Every so often a game comes out that breaks any potential score you give to it. A perfect score doesn’t cover everything because the game is so well realised that the marriage of story, execution, art direction etc come together in perfect harmony. The writers and designers understand the world so well and use it to delight and surprise you with additional content which feels excessive and lavish.

That game is Alan Wake 2, the last game that made me feel like this is Metal Gear Solid 3. I can’t give it any higher praise.

Bizarre character selection which gates the most popular characters with kids behind a ‘hard’ mode and sequesters the Yoshi and Nabbit to an ‘easy’ mode, effectively halving the roster of available characters for people who prefer either mode.

The Online mode feels half-baked yet also like borderline cheating, with good co-ordination you can essentially have infinite lives. This distraction of other players makes it very difficult to appreciate the course design.

Saying that it's Super Mario World bought into the modern day with all that entails. The Wonder effects add a good deal of variety and are much less gimmicky than anticipated. It also has a robust selection of difficult courses for those that like to go for 100% as I had.

Overall, the vision of Control is extremely well realised. Control takes place in The Oldest House which is perhaps the greatest character in the game, you think you know what it is going to throw at you next but it always has something new to surprise you. It’s a fantastic area to explore and never outstays its welcome, which is good because the game is pretty lengthy. The environments and character models all look great too, the sterile and angular environments look great.

The combat works well but is not a showstopper by any means. The game’s well of toys and powers runs dry pretty quicky and I found myself sticking to the things I liked the most and upgrading exclusively them. Enemies do very little to get you to change up your approach and most encounters can be solved by staggering the spamming of your telekinesis ability rather than outright spamming it.

The personal mods system is by far the weakest aspect of the game. You will mostly collect mods just to trash and with no options to auto-sell or expand your inventory they just become a nuisance. It is by no means a dealbreaker but it is an aspect that seems oddly under-considered and in spite of the rest of the great decisions made on this title. Optional challenges also reward you in mods which is a great motivation to skip them entirely.

Saying that, Control takes the Remedy formula to the next level. Narrative was always the strongest suit of their titles and this game is awash with great dialogue, files, audio logs and videos. The writing runs the gamut from funny, scary all the way through to making you question the reality you find yourself in. It rattles through so many concepts (scientific, occult, work drama etc) that I find it unbelievable that this amount of research has gone into building this world. It's an impressive spectacle and credit to the team.

Alan Wake is a game which is a prime example of why I find number rating scores inaccurate and not very useful. I have been scoring games on here purely to organise my thoughts.

It has plenty of shortcomings. It has a functional combat system but it is rather one note and the spikes in difficulty can be insane. It feels like it wants to be a survival horror with resource management but you will find yourself awash with ammo and resources most of the time.

Later on it has some questionable puzzle choices which interrupt the pacing of the game. Platforming should have never been in the design document for this game either as it is imprecise and is not gratifying to do well.

Despite that, I am a huge fan of Stephen King, The Twilight Zone and cosmic horror and as a narrative the game is compelling. It strings you along from cutscene to cutscene with stellar direction, voice actors on their A-Game and an engaging spooky plot. It often stretches out into conceptualising plot elements in only the way video games can.

By the end you really feel like you know Alan well, as well as the great cast of characters which all fill the boots of some horror tropes pretty nicely while also bringing a lot of uniqueness thanks to some great dialogue.

As I said in my opener, numbers are not a good yardstick. I can’t in good conscience give this less than a perfect score. Game reviewing and criticism should not be a mundane checkbox exercise of what you notice literally works and not. It should be in reference to the whole experience, the aims of the development and the feelings you are left with.

It's a fantastic game and one of my favourites that I’ve played recently.

I’ve been warned off this game for quite some time by fans of the Zero Escape series.

The escape room puzzles are very well designed with some very creative solutions and a great variety of rooms to explore.

The 3D models were very limited but I found them charming after becoming used to them, they are used like puppets similar to the Ace Attorney 3DS games (albeit without the polished animation).

The voice acting can be very hit or miss but definitely melds with its B-Movie horror tone well.

The story had enough intrigue going on for me and the perceptive can piece together some of the mysteries well before they come up, but they have enough twists to still surprise.

I wouldn’t say it’s the strongest entry of the series, but it was definitely good enough to play and I enjoyed my time with it.

[World Tour Mode]
A decently fun brawler that teaches you some of the core mechanics of the game.

Has some nice cutscenes with the Street Fighter cast but ultimately the story does not capitalise on the SF lore or expand it in any meaningful way.

Review of Other Modes to follow...