For my reviews of Control’s two DLC, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311823/ and https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311826/

Control may be the closest we’ll ever get to a Superman game, and I promise I’m not kidding. Set in an SCP-esque universe, you control Jesse Faden, a young lady gifted with powers akin to the Man of Steel. She’s looking for her brother Dylan who, years ago, was forcibly taken by the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) to a facility called the Oldest House; and now that she’s arrived there, it’s ready to enact its plans for her. What are they and what secrets does Jesse discover? That’s for you to find out should you play the game, a recommendation I gladly give though with some major reservations, the largest being the story.

See, I made the comparison to SCP for a couple of reasons: one, Remedy themselves outright stated it was an influence; and two, this is a game similarly-reliant on optional material. For those unaware, the SCP Foundation’s mythology is built upon thousands upon thousands of articles detailing paranormal instances across the globe, and while Control doesn’t have anywhere near as much lore, you genuinely will not understand the scope of Jesse’s brave new world unless you read/watch/listen to the numerous pieces of media about you. Explanations about locations, enemies, backstories, the FBC’s hierarchy; why Jesse was chosen as the new Director, how she got her powers, the uniqueness of her gun, etc….Sure, playing the base game will net you a thin enough web of understanding, but unless you’re engaging in those extended convos with your colleagues or tracking down extra database entries, you’re going to be missing out on a significant portion of the narrative, and I just don’t know if this was a good storytelling method. People play video games for the sake of, you know, playing video games, not to read/listen to a book/audiobook, and though Control has great gameplay (more on that later), it’s ultimately a story-driven game. To handicap that aspect for players who didn’t feel like digesting every article they found is a sign of either shortsighted direction or accidentally-obtuse design.

Regardless, speaking as someone who DID engage with 90% of the supplements they spotted, I can tell you their quality is hit-or-miss. The SCP-type articles, for example, are superbly written, featuring the kind of handcrafted mysteries which genuinely expand upon Control’s mythos in an organic manner. The Hotline calls to Jesse’s predecessor, the late Director Trench, on the other hand, are absolutely lazy, chock-full of rehashed B-roll and monologues that drag on for up to two minutes on end (and whose only intent seems to have been to give James McCaffrey (RIP) a SAG-protected paycheck).

Mixed are these live action clips starring Matthew Porretta with the most punchable face in a Remedy game since Max Payne’s original visage. They do their job as far as divulging vital info, but the whole Bill Nye-parody wore out its welcome very quickly.

There are several other sources you’ll come across in your journey, from interview tapes to office notes to even puppet shows with atrocious voice-acting, and while Remedy certainly deserves credit for diversifying their output ala Between the Lions, they all still come down to the core problem of being exposition dumps for the sake of exposition dumps. If Half-Life was an example of a title being too reliant on environmental storytelling, Control is the opposite, and that’s just going to rub some people the wrong way.

That aside, even having ingested the majority of the backbone, I can’t say Control has a particularly strong tale, largely because of two big problems: one, Jesse’s character occupies an inconsistent niche; and two, the game, as a whole, feels very anticlimactic.

Regarding the former, Jesse enters the FBC in a weird capacity -- she knows something is off courtesy of events from her past, yet simultaneously doesn’t know the extent of this hidden society, placing her in a strange position wherein she’s both aware and unaware of such goings-ons. This was clearly done to differentiate her from the fish-out-of-water archetype Alan Wake occupied in his respective game, but the problem is the developers didn’t know how to frame her attitudes against that of the player. What I mean is, when you’re controlling a veteran, their reactions expand upon the world; when you’re controlling a newbie, their reactions mimic your own. With Jesse, though, Remedy opted for this bizarre in-between wherein she’ll internally note how things are beyond the realm of normality, yet maintain this attitude of complicity. It’s admittedly hard to describe, and you’re better off experiencing the game yourself to understand what I’m saying, but the end result is it turns her into a slightly-unsettling individual. Now, some of you may be thinking well Red, what about the numerous science fantasy worlds out there whose heroes likewise don’t express any surprise at their surroundings? The difference is those titles deliver most of their mythology to you in spades, an aspect that, as stated before, Control relegates to digitized stationary.

This polymorphization of heavy optional lore and semi-oblivious protagonist culminates in a world that just doesn’t feel lived-in. The Oldest House and its shifting corridors may be a technical enigma, but not once did I ever feel immersed in its shaky abode, and a good chunk of that is owed to Jesse’s complacency as a person -- after all, if the main character doesn’t care for all the Men in Black-style reveals, why should I? Because of this, Jesse’s arc of embracing her role as Director of the FBC comes across as very half-baked, her lack of explicit consideration for the directorship’s pros-and-cons being the perfect example why her arc is underwhelming. If that weren’t enough, the primary plot of fixing the Oldest House and rescuing Jesse’s brother is incredibly mundane: there’s no real build-up to the climax, the final set-piece is lame, and the truth behind events-past is gleaned very easily (ruining any surprises beforehand).

It brings me no joy to criticize these things because Control is a game that clearly had so much love and effort put into its world; however, the reality is all that love was for naught as the worldbuilding is just not executed in a natural-enough manner. Combined with the bathetic main story, and the end result leaves a lot to be desired.

Still, I assume the lion’s share of buyers out there will be seeking out Control for its gameplay, a facet I can’t quite talk about yet without first addressing the graphics. You see, Control is a unique enterprise, its fidelity resting on a destructible environmental schema fans of The Force Unleashed may find nostalgia from. Remedy’s artisans have done a phenomenal job crafting a system wherein the majority of obstacles & objects within are rendered collapsable, either from adjacent shooting or Jesse’s psychic energy, and while the transitory animations weren’t quite at the smoothness level they needed to be, it’s a feat I never thought we’d see in an open world game given the dedication and sheer engineering required for such a craft.

Yet it’s been done here, and not only has it been done here, it’s been done very well here: glass walls, plywood paneling, computer terminals, clock faces, water coolers, paper piles, stone columns, TP rolls, chair fibers; the crack of the ground as you land with G-Force; the shattering of frames as you bolt through an enclosed window -- all exhibit the kind of response you’d expect from such objects getting hit with a strong enough pulse (shards, splinters, sparks, fragments, floods, confetti, pebbles, scraps, plastic strips). Minus the paper piles looking like polygons out of FEAR (and miraculously evaporating in thin air), it’s an incredible accomplishment, and one that makes Control stand above its generational compatriots.

The rest of the game holds up just as well, with Remedy programming those small details I’ve come to love in AAA/indie gaming alike -- I’m talking reflections off of glossy saran wrap, film projectors continuing to play their picture across surfaces even as you telekinetically manipulate their orientation, light reflections within eyeballs during convos, etc…etc….

In terms of the character modeling, things are a little bit more mixed. To clarify, everyone looks great, but I couldn’t help feeling some detail was deliberately shedded whenever the camera exited close-ups as, in the midst of said close-ups, you could literally make out skin pores and eyebrow strands on Jesse and co.’s faces. When the camera pulls back, however, such tissue is rendered much more translucent, a strange occurrence considering Photo Mode reveals no detail to have been technically lost.

However, my bigger issues lay with some macro aesthetic principles Remedy evidently followed. For starters, Control can get excessively dim at times, predominantly in the cavernous areas, to the point where I had to manually upscale the brightness to find the correct paths (which is saying something considering Alan Wake had no such issues despite taking place almost entirely at night). Secondly, as much as I liked the consistency of the Oldest House (every wing, no matter how radically-varied, visually resembles its architectural-brethren), there was a severe lack of personalization in the minute details. A lot of the office spaces, for example, are mimicked floor-after-floor, exhibiting the same plaques, memos, and paraphernalia. No, this doesn’t apply to the dedicated NPC chambers (like the Director’s quarters), and yes I get that this could’ve been a commentary on the monotony of corporate culture; but still, to not even throw in a bobblehead or family photo out there felt like a missed opportunity.

But these are slim pickings in the long run, and the reality is the majority of players won’t focus on them amidst the urbicidal carnage of the gameplay…which brings me to the gameplay. See, Control is a third-person shooter with psychokinetic elements, meaning Jesse isn’t just trading fire, but utilizing her various abilities to dispatch scores of enemies sent her way; and as you can probably surmise from everything I said before, it’s no secret which part of the combat led to the Superman comparisons. I won’t list all of Jesse’s abilities to preserve some of the surprises for you guys, but know that, as long as you’re keeping yourself upgraded, it’s pretty rare to enter a scenario wherein you don’t feel as powerful as the Big Blue Boyscout.

That’s not to say the gunslinging is mediocre- far from it, what you’ve got is a frenzied shoot ‘em up bolstered by slick auto-aim and an armament reminiscent of the Lawgiver from Dredd (for the uninitiated, it’s capable of swapping into multiple models contingent on your personal preference). Tearing a boulder out of the ground and following up its collision with a hailstorm of bullets never gets old, and I was impressed by the realistic damage calculation done by the Northlight Engine (i.e., the mass of the flung item + the wind-up time + any impeding barriers = output).

To counterbalance Jesse’s onslaught, you’ll often be against tens of wraiths at a time, sets of them divided into special classes ripe with their own unique offensive/defensive schemes you’ll need to adapt to in the midst of battles. It’s a genuinely fun time, namely due to the smooth integration of the abilities synchronizing well with Remedy’s attempts at discouraging cover shooting (unless you’re actively trying to cheese the game, you’ll find most cover crumbles and a surge of explosive munitions thrown your way). No matter the diminishments in difficulty, I always had a blast getting into random skirmishes throughout the Oldest House.

There are only four major drawbacks to the whole enterprise: first, the omnipresent qualm of respawning enemies, which concurrently hamper exploration whilst giving players easy caches for farming exp; second, boss fights, the preponderance of which were less specialized encounters and more bulletsponge rehashings of existing enemy archetypes; thirdly, the game relies on respawn points, some of which can get very frustrating courtesy of them not being near where your objective/death resides/occurs. And fourthly, the fact that new abilities are tied to completing side missions over learning them during the main campaign.

In terms of whether that side content is good, your mileage will definitely vary -- a few standout, involving Jesse investigating malicious items the FBC was studying under lock-up, but a large number embody repetitive extermination tasks (some of the aforementioned Altered Items also not living up to their potential as far as in-depth scenarios).

You’ve probably heard about Control indulging in the Metroidvania genre, and on that front it doesn’t do anything particularly exciting. If anything, the game is more reminiscent of Alien: Isolation or Arkham Asylum wherein returning to prior areas with new skills is less about digging up new secrets and more about progressing forward in the story. Yes, there are discretionary rooms you can access later, but the thing is they often only contain generic upgrade components over specialized goodies, handicapping their enticement as far as being worth pursuing. And it’s kind of a shame because Jesse’s various skills, placed in conjunction with these bland quarters, could’ve been directed towards some unique environmental puzzle-solving under the Metroidvania format, yet the most you’ll get are shoving giant batteries into slots ala Dead Space-style.

SFX, on the other hand, is pretty solid, rarely doing anything exceptional but always underpinning your actions in a veritable manner (one zoom-whoosh din, in particular, became a classic melody for me whenever I battered enemies with telekinetic projectiles!). Unfortunately, it’s slightly counterbalanced by a major defect in the sound editing, that defect entailing the foleying for metallic simulacra. I’m not sure what kind of material they use in Finland, but I’m not lying when I tell you guys every single steel-based accessory and trinket in Control literally sounded like glass bottles falling off a shelf. Again, perhaps the manufacturing is just different in Finland, but with my American background, hearing alloyed rods or drawers clatter like stemware from a high-class bar was a bit immersive-breaking.

Voice acting is more uniform than past Remedy games, with Courtney Hope doing a phenomenal job as our Leading Lady. I’m not sure if Control’s tight shots were filmed under a mocap lens or conceived via algorithms influenced by the actor’s performance, but I like to believe it was the former given the numerous tics Jesse does that perfectly encapsulate what someone ailing from anxiety/trauma/OCD would exhibit: the shifting eye contact, twitching jawline, and forced confidence pitches underscoring a terrifically-accurate visage. If Hope’s fellow castmates had stumbled in their parts, her stagecraft would’ve been more than enough to carry the game.

Luckily, that didn’t need to happen. For all my complaints about his mug, Poretta does a better job here with the multifaceted Casper Darling than he ever did as Wake, depicting that shift from idealistic bliss to hopeless turmoil pretty well.

Martti Suosalo won the inaugural Supporting Performer BAFTA for his role as Ahti the Janitor, and you’ll be scratching your head as to why after beating the game. It’s not that he’s bad, but more-so that he’s barely in it, his limited screen time (even with all the side content) failing to leave a lasting impression.

Antonia Bernath, Ronan Summers, Helen Marshall, Charlotte Randall, and Derek Hagen round out the remaining major players of the story, and though minimally-present, all successfully convey their characters’ personalities in a likable-enough manner.

You may have noticed Dylan’s marionettist, Sean Durrie, absent from the above accolades, and that was for a reason: he’s the only bad one. Whatever direction Durrie was given by Remedy was misguided as he ends up going for this annoyingly manchildish voice, presumably in an attempt to convey Dylan’s concurrent turmoil/dual mindset, that just comes off as fingernails on a chalkboard. Unlike the others, his short airtime quickly emerges as a blessing.

The score, sadly, is the biggest lowpoint of Control, its essence a case of misguided intentions. The talent was certainly not lacking - Martin Stig Andersen did a solid job with Limbo & Inside, and of course Petri Alanko crafted the cinematically-tuned OST for Alan Wake. But the issue here is the two overindulged in bleary synths as a way of conveying the Oldest House’s eerie atmosphere, causing the OST to sound like one of those B-movie scores from the early-2010s that overused distortion effects in lieu of authentic ambience. The result is an ugly-sounding assemblage of motifs that are simply more obnoxious than pleasant to listen to (the quieter tracks somehow being the worst of the bunch). Two bonus songs are thrown onto the soundtrack, one inspired by Finnish heavy metal, the other foreign tangos, and if you’re a fan of either genre you’ll probably enjoy them, though they admittedly didn’t do anything for me.

Despite ending on a bad note (no pun intended), I meant what I said in the introduction: Control is a good game. It’s without-a-doubt the most fun I’ve had with a Remedy release, its base constructed out of d@mn good craftsmanship that mostly overcomes its aforestated flaws. After years of playing games that soft-blocked movement with conveniently placed desks or walls, I can’t tell you guys just how thrilling it is to be able to burst through an aperture or table to get to the other side.

Small things like that go a long way, and you’ll definitely enjoy your time with Control.


NOTES
-The biggest hurdle to 100% completion are these challenge areas called Jukebox Expeditions in which you’re tasked with traveling over a wide expanse and completing an assortment of random errands within a set time limit. It’s perfectly doable; however the extraneous enemy numbers placed in conjunction with the time limit prevent it from being as engaging as I’m sure Remedy intended.

-One thing that bothered me a lot was how Jesse only jumps with one leg. Could they really not have programmed a leap in both appendages?

-Another thing that really bothered me were the hapless redactions and references to other reports within the collectible documents. The blackouts often made no sense (listing a state, yet hiding the city; telling one symptom, but not another; providing one useless detail whilst excluding another), and I couldn’t fathom why they’d even do it if the records were meant to be disseminated to other FBC agents (worse were the ones ordered by Jesse- why TF would she not be entitled to uncensored copies of her own requests?!). The references speak for themselves considering you can’t even access whatever they’re citing. In summation, both methods came across as attempts at making the write-ups seem deeper than they actually were.

What's annoying about not having any next-gen consoles is that, despite how many interesting new games came out last year, I didn't have the opportunity to give any of them a shot, and so the only game released in 2023 that I got to play and review was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. While that game was decent (albeit massively disappointing), I wanted to play at least one more game before the year ended, and while I missed that date by one day, I'm happy that I managed to snag a copy of Super Mario Bros. Wonder either way. Even with my excitement for this game, Super Mario Bros. Wonder managed to surpass my expectations with flying colors, and I'd honestly consider it to be the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World.

After years of oversaturating the market with mediocre 2D platformers through the New Super Mario Bros. series and even making their fans make their own levels across two separate consoles (not that there's anything wrong with that, because I really like both of the Super Mario Maker games), Nintendo finally decided to make a 2D Mario game with some soul to it, and I'd say they succeeded. Instead of being gimmicky and forgettable, the levels here in Super Mario Bros. Wonder are tightly constructed and bursting with new ideas, as each stage features wacky enemies, memorable themes, and interesting mechanics that build off of each other as the game goes along. All of this is true even before you come across each level's Wonder Flower, and once you do find it, the level morphs into something else entirely, and it only amplified just how creative the levels were, how gorgeous the new and more expressive visual style was, and how fun all of it was to play. The Wonder Flower sequences were easily my favorite moments in the game, but they were taken to completely new heights once I started going for the Special World stages, as their more demanding and even wilder level design had me grinning from ear to ear. Aside from the more conventional platforming stages, Super Mario Bros. Wonder also features different kinds of levels such as Wiggler races, Badge challenges, enemy challenges, and search parties, and these provided some decent variety while also being charming in their own right.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder is one of those games whose general excellence makes me feel bad to even consider saying anything negative about it, but there were some aspects of the game that could've been better. For starters, the new Badge system was a bit mixed for me, as I rarely felt the urge to use anything outside of the Parachute Cap Badge and certain levels pretty much requiring the use of certain badges (namely the Dolphin Kick Badge, which makes swimming actually fun to control) without saying so beforehand led to me begrudgingly restarting the level just to swap badges. Among other reasons, Super Mario Bros. Wonder marked a new era in the franchise through its (comparatively) extensive use of voice acting, and while Kevin Afghani was spot on as Charles Martinet's replacement for Mario and Luigi, I thought that the game didn't really need so many Talking Flowers, even if Mick Wingert's performance as them wasn't nearly as annoying as it could've been. 2D Mario games always got the short end of the stick when it came to boss fights, but even with the implementation of the Wonder Flower, the repeated fights against Bowser Jr. still left a lot to be desired, and they weren't distinct enough from each other to be all that interesting to me. All of those flaws pale in comparison to what Super Mario Bros. Wonder got right, though, as I'd easily consider it to be my favorite 2D Mario game to date, and I can't wait to go back and get as close to completing it 100% as I can.

Yoko Taro's NieR: Automata is a game that I've been aware of ever since it came out due to me watching Dunkey's video on it once or twice, but I didn't get the urge to actually go out of my way to play it until years later. Since I've mostly been focusing my attention on games from the 7th console generation and everything that came out before it, I put my search for a copy of NieR: Automata on hold for the time being, but when a friend of mine lent me her copy of the game back in December (shoutout to Catherine, by the way), I knew that it was the first thing I wanted to do when I got back to York in January. After spending a week beating the game's three main paths across a total of just under 23 hours, I can safely say that NieR: Automata blew me away on every level, and even with all of the praise that has been built up for it over the years, I really didn't expect to love it as much as I did.

Since God Hand is currently my fifth favorite game of all time, I was really interested to see what a studio originally comprised of people who worked on that game would be able to come up with on their own, and while I didn't actually realize that NieR: Automata was made by PlatinumGames until I actually booted it up for the first time, I don't think I could've asked for a better introduction to their body of work. In terms of its core gameplay, NieR: Automata works wonders as a hack-&-slash character action game that's equal parts hectic and buttery-smooth, as the amount of mechanics to manage and aggressive machines to keep track of made each enemy encounter feel just as exciting and tense as the last, and I found myself constantly countering moves and unleashing combos that were incredibly satisfying to pull off successfully. The game's implementation of RPG elements worked really well alongside this, with the unique plug-in chip upgrades feeling varied in their uses while also making my own approach to combat feel personalized. NieR: Automata was also very admirable in how willing it was to branch out and go beyond its respective genre, as its massive sense of scale was achieved brilliantly through its implementation of shoot 'em up and even text adventure sections throughout its more conventional character action missions. On top of just feeling great on their own, the slick, responsive controls made me appreciate the game's gorgeous artstyle and world design, and travelling around the game's open world made me feel just as excited to see all of the new, dilapidated vistas as it made me anticipate whatever new loot or sidequests came my way. Keiichi Okabe's phenomenal score is very easily one of the very best video game scores I've heard in a long time, as his music perfectly captures the melancholic, yet grandiose and profoundly emotional tone of the game itself.

NieR: Automata was one of those games where every element on display was terrific in its execution, but one element that especially impressed me would be its writing. Across its multiple pathways and shifts in perspective, NieR: Automata explores densely philosophical themes such as what it means to be human, the motivations that fuel violence and war, and the value of our own individual lives, and its navigation of these topics through the increasingly fractured psychology of its main cast was riveting. The story itself was already compelling in its twists, turns, and overwhelming sense of loss and tragedy, but the layers of existentialism that grew more prevalent as the game went on made for some outright heartbreaking moments, and it all made the game's stakes feel heavy and palpable. The game's structure involving multiple playthroughs worked really well for me, with the slight shifts and additions in gameplay being welcome changes that were a perfect fit for the recontextualization of certain events, motivations, and reveals. There's no doubt in my mind that NieR: Automata was one of the very best games I have ever played, and not only do I want to play what directly preceded it, NieR, but I also want to eventually play the game that NieR was a spinoff of, Drakengard.