Control was a game that grabbed my attention from its first trailer, which, given my love of Remdy’s previous work, shouldn’t have been a surprise. Max Payne and Alan Wake were massive favourites of mine, and I was also a huge fan of Quantum Break, a game that probably never got the credit it was due at the time.
I picked up Control not long after its release in 2019, and for some reason, I couldn’t make it stick. The game wasn’t a fault for that, that was all me and something that had affected serval game playthroughs at the time, so it was left behind in storage as I continued to look for something else to play.
That brings me to the present day.
I promised myself in December 2022 that with a lovely new graphics card installed in my PC and my wallet being quite a lot lighter, I would start to make my way through a backlog that would require a metric ton of laxatives to clear. Over a month into 2023, I’ve managed headway with Control joining a growing list of games I’ve completed.
Control falls someplace between Alan Wake and Quantum break in terms of setting, with horror and Si-Fi elements. The voice acting and storytelling are vital to making you want to play and learn more, and it’s handled exceptionally throughout. Control has loads of memorable characters, with Ahti, the janitor being a personal favourite. More background on the story is found by collecting hidden logs and videos for the completionists out there. The main story gives you enough information to understand what’s going on, but if you want to explore and dig deeper, there’s loads more lore available.
While looking for her missing brother, the main character Jesses Faden explores the depths of the Federal Bureau of Controls’ (FBC) “Oldest House” and finds Objects of Power to gain abilities like evade (dodge), launch(short-term flight) and seize(move objects with her mind). As she explores deeper, she uncovers a better understanding of why she was pulled there and how it ties to an earlier event in her childhood called an altered world event by the FBC.
On her arrival, the oldest house has been overrun by an enemy called the Hiss. As they’ve started to take over, the building has been warped, and sections of the oldest house have been altered and are unreachable. As Jesse explores the twisted and changed version of the Oldest House, she finds that the Hiss has taken over a number of the FBC agents and will need to be cleansed before the FBC can come out of lockdown. This leads Jesses deeper into the Oldest House, as it transforms as she clears out control points and gains more knowledge about what has happened.
Without spoiling too much of the story, you’ll eventually track down your brother and then learn more about who released the Hiss before trying to find a way to take them down for good.
Even four years after its release, Control is sometimes a sight to behold. Built using the same in-house built Northlight engine as Quantum Break, the environmental destruction is truly impressive and very few games have as much as this going on at one time. The abilities gained by Jesse see her launch multiple parts of the world into enemies, and they all react realistically with each other as they fly about your screen.
Control was one of the first mainstream games to have ray-tracing and DLSS support and was pushed massively by Nvidia because of this before its release. On my 7900xt, the game looks fantastic and plays at well over 120fps on my 3440×1440 screen, at least until I enable ray-tracing. As it’s an older game, it lacks support for Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR)(AMD’s version of DLSS), so with all the lovely ray-tracing options turned on, it drops a bit down. In short, the game should look great for ages to come, thanks to the impressive technologies that have been used to make the game.
Combat is a mixture of shooting and using the abilities gained during your progression. It feels great, and combining the two is easy, allowing the player to cause massive damage to any threats you come across. Don’t expect a load of different weapons, as the game only has one, the service weapon. However, it has a few forms that essentially work as a pistol, machine gun and shotgun. As well as this, it can be upgraded and modded for added damaged or stat buffs.
Outside of combat, you’ll have puzzles that you will use your abilities to be solved. I’m not the brightest lightbulb in the pack, but most of it is standard fare and shouldn’t take too long to work out. Only once did I need to fall back on a trusty guide for help.
Control is a fantastic game and admiringly well-made, except for the map. For a Metriodvania-style world, the map is incredibly frustrating to use. You’ll need to backtrack through areas you’ve already been in, but the map only gives a minimal idea of how to get from point A to point B. It just doesn’t have enough detail, and it would have been an enormous help to know what door or areas were still locked and what was open. It’s not game-breaking, but I was pretty frustrated by the end of my playthrough.
Control is a relatively short game, with the main story only taking about 10 to 12 hours to complete; as I said earlier, if you want to know more about what’s going on, there are a few side missions and collectables that can take your game time past the 20-hour mark, depending on how many you want to complete.
-BigGP
