The following is from a post I wrote on ResetEra back in 2020, because I'm too lazy to write something new...
"I stopped reading the documents about quarter of the way through, because not only were they not particularly interesting content wise, but the game just bombards you with them to an almost comical extent. It's like there was something new to read every time I entered a new room. Last thing I want to do is start and stop a game constantly just to read stuff; that shit is worse than listening to audio logs a la Bioshock.
And the story just did nothing for me. There way no hook tangible enough to snag me, it was just weirdness piled upon weirdness right from the get go, and I wasn't intrigued enough to unravel it all. I like surreal and eerie content in media in general, like David Lynch's movies for instance, but at least Lynch has the good sense to balance out his own brand of 'strange shit' with a degree of normalcy. Blue Velvet has the white picket fence suburbs and a boy scout protagonist to juxtapose the insanity of Dennis Hopper and his own little world. Control doesn't have that.
Loads of other problems with the game as well. On a base PS4, the game shits the bed every time you unpause it. Awful technical performance + borked checkpoint system + enemies that can take away most of your health in one hit = pure frustration. A confusing map in a game where many of the environments look the same is cause for further exasperation. And it's hard to believe that the same man who wrote the first two Max Payne games managed to create a main character so beige and uninteresting."
"I stopped reading the documents about quarter of the way through, because not only were they not particularly interesting content wise, but the game just bombards you with them to an almost comical extent. It's like there was something new to read every time I entered a new room. Last thing I want to do is start and stop a game constantly just to read stuff; that shit is worse than listening to audio logs a la Bioshock.
And the story just did nothing for me. There way no hook tangible enough to snag me, it was just weirdness piled upon weirdness right from the get go, and I wasn't intrigued enough to unravel it all. I like surreal and eerie content in media in general, like David Lynch's movies for instance, but at least Lynch has the good sense to balance out his own brand of 'strange shit' with a degree of normalcy. Blue Velvet has the white picket fence suburbs and a boy scout protagonist to juxtapose the insanity of Dennis Hopper and his own little world. Control doesn't have that.
Loads of other problems with the game as well. On a base PS4, the game shits the bed every time you unpause it. Awful technical performance + borked checkpoint system + enemies that can take away most of your health in one hit = pure frustration. A confusing map in a game where many of the environments look the same is cause for further exasperation. And it's hard to believe that the same man who wrote the first two Max Payne games managed to create a main character so beige and uninteresting."