Yet another utterly fascinating swing from Remedy. A game not without its faults that nevertheless had me hooked from the very start. In terms of setting and worldbuilding it quickly became one of my all-time favorite pieces of media.
In terms of its narrative, it starts as strong as it can be. Control’s first two to three hours are some of the best work Remedy has ever developed. It’s also a game that struggles with pacing. The overall structure has some extremely high highs and some rather meandering in-betweens. Every great element of this game also has a rather dull attachment weighing the experience down.
The last couple of hours are simply spectacular as well. As I rolled credits on Control, I wished that Remedy had attempted a more focused, slightly more linear, approach to the game’s structure and narrative. Something more akin to their previous output would solve 90% of the issues I have with the game.
The games' second act, though continuing to introduce fascinating spaces to explore and weird documents to read, tends to blend together in memory as an amalgamation of fetch-quests that don’t really add up to much in terms of the main plot thread, character or world building. This feeling is only amplified by the gradual ramp up of side quests that distract from this main story path. Some are pretty stellar and memorable, specially the ones that grant Jesse new powers to fight with or dive head-on into the sheer fun absurdity of the supernatural world that Control presents, but most of them are even more forgettable fetch-quests and an endless barrage of procedurally generated time sensitive combat encounters that pop up in random areas of the map every set amount of minutes, flashing the screen in big bold letters, attempting to entice you into dropping whatever more interesting thing you are doing to go there and kill some repetitive waves of enemies for some truly lackluster rewards.
The game has some slight metroidvania influences in its approach to the world design, in a Jedi: Fallen Order kind of way. As you advance in the story, you’ll start unlocking abilities that will grant access to new sections of areas you’ve already explored, pushing the player into going back to those places in order to find new stuff. There are a couple of issues with this approach in Control. In particular, the Oldest House, the supernatural, ever shifting, setting for the game, is a very weird and labyrinthian place, and a pretty hard one to traverse at that. Exploring every nook and cranny for the first time is really fun but going back to places and trying to remember how to get back to somewhere, even with the use of fast travel points, is a real pain in the ass. This and the enemy waves that spawn pretty much anywhere large enough to be a combat arena every time you go through there, makes simple fetch side-quests even more bothersome than they should be in the first place.
Combat is the other aspect of the game I’m quite conflicted about. The gameplay experience is amazing, powers and abilities are really fun to play around with. Remedy really nailed the superhero shooter style. My main issue is with the combat encounters. They are simply not engaging nor fun enough to sustain how many of them you can be involved in. It’s near constant, there’s pretty much just one approach that works consistently and enemy variety isn’t enough to keep them fresh for long. Quantum Break had very few opportunities for combat, Control might have too many for what It’s offering to the player. Midway through the game I was quite over these encounters, even though the gameplay experience itself never stopped being fun.
There’s also a whole upgrades system with stat modifiers for weapons and powers that should have been cut altogether. These XP points and mods are not engaging as exploration rewards, builds don´t feel different from each other when playing, the interface itself is a pain to interact with, it just doesn’t work, and it wasn’t necessary to include here. You cannot engage with this at all and still have the same experience as everyone else playing, because I’m sure most people even forget that the system exists at all.
I have my complaints about the game, and I’m rather passionate about them, but that’s because I love the overall experience so damn much. It works so well for me. This blend of weird sci fi and horror, played straight but with some sense of humor, is very much specifically my thing. I absolutely adore all of the world building, finding these documents, letters and videos. Just the look of the game and its spaces was enough to win me over instantly. The presentation is amazing, the way it uses cutscenes and video like no other game does, the wonderful music and sound design, I could go on for a long time praising every little detail I loved. Remedy, as always, created something even more ambitious and fascinating, and I hope they keep doing just that with their next games for a long while. Just maybe keep it tighter next time, trim the fat a bit.
Great DLCs too, AWE is a must play for any self-respecting Alan Wake fan.
In terms of its narrative, it starts as strong as it can be. Control’s first two to three hours are some of the best work Remedy has ever developed. It’s also a game that struggles with pacing. The overall structure has some extremely high highs and some rather meandering in-betweens. Every great element of this game also has a rather dull attachment weighing the experience down.
The last couple of hours are simply spectacular as well. As I rolled credits on Control, I wished that Remedy had attempted a more focused, slightly more linear, approach to the game’s structure and narrative. Something more akin to their previous output would solve 90% of the issues I have with the game.
The games' second act, though continuing to introduce fascinating spaces to explore and weird documents to read, tends to blend together in memory as an amalgamation of fetch-quests that don’t really add up to much in terms of the main plot thread, character or world building. This feeling is only amplified by the gradual ramp up of side quests that distract from this main story path. Some are pretty stellar and memorable, specially the ones that grant Jesse new powers to fight with or dive head-on into the sheer fun absurdity of the supernatural world that Control presents, but most of them are even more forgettable fetch-quests and an endless barrage of procedurally generated time sensitive combat encounters that pop up in random areas of the map every set amount of minutes, flashing the screen in big bold letters, attempting to entice you into dropping whatever more interesting thing you are doing to go there and kill some repetitive waves of enemies for some truly lackluster rewards.
The game has some slight metroidvania influences in its approach to the world design, in a Jedi: Fallen Order kind of way. As you advance in the story, you’ll start unlocking abilities that will grant access to new sections of areas you’ve already explored, pushing the player into going back to those places in order to find new stuff. There are a couple of issues with this approach in Control. In particular, the Oldest House, the supernatural, ever shifting, setting for the game, is a very weird and labyrinthian place, and a pretty hard one to traverse at that. Exploring every nook and cranny for the first time is really fun but going back to places and trying to remember how to get back to somewhere, even with the use of fast travel points, is a real pain in the ass. This and the enemy waves that spawn pretty much anywhere large enough to be a combat arena every time you go through there, makes simple fetch side-quests even more bothersome than they should be in the first place.
Combat is the other aspect of the game I’m quite conflicted about. The gameplay experience is amazing, powers and abilities are really fun to play around with. Remedy really nailed the superhero shooter style. My main issue is with the combat encounters. They are simply not engaging nor fun enough to sustain how many of them you can be involved in. It’s near constant, there’s pretty much just one approach that works consistently and enemy variety isn’t enough to keep them fresh for long. Quantum Break had very few opportunities for combat, Control might have too many for what It’s offering to the player. Midway through the game I was quite over these encounters, even though the gameplay experience itself never stopped being fun.
There’s also a whole upgrades system with stat modifiers for weapons and powers that should have been cut altogether. These XP points and mods are not engaging as exploration rewards, builds don´t feel different from each other when playing, the interface itself is a pain to interact with, it just doesn’t work, and it wasn’t necessary to include here. You cannot engage with this at all and still have the same experience as everyone else playing, because I’m sure most people even forget that the system exists at all.
I have my complaints about the game, and I’m rather passionate about them, but that’s because I love the overall experience so damn much. It works so well for me. This blend of weird sci fi and horror, played straight but with some sense of humor, is very much specifically my thing. I absolutely adore all of the world building, finding these documents, letters and videos. Just the look of the game and its spaces was enough to win me over instantly. The presentation is amazing, the way it uses cutscenes and video like no other game does, the wonderful music and sound design, I could go on for a long time praising every little detail I loved. Remedy, as always, created something even more ambitious and fascinating, and I hope they keep doing just that with their next games for a long while. Just maybe keep it tighter next time, trim the fat a bit.
Great DLCs too, AWE is a must play for any self-respecting Alan Wake fan.