I first played this game near release, shortly after playing Quantum Break. Now, I absolutely hate QB, and back then the first hours of Control didn't convinced me it wouldn't be yet another cheap TPS with sponge enemies.
Well, joke's on me because this game is nothing short of amazing. First, the story. They aren't bound the Stephen King precepts of "horror stories can't have explanations" and so they actually do try writing a cohesive supernatural story. The FBC is an organization meant to detect, contain and study the type of events like what happened at Alan Wake. Therefore they HAD to explain it or at least offer a substantiate amount of theories and studies about the thing they deal with.
The story in this game is great, not exactly perfect, but such a step up from everything that came before it that left me pleasantly surprised. Jesse is also an extremely charismatic protagonist. They managed to make a character with quirky/joke-y monologues without her sounding like TikTok zoomer BS like most character in this archetype does. Her reactions are mostly believable, and her story as a survivor of another event much like the one that happens in Alan Wake is intriguing.
Gameplay is also a massive improvement, and it also only falls short of perfection by little. The main problem with Control's combat is Remedy's insistence of making enemies be bullet sponges while dealing ridiculously high amounts of damage to the player. This coupled with a bad health pickup system makes combat sometimes infuriating when it should be awesome. The accessibility options that come with the Ultimate edition do offer a damage resistance option and I feel like the endgame pratically demands that setting to be turned on if you don't want to cheese the health gate mechanic like the Borderlands series.
All in all, this is a really great game, with only minor shortcomings preventing it to be a true masterpiece. It's my favorite Remedy game so far (and yes, that includes AW2).
Well, joke's on me because this game is nothing short of amazing. First, the story. They aren't bound the Stephen King precepts of "horror stories can't have explanations" and so they actually do try writing a cohesive supernatural story. The FBC is an organization meant to detect, contain and study the type of events like what happened at Alan Wake. Therefore they HAD to explain it or at least offer a substantiate amount of theories and studies about the thing they deal with.
The story in this game is great, not exactly perfect, but such a step up from everything that came before it that left me pleasantly surprised. Jesse is also an extremely charismatic protagonist. They managed to make a character with quirky/joke-y monologues without her sounding like TikTok zoomer BS like most character in this archetype does. Her reactions are mostly believable, and her story as a survivor of another event much like the one that happens in Alan Wake is intriguing.
Gameplay is also a massive improvement, and it also only falls short of perfection by little. The main problem with Control's combat is Remedy's insistence of making enemies be bullet sponges while dealing ridiculously high amounts of damage to the player. This coupled with a bad health pickup system makes combat sometimes infuriating when it should be awesome. The accessibility options that come with the Ultimate edition do offer a damage resistance option and I feel like the endgame pratically demands that setting to be turned on if you don't want to cheese the health gate mechanic like the Borderlands series.
All in all, this is a really great game, with only minor shortcomings preventing it to be a true masterpiece. It's my favorite Remedy game so far (and yes, that includes AW2).