Control Review
From start to finish
Control does a fantastic job at luring, but also confusing, the player into the narrative set out by Remedy Entertainment.
Control instantly throws the player into a perplexing story arc, with very visually appealing graphics and level design. Some of the craziest level designs that I have seen and played, happened to be during my playthrough of Control, even while trying to piece the storyline together, in the roughly 12 hours that I spent doing so.
From the get go, the tone of the game is set very quickly. Playing as Jesse Faden, you are able to walk right into what seems like an empty building in the heart of New York City run by the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) in search of something that is unknown to the player (and somewhat to Jesse).
Throughout the main mission and the side missions that are scattered throughout the game, Jesse’s goal at the FBC and the mystery behind the strange “Hiss” monsters become more and more clear.
Control comes out swinging early on, with a tense surroundings and ominous, almost horror-like, feeling. But the story just falls flat in the end. While it is still intriguing enough to play through, the confusing aspect of the main story did not get wrapped enough at the end, side characters seemed very unimportant, and Jesse’s conclusion did not leave me satisfied.
Control does nothing special in the realm of gunplay mechanics, leaving the player to use just the one gun, the Service Weapon. However, through looting and leveling up throughout the game, you are able to craft weapon mods for this pistol to change the firing behavior to be completely different from other versions of the pistol. These different mods give the player enough variety to not feel bored while they gun down the Hiss.
Serving as a great compliment to the Service Weapon, Jesse Faden is also capable of a wide range of psychic powers that she gains throughout the game by gathering what are called “Objects of Power.” Swapping back and forth between these different powers and figuring out which ones were best for certain situations, really added to the overall fun of the combat system. Levitation and Telekinesis are two of the easiest powers to unlock, yet provide some great enjoyment as you wipe out the Hiss.
While Control did a lot of great things throughout the game, there were some issues that may hinder someone’s enjoyment of the game. While running through the, sometimes confusing, FBC building, the player will run into a fair amount of Hiss bad guys. There just won’t be a ton of differentiation between the ones that you run into. Most of the enemies are very similar in mechanics (or lack of) and the game fails in providing the player a larger variety of enemies.
The repetitiveness of the enemies also leads to repetitiveness of the overall combat. While the combat system is very fun, when I had killed the same enemy type hundreds of times throughout the game, it became rather rinse and repeat.
Control does a lot of things right. Remedy created another quality game to add to their collection. And even with the disappointing ending to the storyline, the gameplay was definitely fun enough to be worth a playthrough.
If you were able to pick up the game for free from Epic Games Store earlier this year or have access to Xbox Game Pass, I definitely recommend playing Control. If not, maybe wait until a decent sale is available before picking it up.
PROS:
Stunning graphics
Mostly fun combat system
Intriguing story line
Plenty of side quests and loot to stay entertained for quite a while
Assist mode for players looking to be able to play with essentially “god mode”
CONS:
Confusing ending to the story. It doesn’t seem to wrap itself up very clearly.
Lack of standard enemy variety
Combat can sometimes get repetitive.
Easy to get lost in the FBC building.