Control is an action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by 505 Games. I played on the Xbox one X, and the Xbox one S. The game tells the complicated story of the Federal Bureau of Control or the FBC, a hidden secretive government organization that handles paranormal phenomena and otherworldly events. The FBC keeps these events and objects hidden from the masses of people. The FBC’s New York headquarters, known as the Oldest House has been overrun with a strange force called the Hiss that threatens all life, outside and within the Federal Bureau of Control. You play as Jesse Faden, a stranger with a mysterious past. Jesse has the help of Polaris, a strange presence inside her own head. After searching for a very long time for her brother, Jesse finally finds the Oldest House. She enters, and everything she knows about her life will change over the next ten or so hours of playtime.
Control is bizarre, in a good way, even in a great way. When first starting the game, players can expect to have no clue as to what is going on. This being said, this review will try to hide spoilers as best as possible, but if you really want the fresh, crazy experience, I suggest picking up the game right now and giving it a try. You are the director, upon entering Jesse soon learns that she is next in line for a directorial position in the FBC. This being said, as a director you will feel that you have little to no control, and the agents of the FBC keep doing what they want, whether you like it or not. As director Jesse gains control of a powerful artifact known as the service weapon. The service weapon is a strange shape-shifting gun that can morph into many different types of firearms. The service weapon starts off as a pistol, capable of taking out weak hiss targets, then as the hiss evolve, so does your weapon. Eventually unlocking powers such as automatic fire or a charging blast, not to mention the other few weapon types, making a total of 5 gun types in Control. Jesse can also find modifications for her weapons and her own body that increase her potential power. There is also a very basic leveling up system in place. Skill points are awarded for completing missions and finding secrets, so there are only a set amount of them.
This game does deserve lots of praise, but it is also pretty simple. All of the powers are acquired through basic side missions or recieved at certain story moments. There are only a handful of powers and they are all pretty predictable, like shield, throw, that kind of simplicity. The only power that truly impressed me was the flight power, this was easily the most exciting. Flying felt really good, it also unlocks new areas of the game and a whole new fighting style. Every power is obtained by binding Jesse with an object of power, which is basically a paranormal object. Being a sort of chosen one, Jesse can overpower the objects and use their powers as her own. The powers combined with the gunplay make for simple yet exciting combat. However, if complexity is something you desire for combat, this is not a game for you.
This game really only used combat as an obstacle in the way of the story. The combat is there, but you won’t really remember most of it. The game is semi-open, and you can explore everything before and after you finish the game. The optional bosses stand out as being really fun and make it worth playing through all the side quests in Control. Control only has ten main missions, they can take about an hour each with some exceptions. The game could benefit from a better map system because I had to look up shortcuts and areas that I had completely forgotten. You could argue that the simple map and lack of specific directions adds to the mysterious element of the game. I would agree sometimes, but even that mystery should have it’s limits when it makes it more boring to play.
The game looks good, the graphics are pretty decent. The graphics did tend to break immersion when talking to people and watching the facial animations. They still work, but it looks really strange. The times where you are the floating camera following Jesse look good though, and the faces are only a minor disappointment. The sound design is really good and helps players feel immersed in an office building, which may or may not be a good thing.The acting is really good, especially Dr. Darling, who acts as a helpful tutorial along the journey. The game utilizes real videos of doctors filmed on real sets playing with the crazy objects and powers in Control. Courtney Hope, who plays Jesse Faden, does a great job sounding just as confused as we all are. Technically the game is perfectly good, the furniture can break and the destruction physics are fantastic. The graphics, sound, and voice acting are all very nice.
Towards the end of the game I had a big problem with frame rate and rooms not loading in. Two different times I walked into a room that wasn’t loaded and I ended up falling right through the ground and it counted as a death. Combined with the long loading screens throughout the game this problem can add lots of frustration. The frame rate only seemed to go down in fights, but luckily I never died strictly because of frame rate. These problems can make certain parts of the game annoying and add too much idle time.
The story of the game and overall setting are top notch. I highly recommend playing this game if any of this sounds appealing to you. The story is awesome and is one of a kind. I have never really played a game quite like this one so it is very hard for me to compare it to others. The closest thing I can think of is Quantum Break (2016) which was developed by the same people, Remedy Entertainment. This game is great, but unfortunately it is not long enough or detailed enough to really be a 10/10. This game is a simple classic, and it is a great ten or so hours. The game is a great time and fun, but once you put it down and finish it, you don’t really have a desire to play more. Regardless, play it and try to gain Control.
Remedy Entertainment has announced that they've purchased the full rights to the Control franchise from 505 Games.
I hope so, Rockstar ain't doing shit with it sadly.
I loved the gameplay in Max Payne 3, it was fantastic but it just didn't feel like Max Payne at its core, it felt like they were doing a new IP or experimenting with one and reshaped it into Max Payne
The Noire, the atmosphere, the dark grittiness, the graphic novel cutscenes, Mona Saxx were all missing.
I'm hoping if they ever get the rights back they do their own version of Max Payne 3, off the secret ending from MP2 where Mona survives.
Max was finally starting to heal thanks to Mona in MP2 and in MP3 they just put his character back to square one, all that development gone.
Kinda what I'm thinking too, like as much as I'd love for R* to give it their unmatched magic touch, they're not doing anything with it.
I loved MP3, only gripe was that the story had very little to do with Max personally but it was still great. The Mona ending would be amazing and honestly not entirely out of the realm since MP is kinda considered part of the control universe, though I would like that to stay out of MP as much as possible and be it's own thing.
The fact that we haven't gotten a MP3 remaster is crazy imo
Prime Gaming January Content Update revealed
The Remedy Entertainment title is getting a sequel and a co-op multiplayer spin-off with an investment of up to €50 million.
Which makes it even harder to believe the 100 million development cost for Forspoken.
Forspoken had a long development time. That is why its development budget was so high.
$100 million big money number but that's nothing compared to the $500 million budget plus the hundreds on millions for a new console built for it and millions more for a new game engine for the biggest epic fail of all time...Halo Infinite.
Weird. I thought this was an article about Control.
And to say calling Halo Infinite the "biggest epic fail of all time" is about as inaccurate an disingenuous as you can get.
The game was still a success. They dropped the ball when it came to the promises made with the multiplayer going forward.
If you don't think it's going to be worked on and updated for years to come, well, we'll see going forward.
@MadLad
Sure Microsoft can do something years from now that might make Halo Infinite Money Pit relevant again that's always possible lol.....lol. But no one is holding their breath counting on Microsoft doing such a thing are they lol...that's funny lol. Microsoft just added another season last week that contained absolutely no play worthy content and a few weeks before that released Halo Forge that allows the users to do what Microsoft can't and that's add new maps and new play worthy content but turns out the Halo Infinite users aren't very good at that. The one little thing Microsoft has done and is good at since it rushed'err pushed Halo Infinite Money Pit out the door a year and a half ago is released more stuff to purchase in the Halo Money Pit Scam Store but that's no surprise to anyone is it. So after all the adding and adjusting and scamming, misleading Microsoft has done its not working to bring the Money Pit players back and clearly its not added new ones. Halo Infinite is the AAA game no one cares to bother spending time in and its a Free to freaking Play game. So with all the $$money$$ that Microsoft has sunk into Halo Money Pit Free to Play that's now well over a billion dollars its not just the Money Pit it's "The biggest epic fail of all time" in gaming.
@madlad
Except he's not being disingenuous. It was supposed to be a massive comeback ..it wasn't. A new open world exciting to explore and play in...it wasn't. A comeback for the multiplayer of halo... it wasn't.
In all instances it was an epic fail at what it was trying to achieve.
They also removed features present in past halo games.
It only managed to make the gunplay feel okay. But in reality they just brought it back to the original games feeling. Nothing new at all
Most of the budget for high profile or AAA games these days is actually used in marketing, not the game. So when EA says they spent $100mil making a game, it's really like $45mil on development and $55mil on marketing.
Good for Remedy. I personally didn’t like Control. However, many gamers enjoyed the game.
I was about to post basically the same comment. I hope they make good use of the profits, and the goodwill they've earned.
Yeah I just couldn't get into it either. Really like the premise, but I lost interest pretty quickly.
The cheap enemies were the biggest deterrent for me. I finished it though because the story was super interesting. That is, until I beat the game...
Honestly it didnt feel as smooth and reactive as it looked when i first played it, wasnt till i grinded and got overleveled for everything that it started to actually be fun. The universe was what kept me interested.
I enjoyed Control, it was very Max Payne-esque in terms of gameplay with an interesting setting. Graphics were solid as well. However, I thought it had too monotonous of environments and story pacing was uneven. I do believe it is a great foundation of a larger metroidvania type of a game, which hopefully Control 2 will become.
I wish they make the upgrades meaningful, story better paced and written, and finally have more variety in the gameplay loop and environments. Also, I think we are past reading journal entries and listening audio logs, would be nice to have new innovative ways to tell a compelling story.
thats great to see, create another game using the same tech, don't let go that physics engine please, but only work on the effing story, I want to love Control but each time I stop playing and come back later on, Im always like so what the heck the story is about in this game?, and what it makes stay playing is just destructible environment running at high framerates, it looks so pleasing to the eye, more than any visual effect even way more than that RT nonsense.
Basic story is pretty simple, though. The files make it seem a bit convoluted.
3 million!? I'd say that's a failure from what some people tell us. Damn Control released years ago and only 3 million? There was a game that released not 4 months ago and sold 11 million copies in the first 2 months and according to some that's a fail so 3 million for a multiplatform release from years ago I don't know why such a game would warrant a article even if its for a part 2 of the game.
Its a AA mid tier game, not a AAA game. Says right in the article the budget was less than €30mil so making over triple what they put into it? Yeah thats a massive success.
Exactly. The budget covered very high salaries in Finland for the development team, advertisement and distribution costs. After all that, they made twice as much, which will translate to individual bonuses, and rest will go into the new projects. That is a very solid result, and ensures they can continue making solid games with even larger budgets and teams.
@tapani
The game released quite a while back...any bonuses would have already been handled.
Excellent game. Love the weird creepy vibes and the super slick design. It’s almost kind of retro. One of the best releases in the last few years imo
I liked it too. Each weird item was a story in itself. My kids say it’s like SCPs or something.
