Control

If you loved The Lost Room mini series, you'll love this game. Mystical, creepy and suspenseful with plenty of action.

The last game I played in which the character had supernatural abilities, I was saving a fictionalized New Orleans from a gargantuan, world-eater monster. Now-days, I've graduated to becoming the director of a shape-shifting, Brutalist skyscraper in the Big Apple, protecting it and it's people from a destructive, otherworldly force of possessive nature.

In 'Control', I portrayed the character Jesse Faden, who came to the Federal Bureau of Control in search of answers as to her brothers disappearance to the Bureau years prior. She finds the building bereft of employees, and the acting director dead from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head...with a seemingly supernatural sidearm.

Jesse retrieves the sidearm and, by order of the mysterious Board, becomes Director-in-Training, tasked with ceasing the invasion upon the Bureau's headquarters - The Oldest House - by the terrifying menace known as The Hiss. ---------- Immediately, I was sucked into the fluid, fast-paced action of Control with intuitive and responsive controls. Shooting is easy, both on-the-run and ADS, although I found it easier doing potshots than precise ones. The supernatural abilities that I've gotten my hands on early in the game are simplistic, but very well-crafted. Nothing feels hindered by any sort of UI elements. You simply use the power with the press of a button, and immersion is never broken.

Combat is difficult, and I sometimes found myself losing to a boss, returning and having to re-watch their unskippable intro scene. But Control's easy-to-master controller setup makes these moments marginally frustrating, and the combat system makes every return exciting. Enemy AI has been fair so far, though it doesn't seem different from any other shooter, despite Northlight's AI system being touted as something to gawk at.

The graphics presented their capabilities even on a regular PS4 system. The environments have believable and deep reflections and material to them, and the levels themselves are interestingly designed. There wasn't a moment in playing that I didn't feel curious about the environment I was in. The destruction capabilities of the game's engine really sold me, though. Projectiles rip through offices, taking out other physics objects in the room, and causing chaotic action scenes. Unfortunately, for early PS4 users, I noticed distinct framerate drops during some action sequences. They didn't seem to affect gameplay, however.

The story and how it unfolds are what shine the most in this game. Jesse is truly presented as a fish out of water, and every piece of exposition we hear is valuable and worthy of listening to. The Oldest House has a lot of secrets, and Jesse has access to all of them.

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All in all, Control is poised to be one of the most memorable games of the generation. Once again, Sam Lake and Remedy present us with a deep story, rooted in curiosity-binding place, pulled together with solid, responsive gameplay and topped with a bow. Anyone who's a fan of Alan Wake, or any number of Remedy's previous iterations owes it to themselves to gain some Control.

This game is a pleasant surprise ever since the beginning. Remedy uses a cinematic style for its storytelling, with crazy visuals and cryptic shenanigans. It is a story where you can read between the lines, and if you have the patience to browse the many collectibles you can give interesting interpretations of the game. The characters are quite quirky, as expected, and the acting is convincing.

The gameplay is satisfying, a bit difficult to pick up the gunplay but very rewarding as for the kinetic powers. I really enjoyed the exploration, stumbling upon very secret areas and unlocking cool stuff.

On the downside I can only think of three issues: some visual hiccups, specifically faces going to a neutral expression too soon in cutscenes or the animations being a bit too stiff; aspects of the gameplay, like the fact that any melee attack you receive makes you one-shot regardless of your current health; counter-intuitiveness in certain side missions, it's really hard to understand what to do or where to go sometimes.

Control is another good hit for PlayStation. It provides lots of opportunities for exploration and has a nice volume of side missions in addition to the 15+ hour story. It has just enough gun varients and abilities to keep combat fresh, but I wouldn't say the game is highly replayable. I also think it would have been good to explore the levetation ability sooner than the final act. The story starts out and continues to be very cryptic for the majority of the game, however one can gather more information by gather notes and scattered everywhere. My 2 complaints with Control are firstly, that the story can be too confusing sometimes, as this fictional "Federal Buerau of Control" building is lacking context it it's world. It uses visual storytelling much more than dialogue and it sometimes suffers by not being specific enough with things. That said I do enjoy it's surrealist style overall. Second is it's very frustrating navigation thanks to a cruddy slapped on map and lack any precice waypoint system. In a building where many areas look similar it is easy to get lost and acctualy led me to a couple angry google searches. Such a silly oversight. No other problems with is this game though. The fact that I can say even this game is better than almost every Xbox exclusive is kinda sad....

You can tell the developers are purposefully trying to screw with you, because I've finished the game, watched a couple of videos on it, and still don't know what the heck they're trying to say.

But that mystery, the game's entire aesthetic and its incredibly satisfying gameplay are what make it one of the most unique games I've played in a while.