Control Review - PC
I’ll be honest. I didn’t have high hopes for Control when I pored over the first screenshots. Wide open seemingly sparse spaces with humanoid floating enemies?
Meh...or so I thought.
The truth is more difficult to convey in mere words or - in fact - screenshots. Control is a game that needs to be played to be understood. The more you play, the more you’ll become aware of how wrong that last sentence is, as least where the story is concerned. Confused? So was I, and I loved… See More
it!
Every drip-fed morsel of back-story fleshing out the oddness of The Oldest House (and the secret government organisation within) had me glued to the monitor. Not just the wonderfully acted characters and low budget science videos that felt like 1970 online university fillers, but the plethora of classified documents (with tantalisingly blacked out words) strewn throughout the building with Easter eggs for lovers of Remedy’s past glories, beautifully tied into the already mind bending story.
And what a creation The Oldest House is; a sprawling nightmare of a place (origin unknown), all imposing concrete and glass, interspersed with wooden panelling to give the spaces some semblance of warmth when within offices or more executive sections. If the rooms behave in a normal manner, that is. Many areas you find yourself exploring will shift, rearranging in ways that give hints at a place not entirely of this dimension. It’s all wonderfully disconcerting and begs to be explored.
Add to this the former employees floating above you in various unconscious poses whilst emanating (their lips don’t move) a mantra from which you can discern certain words and yet confuse you if you try to focus on the true meaning and you have oodles of atmosphere. A lot of time has been spent on the sound, and it shows, from that eerie mantra, the sounds of battle during tumultuous fights, or the mundane ticking of thousands of clocks.
Clear, crisp textures pop and give life to environments and characters alike. The separate areas of The Oldest House are surprisingly varied, both in terms of game-play and visual aesthetics. Every area has been meticulously designed and screams imagination. Secret areas are not ridiculous places to enter, but take a bit of thinking or at the very least, an ability to scan your environment in every direction. For the first time in many years I enjoyed hunting them down.
No game is worth the money if found lacking in fluid game-play, and boy does Control deliver there. What starts as a simple third person shooter mechanic quickly develops into a crazy superhero-a-like blast where you can fly, use your mind to cause obscene amounts of damage and still use your upgradable weapons to whittle a denizen’s health before squashing them like a bug with pretty much anything you see lying around. The physics engine works overtime during high octane fights that leave you pumping with adrenaline and salivating for more.
On the technical side, Remedy has also used ray tracing technologies in such a manner than this must surely be the new Nvidia poster child when selling overpriced RTX GPUs. This game looks and plays beautifully without RTX, but if you are lucky enough to be able to play with RTX on, you have extra incentive to own this classic. I await the DLC with anticipation.
It’s hard to go deeper into what makes Control a great game without spoilers. From a personal standpoint, Remedy has blindsided me and given me a game that is even better than Alan Wake (The reason I bought an Xbox 360) and rekindled the joy of knowing that games can still feel fresh.
Not only that, with one major update it will be even better!
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That was a very thorough review, and now you make me want to get it. The background you give it, and the atmosphere you paint, I can picture in my mind, and I just LOVE IT! Thank you for that, btw.
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It's an awesome game I'm hoping to get a copy as well by end of month to enjoy the incoming photo mode (or is it there already?)
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Nice review
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