Control - supernatural third person action-adventure from Remedy

[JDR13]

I haven't played Alan Wake (despite owning it for 7 or 8 years)

I will never understand people like you.

It's not like he's missing much.

 

[Whisper]

I haven't played Alan Wake (despite owning it for 7 or 8 years)

I will never understand people like you.

It's not like he's missing much.

He is missing A LOT.

One of best games.

 

[Fedora Master]

I haven't played Alan Wake (despite owning it for 7 or 8 years)

I will never understand people like you.

It's not like he's missing much.

He is missing A LOT.

One of best games.

Alan Wake is utterly trite in both gameplay and story.

 

[Israfael]

I'm not saying it's good or bad, I simply did not play it so I don't have any references to what happens in-game. And obviously the cryptic nature of the narrative in Control does not really convey the gist of it

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Control reminds me a lot of Second Sight and F.E.A.R., though it lacks the stealth mechanics of the former and the good gunplay of the latter. The story is presented mostly in found documents and media. It's also very straightforward and inspired largely by the X-Files. Control would have benefitted greatly if it cut out the filler content that randomized loot necessitates and copied the itemization from Ocarina of Time. I would recommend it if you can look past retarded loot mechanics.

 

[Twiglard]

I haven't gotten far into the game, mostly because for some reason it made my GTX 1060 overheat. But what's so great about it? The story is sparse and kind of underwhelming. Gameplay is trash mob after trash mob, and environments are uninspiring.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I just liked it because of X Files and Fringe vibe

 

[kangaxx]

Finished Control like a month ago. It was surprisingly enjoyable, but I have to say that the DLC was really lame. I was expecting something more as I was a big fan of the Alan Wake DLC, American Nightmare. Both DLCs reeked of low effort cash grabs with recycled content up the wazoo. Not worth getting unless it's free or part of the complete edition, but I certainly would not buy them as a season pass deal or anything. The main game itself was fine, with some of the smoothest 3rd person shooter gameplay by Remedy yet. Martti Suosalo as Ahti was funny as shit as well.

I'm with you on that, the DLC was very half-arsed. It felt like I'd been bent over and served a portion by the devs.

 

[DalekFlay]

Got the game free when I purchased my RTX 2070 super. Even with DLSS 2.0, enabling HIGH RTX still takes a big chunk of my FPS when running 4k resolution.

When Digital Foundry covered the game at launch, even a 2080ti couldn't do high ray tracing at 1080p60. Even with DLSS on at 4k your lowest resolution option is half that I believe, which would be 1080p, so yeah.

 

[wahrk]

I started playing this the other day and just got to Containment. So far it’s alright. The best part has been the Lynch/X-Files vibe, plus the little details like the Darling recordings and the case files you find scattered around. The actual story and characters themselves aren’t particularly interesting. I don’t dislike Jesse as a protagonist but the constant tortured narration gets old.

Combat is ok, launching objects at enemies is fun and I like the concept of the service weapon. The encounters themselves get repetitive pretty quickly though. It also took me a while to even realize there was a whole upgrade system with weapon/character mods, it feels sort of superfluous and it’s implemented in such an uninteresting way. Just a big list of percentage upgrades for everything that you have to sort through.

Overall it’s fun enough but it’s style over substance (although the style is pretty good). I have a feeling I’ve already seen most everything the game has to offer at this point. Maybe there’s still some unexpected twists coming, we’ll see.

Also, it would be great if devs would stop with these faux TV credits intros. It’s a game, not an HBO series.

 

[kangaxx]

You should definitely play to the end IMO. It isn't very long, and as someone who finds shooters quite one dimensional anyway it held my attention pretty well. There are some very nicely done sequences.

 

[wahrk]

You should definitely play to the end IMO. It isn't very long, and as someone who finds shooters quite one dimensional anyway it held my attention pretty well. There are some very nicely done sequences.

I definitely will, I am enjoying it despite my few complaints. The David Lynch vibe is enough to keep me interested.

 

[cruel]

I forced myself to play this for few more hours, and... surprisingly, I don't regret it. The game actually gets better, Jesse shuts up, they allow more weird stuff as you go, gameplay gets better after you get some new powers (mainly levitate was a big change for me, seize as well). My biggest complaint in the first few hours was that basically nothing of interest was happening, and not much to remember - later I got multiple boss fights (mainly from sub missions), some nice scenes (Threshold Kids videos, meeting Dylan) and better (more varied + sometimes vertical) environment design. It's a decent game.

I don't get all the complaints about the difficulty though. Unless they patched it, I never had a long trek to boss fight, and the maximum amount of tries for a boss was 3 (Anchor). Maybe some people are not aware of how powerful Launch is - having it maxed makes all the boss fights much more manageable.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Last game I ever played. I was limited by the PS4 hardware and gave up. Very cool game though. I will return to it on less shit hardware.

 

[kangaxx]

I didn't play it pre-patched control points either, but apparently the mould boss one was very annoying. You had to trek from all the way back at the top of the cavern, past a load of mould people each time.

 

[cruel]

Cool way to scare player without expecting it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NavwMYY2VMM

Make sure to play it on headphones and keep the sound pretty loud.

I didn't play it pre-patched control points either, but apparently the mould boss one was very annoying. You had to trek from all the way back at the top of the cavern, past a load of mould people each time.

The definitely patched it then. There is additional control point next to the Mold boss, and same case for Anchor (probably other bosses as well). They listened to feedback it seems.

 

[Terra]

I finished this recently (not bothered with the dlcs yet) and saw it is pretty highly regarded in most places. Despite being a fan of all Remedy's past games I've come away pretty underwhelmed.

-Mechanically, the game only really peaks in the final section after levitation is unlocked, prior to this, I found the whole "throw shit at the enemy, empty your clip, wait for both to refuel while in cover" to be sub par for Remedy. Yes its fun to pick up things, bodies, missiles and such and throw them at the enemy, but unlike their past efforts, this just didn't engage me over the course of the whole game. Even with all powers, playing on keyboard + mouse the game felt clunkier than it should.
-Story; where was it? I'll confess, I didn't bother reading a lot of the collectable documents, but the narrative seemed a bit threadbare in this game. This combined with the whole game taking place in an often samey looking building just failed to engage me.

I feel like I've missed something with this game, but I'd happily replay any of Remedy's older titles over this, it just felt completely unremarkable.

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't get all the complaints about the difficulty though. Unless they patched it, I never had a long trek to boss fight, and the maximum amount of tries for a boss was 3 (Anchor). Maybe some people are not aware of how powerful Launch is - having it maxed makes all the boss fights much more manageable.

Not sure where you are, but it was the late game optional bosses that gave me trouble, and which had save points annoyingly far away. The "main quest" isn't that difficult at all really.

 

[JDR13]

Installing this now. Remedy's games have been a mixed bag for me, so I'm curious to see how much I like this.

 

[kangaxx]

Installing this now. Remedy's games have been a mixed bag for me, so I'm curious to see how much I like this.

As a piece of advice (linked to Terra's post just above), take the time to explore and read/watch stuff. It definitely adds to the atmosphere.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

I haven't played Alan Wake (despite owning it for 7 or 8 years)

I will never understand people like you.

It's not like he's missing much.

He is missing A LOT.

One of best games.

It has one of the most repetitive gameplay loops I've ever suffered through. It's shit.

 

[cruel]

Not sure where you are, but it was the late game optional bosses that gave me trouble, and which had save points annoyingly far away. The "main quest" isn't that difficult at all really.

They definitely patched it then, I confirmed with patch notes from August 2020:
https://controlgame.com/control-august-update-notes/

I can imagine those bosses being a hassle with all the backtracking.

Finished the game today. Ending was 'meh', wasn't really impressed. So far the DLCs don't look amazing as well. The game starts slow, in few hours you get enough powers to have fun (levitate + seize in 6h or so), level design sometimes changes for the better. But I'm not sure, I feel like something was missing and this game could be so much better. Almost like somebody told Remedy to keep the breaks on and don't take any risks? I really liked all the Threshold Kids videos, the first entrance into Panopticon, first meeting with Dylan, some of the boss fights were cool. But I don't know, I don't feel fully satisfied, was expecting something more after those 22 hours. 7/10. As for recent 'popamole' action games, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a better game.

Edit: Oh, and regarding Alan Wake. Great atmosphere, interesting characters, but the core gameplay is probably the most boring I've even seen in a game. I cannot imagine how somebody thought that shooting same enemies, using same weapons for the whole game is close to 'fun'.

 

[wahrk]

Finished it today. They did save some neat sequences past containment - the mirror, the quest with the agent stuck staring at the fridge, the ashtray maze, the “end credits”, etc. The storyline picks up a little once you find Dylan and start getting into more details of the slide projector and what happened in Ordinary. Considering the type of story this is, I had low expectations for the ending, but I thought it did a decent job of wrapping things up. The main complaint I have about the endgame is that all the lengthy combat sequences are just tedious at that point.

Overall I had a mostly positive experience with it but it’s mainly carried by the weirdness aspect, as I don’t think the gameplay stands on its own. I’d like to see the concept explored more though, there’s a lot of good stuff there.

Also, my personal highlight of the game:

Spoiler

Any reason to play the dlc?

 

[DalekFlay]

Any reason to play the dlc?

The first one has a pretty different looking cave environment and new enemies who rush you in melee that actually make the shotgun mode make more sense. The new powers are meh and mostly used for traversal, but overall I enjoyed that one. The Alan Wake one seemed like more of the same from the main game, both gameplay wise and setting, and I got bored pretty quickly.

 

[JDR13]

So I finally tried this tonight, and it's definitely not for me. The writing and presentation are way too pretentious. Plus I can already see how repetitive the enemies are.

I can't say I'm surprised though. I've tried most of Remedy's games, and I haven't really enjoyed one of their titles since Max Payne 2.