Soooo i finished the game and it feels pretty gud.
The game is very pretty,even on low/medium it looked great. It is also very well optimized,it run on at least 60 all the time and even dropped GPU consumption when left in a single frame,it is very well put up,also not a single bug in the whole game. It is very rare to play a fully finished game in this game. The level design is pretty competent even if most of places are kind of the same grey offices and industrial rooms filled with pipes and such. The use of the assets is pretty impressive because they never felt the same or illogical. There are three office like levels and one industrial. They are pretty big and you end up opening new paths and areas through out the game. It is like the older games where you find new item or ability that opens up a new path. Speaking about this the map is pretty shit sadly, it is very unclear about elevated part that mix with lower parts of the level and feels like a mess. Also it doesn't add locked rooms and you can't add a pin note to it. There is a decent amount of secrets also.
The gameplay is great fun for me with a few interesting bosses. The fighting is great with some frustration about the hitboxes. It is very fast passed focused on dodging projectiles and being on the move,there is no cover mechanic and most of the cover is destructible,it serves to hide out from projectiles from time to time,but not to spend the fight in it. You have a bunch of standard weapons and abilities that are unlocked during the game. But they are well implemented with a few interesting takes on them. There is a pistol(the best weapon),shotgun,assault rifle/uzi,powerful one charging shot weapon,something like rocket launcher and something called launcher that i never found. In the ability sector you have telepathy that is best weapon of the game,it allows you to pull and throw items at the enemy,there is shield that is absolutely useless,mind control that is also useless,levitation that is great and dodging that is also great,the RPG part comes from upgrading the abilities,very generic/serviceable. Once you get all the abilities the battle becomes great fun.
The worst part of the game is the mod part,you get to add mods to your guns up to three times as you upgrade them. They go up to level 5 and have some random stats,they all have predetermine effect but say level 5 upgrade could have from +20% to +25% of that effect,not a big deal. The problem comes that you could craft them after you upgrade your craft skills,but is very expensive and random. You can choose to craft a level 5 weapon mod but not exactly which type of mod. Same with mission/container loots. By the end of the game i still was using the level 1 mod for damage because the game was spamming me with all the useless ones and i had no way to upgrade or create a new more powerful one. Most of those mods are useless garbage that i didn't even bothered with putting on a empty slot,you get pretty fast what is useful and what not. Another thing i noticed is that i never got how you get the schematics to upgrade/create the weapons. I just run with it,didn't found that launcher i wrote earlier and some of the weapons never got to be upgraded.
The writing on the other hand is.....terrible and excellent at the same time. Anything with dialogue is total garbage,most of the living NPCs are meh at best,the Fin janitor is a chad tho! The main story is pretty good,but sadly the protagonist is not,thus could make it annoying for some people. Anything about files/notes,hotline and video/audio is great writing,there quite a few interesting things to be find while exploring the game. The cases such a nice read that i kind of felt that the game should have been about exploring such cases
. Also the atmosphere is great,the whole game have a solid direction/vision about what it wanted to be and how it should look,it is pretty interesting the name "Control". The game does have that thing that makes you keep on going in search for the key to the mysteries put in front of you. The setting i also found very interesting,it is filled with strange mysteries about all kind of things. Now that i think about it,it feels like a good Sci-Fi novel. The Videos and the Hotline are particularly good,it gave the feel of an old noir/sci-fi film,the acting in them is gud and they were the only likeable character in the whole game. If you cut out all the melodrama and you played the game as the former director...it would have been grand!
As the whole the game feels like a mix of RE,PREY and some old school shooters. It is well made with clear vision and good writing(outside NPC dialogue) that rewards exploration with some good stories. Also the game comes pretty close to art in a way,it is strange for me to like such a thing,it just well implemented. As a whole i do recommend it to most codexers. You will like it if you are looking for a solid shooter or solid sci-fi story or some strange artsy experience or a good exploration game.
Oh and the game is pretty 4th wall breaking,many times it talks directly to the player,it is cleverly done thanks to the theme of the game.
