Control Resonant Lives Up to High Expectations

Control is one of my favourite games of all time. Everything about it clicked for me; the world-building, the characters, the gameplay. It’s the most I’ve ever replayed a game and I love it so much. When Alan Wake 2 came out, I gave it a shot despite being a lil coward too scared to play horror games and not being a huge fan of the first game, but that only made me fall deeper in love with this world Remedy Entertainment have created, even going back to play Quantum Break afterwards. So it’s safe to say a Control Resonant has been my most anticipated game for years, and every tease and trailer only made that anticipation grow. The initial reveal shook me a little though; no Jesse as the protagonist, an open world, and a completely different gameplay style. Would it really feel like a Control sequel with all of those changes?

Control Resonant picks up 7 years after the first game, the lockdown of the Oldest House has held all this time, but just as Jesse Faden, director of the FBC, disappears, her brother Dylan awakes and the Hiss breach the Oldest House into larger Manhattan. Now armed with a strange weapon called the Aberrant, it’s up to Dylan Faden to find his sister, and save Manhattan from the Hiss and a new threat called the Patterning, which has created a series of powerful Resonants throughout the city. Dylan may not have the FBCs trust, but he will have the help of allies old and new in his quest to save the city. It’s easy to see that after recent successes, this is one of Remedy’s most ambitious projects yet, but does it live up to that?

One of the main draws of Control is the aesthetic, the first game taking place in a nightmare of sprawling liminal office spaces, an endless government space of carpet and concrete filled with posters and paperwork. As we expand into the larger Manhattan alongside the Hiss and Patterning, Remedy applies a similar approach to the city itself. This isn’t a New York filled with recognisable landmarks (aside from the Oldest House, based off of the real life 33 Thomas Street), but yet another sprawling nightmare of repeated patterns, swapping the trappings of bureaucracy for those of the city, an endless maze of identical blocks of buildings, bodegas and cafes, and construction sites and scaffolding everywhere you look and nothing but a handful of trees by way of nature. Except for the mold of course. The delicious, delicious mold. Remedy takes the endless maze of the first game and reminds us that so many of us are trapped in one of our own. The cityscape gets weirder and weirder as the game progresses, folding in on itself again and again, until you’re getting lost not just in space, but also in time. It’s hard to forget the unique style of the first game, but even in an intentionally repetitive and familiar city, Remedy still manages to give Control Resonant a wholly unique and memorable setting.

Moving around Manhattan can get confusing at times, mostly intentionally, although the map doesn’t do a great job at showing the actual routes to traverse through the city and which are dead ends. While you’ll learn to recognise a few landmarks to find your way around, the city is intentionally mazelike so there’s a few too many walls that even in the lategame aren’t navigable through or over, and some later areas are a little inconvenient to return to even with the fast-travel doors around the map. The actual traversal is great fun though, starting off with supersprinting and basic flight but expanding to gravity shifts that let you traverse the upside down and sideways parts of the folding city, and a gravity grappling hook-esque ability to zip about quickly. Once you get deeper into the truly nightmarish, folded over city, there’s nothing more satisfying than zipping about in 4 different directions, gravity just another tool for you to use.

The combat of Control Resonant is a complete reinvention from the original, swapping the third-person shooter for a hack and slash. Remedy talked about intentionally leaving out any sort of parry system to make the combat non-stop action instead of just waiting around to attack, and it works brilliantly. The enemies can be a little spongy, especially in the early game (although I believe recent patches have addressed this), but the game’s robust difficulty options let you ramp up your damage to find a style that suits you better if you want. My main issue with the gameplay comes in the different playstyle options, with there being 3 options for both your standard and heavy attack. Each style fits different scenarios, and the game feels like it’s built to let you switch between them at the press of a button, especially with the shifting nature of the Aberrant, your weapon, but that’s just not an option without going into a menu.  It leaves the combat, while fun, a little lacking. With a limited number of affordable respecs, there’s not enough room for the type of experimentation with different builds that the game needs.

Alongside your standard hacking and slashing, the game has a series of abilities unlocked through defeating Resonants, the main bosses of the game. The boss fights are fun enough, but often a little simple with their patterns being too easy to learn. The abilities gained from defeating them often lack balance, either being so essential to combat you’re waiting for a recharge, or so utterly useless you never use them. Some get unlocked too late in the game too. No matter how good they are, you’re so set in your playstyle by that point that they don’t get used. Thankfully, the game has a New Game+ for putting the late game abilities into action. You have two different skill trees for levelling up both Dylan’s different combat types and Dylan himself, but the lack of weapon switching makes it unclear just how many benefits there are to levelling up the weapon even in forms you don’t use – it all adds to your damage even if you don’t use those forms so it’s worth levelling them up irregardless. My main issue with Dylan’s skill tree was primarily focused on how the top 20% or so is based on a late game ability, but it’s easy to reach that part of the skill tree long before you have said ability.

The open world is full of activities, some random, like fighting powerful enemies, or other repeatable quests, and also a wide variety of “Altered Items” scattered around the map with strange abilities, like a dog that’s lost his toy dragon or a taxi that brings you to a nightmare Manhattan. These are accompanied by a series of actual side quests more akin to the first game’s Altered Items quests that go a bit deeper too, so there’s plenty to keep the world busy. You can also get some easy to repeat tasks for extra items, although the actual conversation that starts those is oddly hidden. There are plenty of hidden chests throughout the game too, and even some deeper secrets hidden within the city you’ll need to solve some real puzzles for. There’s no hand-holding on them, you’ll get a few clues but without some actual thought or blind luck, you’re not getting the answers. This is a pattern throughout the game, never afraid to throw you into an area with nothing but a vague direction. It’s largely refreshing, although there were a few vague “find out about x in this area” missions that got a little frustrating to find the single guy you needed to talk to.

I was initially sceptical about swapping Jesse for Dylan in Control Resonant, having grown so attached to her over the years. But the change-up in protagonist really helps drive the story forward by putting you in the same shoes as Dylan, desperate to reunite with her. Sean Durrie’s performance is absolutely incredible, really selling Dylan’s personality. He’s spent the majority of his life either abused by his parents, or by the FBC, devoid of any real socialisation or life and that constantly shines through in Dylan’s lines. While Dr. Darling’s role, and Matthew Porretta’s performance, is again limited, each scene leaves you furious at what this man did to Dylan. Despite his background, Dylan is very funny at times too with his frequently childlike appreciation of the world. One of his side missions even revolves around sketching a recreation of scenes with casual objects, like a cat picnic, which can quickly switch Dylan’s viewpoint from charming to heartbreaking.

The key to Dylan working as the protagonist is his relationship with his handler, Agent Zoe De Vera, played by the incredible Frankie Kevich. Their relationship, going from strangers brought together by circumstance to the first real friend Dylan has had, is the absolute heart of the game. As the voice on the other end of the radio, she serves as a good sounding board for Dylan, and allows some natural exposition when needed too. It’s so easy to fall into Dylan’s guilt-driven suicidal nature, and watching him learn to find something to live for, not just die for, through his friendship with Zoe is the axis around which the whole game revolves. Remedy has always had a great relationship with music, and Zoe and her mixtape is the entry point here. While past Remedy games have opted for a big musical moment, Zoe and her mixtape gives you a handful of smaller ones, spotlighting a series of Finnish artists with all new songs. It’s a little underwhelming at first compared to “Dark Ocean Summoning” and so on, and I would have liked to see some of the later songs integrated further, but it still leads to some incredible moments. The main score by longtime Remedy composer Petri Alanko is incredible too, with some moments that blew me away as much as the mixtape.

We have some familiar faces from Control back too, mainly the now acting Co-Directors of the FBC, Emily Pope and Simon Arish, both of whom are given a lot more to work with this time. Pope and Jesse became fast friends in the first game, a connection only deepened by 7 years of lockdown together, and Antonia Bernath’s performance is at times heartbreaking as it slowly becomes clear she’s just as invested in Jesse’s return as Dylan is.  Arish meanwhile, once a friendly face to Jesse, absolutely hates Dylan, much like the majority of the FBC, which makes for a really interesting dynamic that plays out through the game.

Playing on a regular PS5, I switched between performance and quality modes, but honestly saw little difference beyond framerate. I had maybe two moments of frame drops while playing, each of which only lasted a few seconds before returning to normal. The graphics look great, the city itself is fantastic and full of details, and the character models are at that perfect level of realistic without being too photorealistic. Like most Remedy games they aren’t overly cutscene heavy, and all are very much in-game renders and are fantastic at showing the depths of Sean Durrie’s performance. We get the usual collection of live-action clips for in-game videos too interspersed throughout, mainly for Dr. Darling’s video messages./

It felt like living up to Control’s insanely high standard was impossible, but after pouring 30-something hours into Control Resonant in a worryingly short number of days, it’s clear that it comes as close as possible. It’s not perfect, the combat feels like it could have been refined further to make something truly special and the story, while largely strong, doesn’t quite wrap together as well as the first games. I’ve heard NG+ may offer some unique story points, but when a game takes 30+ hours to beat that feels unnecessary. Despite these few issues, Control Resonant is easily one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in gaming this year, and takes both Control and the expanded Remedy universe to a new level. Playing the first Control isn’t essential to understand what’s going on, and the game includes a recap for new players, but on an emotional level it will certainly help a lot to have played it. To any fans of the first game, Control Resonant is an absolute must-play, and I hope players new to Remedy’s work will give it a chance, it’s easily one of my favorite video games of the year.