Control - The Official Word Review
On the 27th of August saw the launch of Remedy Entertainment's newest title, Control. While adding to their existing roaster of popular titles like Max Payne and Alan Wake, Control truly opens us to a new world of extreme and unorthodox game play with a sense of surreal occurrences.
Taking a brief step back and highlighting the main story narrative around our main protagonist, Jesse Faden,who is in search of her brother Dylan Faden. Dylan had been kidnapped by the Bureau right after an Altered World Event in their hometown of Ordinary, which occurred seventeen years before. Our story starts with Jesse entering the FBC (Federal Bureau of Control) in search of Dylan to only stumble across Zachariah Trench, the previous Director of the Bureau, to be launched into a position of power as the new Director of the Bureau. What she doesn't realise at first is that the "Oldest House" is actually under threat by a paranormal force called "The Hiss".
The story really evolves from this point on wards and throwing the player straight into the action against this new threat, while Jesse is still trying to make sense of what has just occurred. In stead of just searching for her brother, a heavier and deeper responsibility has consumed her now and the only way through this messy situation is moving forward.
Something that really stood out for me was that the character introductions and development are really in depth and on a more personal level as you progress through the game. You are constantly meeting new characters, who serve their various roles throughout the Oldest House, but still maintain a distinct relationship with Jesse. These characters can sense the new responsibility that she has taken on as Director but they still allow for grey areas to form, which creates mystery in the story.
The setting of the games environment is really quaint and really starts to develop as you make progress through the story. The game has its main quests, but also alerts you to timed events that are optional to take part in. You collect FBC documentation during your journey, along with various other collectables that help to start piecing the history of the Oldest House and trying to discover what the FBC actually is. Things do really start making more and more sense the further you explore, but the game will still leave you asking questions which I found to be extremely intriguing, as I needed to know more and I needed to know now!
The game play mechanics are really well polished with a level up system which enables you to unlock new player abilities, weapons, mods and so forth. You start the game with the Director's main weapon called the Service Weapon. This is the most powerful developed weapon and only the Director may wield it. As you progress on, you can really crank up the different upgrades and variations for this weapon. The other big focuses is on the abilities you uncover throughout your game play experience and how you use these abilities in connection with your Service Weapon. I felt that the combination was incredibility well developed and very easy to grasp as you are learning your way around the controls.
The enemies are actually well balanced and I say this because you get lower level enemies who are kinda just running around and shooting at you and then you get enemies that will actually start moving around in more unpredictable manner and might just surprise you in their execution. The Hiss has various forms throughout the Oldest House and I really enjoyed how they incorporated that into the overall experience. There are also various puzzles scattered in your path that need solving before moving ahead which I felt had various levels of challenge.
The visuals of this game are truly breathe taking and I have not yet, personally, played a game with better destructible physics. My platform of choice was the PC and I did get the opportunity of experiencing the game with Ray Tracing. The visuals are all they promised to be and I did test with DLSS enabled and saw the improvements almost immediately in the overall performance, which made the experience even more enjoyable. The destruction that can occur has varied consequences in how you use the environment . There are many settings that you can play with but the general experience playing the game was really smooth considering it has just launched and updates will start rolling out soon enough.
In conclusion, I would have to say that the story is so very, very interesting and really "out there", making you want to explore and get answers. The game play presents loads of action, it is fast paced and feels effortless for me to pick up at any point and just have fun. The enemies and puzzles throughout the game do present their various challenges but are very rewarding when completed. The visuals are beautiful and you just want to destroy things while in combat. The game runs well and in my opinion is just very addictive once the story starts taking shape. I am really impressed with what Remedy Entertainment has produced with Control and looking forward to many more hours of game play experience.