Control is one of the best games I've ever played

The Game Room
#1

I just finished the main story and I just had to gush about this game. The plot is like a really great X-Files or Fringe season, involving shady government bureaucracy and the paranormal. The graphics are incredible. I played it on a PS5 in graphics mode (30 fps didn’t bother me, especially when I saw the ray-tracing effects). And the gameplay was just plain fun. The third person shooter aspects were really enjoyable, especially since you didn’t have to worry about ammo farming.

Ok, I’m on way to play some of the side quests I didn’t finish and the DLC…

#2

I agree. It is incredible. I played it through all the way. I’m surprised it hasn’t received more attention.

Also for those curious, it’s a sequel of sorts to the Alan Wake series of games; it is supposed to exist in the same universe and references those earlier games.

Control itself is about the “Federal Bureau of Control”, a secretive government agency based on the fictional SCP Foundation which was developed as an online collaborative fiction project. Even the development of the game is fascinating, let alone the final product.

#3

I wonder if part of the reason is because when you enter the game you’re just all sorts of confused. And the game slowly gives out information.

But I also imagine the other reason is from all reports it was just simply too taxing for the PS4 and XBox Series X, leading to all sorts of frame rate dips (basically due to the physics engine, since you can throw just about any item). Even high end PCs had some issues because of the ray tracing.

#4

How difficult it is it?

#5

Well I didn’t find it overly challenging and I generally play on medium difficulty levels, but it is noteworthy for not having difficulty levels.

Though you do die a lot and then hopefully learn from your death the next time you rush in (you can’t save whenever you want, so at rare points you may have to travel from the last checkpoint to where you ended up dying)

#6

I really enjoyed it but felt the randomization of weapon upgrades was out of place and just plain made the game worse. I think they we’re trying to find a way monetize PVP play.

That’s a minor complaint though; it’s a great game.

#7

I didn’t think Control had multiplayer? Remedy doesn’t generally make multiplayer games (though I think they’ve started looking into it)

#8

Yes, I said PVP but meant multiplayer. I believe the Jukebox Object of Power (which took tokens) to allow additional missions to get rewards and the lootbox-style weapon upgrades were both part of a failed/cancelled multiplayer attempt. I don’t have a cite; it’s just my own theory.

Naturally if you wanted the best gear you’d have to buy tokens to enable you to keep doing the reward missions over and over. They’d ration the tokens to the F2P folks and make their money off the whales willing to pay.

#9

I’ve heard good things about the game. How long is it in terms of hours of gameplay?

(Yes, yes, I know that hours of gameplay is a terrible metric for some people, but I don’t really want to spend CAD $40 on a game that’s only two hours long, for instance.)

#10

I can’t remember my exact playtime but I’d guess it was around 25hrs. I was a little disappointed I hadn’t unlocked all of the weapon forms by the end so I might have gone a little faster than most.

#11

HowLongToBeat has it as 11.5 hours for the main campaign, 18.5 for Main + Extra, and 25 hours for “completionist”.

#12

Control has a very, very cool brutalist visual style… almost unique in gaming altogether. Plus the nvidia RTX real time ray tracing support which is pretty!

My only complaint is that the difficulty of the various “boss” enemies spikes so wildly towards the end of the game.

#13

Oh yeah, toward the middle of the game as you’re building your powers you really feel awesome and unstoppable, casually demolishing things, until you hit a brick wall with some of the later bosses. They’re beatable with strategy and practice but it’s so jarring to hit that level of difficulty and you’re not prepared for it at all.

#14

I loved, loved, loved this game and will happily pile on with another recommendation. I got the ultimate edition with all the DLC and was happy for the extra time in game, which was added seamlessly. Great gameplay, great story, unique, weird, fun and funny.

In terms of “how hard is it?” one of the things I really liked is that instead of set difficulty levels, you could reduce the damage your enemies did to you by % at any point. So there were a couple of boss battles that I found very difficult, but I could tweak the damage down by 20-30% and get through it - still with difficulty so it was an enjoyable challenge, without making it too easy.

#15

Wait, what? So they do have difficulty levels in the sense you can reduce damage to yourself.

#16

Somewhat. It’s buried in settings - in case you really need it I guess. And IIRC, it was something added with a patch because people wanted some way to make it easier.

#17

I LOVE Control bc it allows shitty players like me to enjoy the game.

It has auto-aiming which is exactly what I need in order to play.

It took me a minute to figure out how to arm weapons, and upgrade abilities though.

#18

Right. In the options, at any point, you can set the damage reduction from 0% to 90% (?? maybe it goes to 100?) in 10% increments. It’s not pre-set levels like Easy-Medium-Hard. It doesn’t change the number or type of enemies or anything else.

There’s also an Invincibility mode, but I didn’t use that so I can’t speak to it.

#19

I think you can only do that on the hard copy though. If you stream it, you can’t get to those options. (At least not on PS)

#20

Interesting. In that case I suppose I should specify that I was playing the Ultimate Edition on XBox One. (Not a hard copy, downloaded).