I just finished the main game. I was stunned that it ended so quickly, but I could sense it was leading to the end there.
Neat ending, not sure I follow all of it, but it was cool. I was only OK with the final sequence through the Hiss, but it had to be done.
Still have DLC to play through.
So since you finished, I can ask this without being too spoilery (and I’m being very generic to not introduce spoilers). So two questions…
Did you see the music video about Jesse?
If so, how awesomely cheesy and exciting was it? 
Do you mean Darling’s music video? I loved it.
I will say that years from now, the Ashtray Maze will remain one of the greatest sequences I’ve ever played. It only works on that level if you have NO idea it is coming and I had no idea. I went from “oh, a new area” to “OMG I AM A SUPERHERO WITH A GUN, TELEKINESIS, FLYING, AND I AM KILLING WHILE FLYING AROUND!”
I went and showed my kids because it was so awesome.
I’m only half feeling this game at the moment. Seems goodish, but I’d like to switch to view 3d perspective, the behind the shoulder thing sort of annoys me.
Plus I’m lost. At the stage of the missions Burn trash around the furnace and Speak with security chief Arish, I’ve been running about for an hour, up and down lifts. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so stuck in a games map.
Here is what I said two months ago and I stand by it and sympathize with you. It needs to let you know which way is right.
I recommend a youtube longplay to see where to go.
The Ashtray Maze is great but might be trouble for @Smid
Definitely check out vids/walkthroughs if lost.
Really? Of all sections, it was the most 100% straight forward.
Just so much of the game looks the same, there’s multiple levels and no clear way to link that level with the objective on it, to the one you’re on. Is it above? Is it below?
Maybe I’m used to be led roughly in the right direction, but a dot somewhere on the map, and me hitting brick walls when there’s a corridor leading to it JUST THERE.
Mazes? I understand mazes. Those are less of a problem. This is just a large map and no clear way to get there. Perhaps I need to fast travel between control points and look for signs to the place with the objective.
I don’t understand the weapon forms. I seem to have a slot unlocked because of ability choices, and yet when I click on it, there’s nothing to choose. Is this a second gun? Where do I get one?
You need to go to any control point you’ve cleansed or claimed and select the Astral Constructs option.
From there, you can construct additional weapon forms (among other things).
Well, I’ve played it enough to consider walking away.
A lot of it is just too hard. Like not even close, The jukebox expeditions are so time heavy I’d not do three out of four in the time allotted, and I suspect there’s a proper timesink boss in there somewhere too.
Perhaps hard is not the word. I think I beat many of the bosses I spend hours on by sheer luck. For instance the big eye creature (Fomer?) you see twice at least, just ends up frenzying, you can’t see a damn thing, and the floors all been have been bashed away so most of the time you fall through because you don’t have a clue where you are and where to land.
I’m only doing some of it because the healing orbs can be taken over, and then you actually can beat all those soldiers without having to hoover up the healing. The exploding corpses are just annoying as hell.
I’m not one usually troubled by difficulty levels unless it’s of the Dark Souls etc level of impossible. Though I have now accepted that I can’t master weapon switching in Doom Eternal so the DLC is impossible otherwise.
But like I say, this is less hard than annoying. And putting an arbitary time limit on the jukebox thing is like spraying petrol on a dumpster fire, so you’ve not only be massively quick but with the travel back to the islands if you die you end up wasting the time away when THERE’S A BLOODY TIME LIMIT, so demanding almost perfection from you.
So reconsidering the options. Not quite finding it as good as the others here though.
Oh yeah I hated that asshole. I was glad to get past that part. That was not a fun part of the game. The frustration from me is that you weren’t dying due to bad strategy, bad reflexes, or difficult mechanics, it was the limitation of the way the game was designed. It didn’t allow you to have a perspective to see the floor as you were moving around so you’d fall into a hole you weren’t allowed to see. I hate a fight that kills you at random. That’s not a challenge, that’s gambling.
There are parts of the game like that, but they are rare. They are brief rough patches in what I otherwise found to be an amazing game.
The jukebox expeditions sucked so I didn’t do them. They are a completely optional part of the game and I didn’t bother with them. I otherwise completed all the other content.
Again you don’t have to do them. Just skip it. Avoiding the whole game because you don’t like some optional content that has nothing to do with the actual story or progression seems a bit odd.
Put the hiss-assisted Tommasi on that list too. Hate those ones. He’s got a shield. So you lob rocks at him. But he dodges them. So you end up shooting and chasing and shooting and chasing, and he’s not dropping health, then he’ll spawn a bunch of exploders and you’ve nowhere to hide. Oh yeah and the invisible one, so its, rain debris, boom or spewed upon.
I can see the difference between bad game design and a challenge, and I’m seeing it from the likes of combinations of those sort of monsters.
Oh and I’ve long since ran past the hoards of monsters spawning in between in the tedious bit between a hard boss and the spawn point.
It’s a pity, I’ve liked parts of it.
I got to the end of the main story, such highs and such lows at points. I didn’t mind the office stuff delivering mail etc because I knew it was a means to an end, but some bits just left you with “what do I do now, in this big red void of platforms”. I had to look that up as to what the hell to do.
The music to the maze was excellent, I went off to see if the band has albums but sounds like they’re not called that and another finnish band with expensive CDs. Still, I suppose spotify will do with that. Ended with one of my favourite Porcupine Tree songs which was nice.
I think part of my problem was the lack of distinction between the DLC content which was significantly harder, than the main game content. I was down about the bit with the dark being chased away with the light and getting my arse handed to me, I was kind of chasing ability points to upgrade things, but in the end the main game didn’t need these so much. Load up health, seize and throwing items and largely that’s all you need.
Still, quite a good game, but the DLC division could have been more distinct…
Do you mean the Xbox One X? I have Control on a Series X and it runs great.
Ray Tracing must be optional. I never looked into the settings, but let my gaming laptop run it at the settings the game picked for me. I never noticed any frame-rate issues, but ray tracing had to be off.
My laptop’s card is Nvidia Geforce 1650 and it ran the game very smoothly.
Only RTX 20xx and 30xx cards by Nvidia support ray tracing in hardware.
I have heard you can do software ray tracing in the 1660 and 10xx cards but it is minimal and you probably would not want to as a performance issue.
I had no interest. I did see some videos, though, that showed some amazing reflections that Control is capable of. Neat stuff, but hardly worth it for me.
I never did play the DLC for the game, so I was unaware of the jukebox stuff. I played the main game and found that it was enough for me.
Yes, One X… XBox’s naming conventions get confusing to me at times 
XSX and PS5 ran it well with ray tracing in fidelity mode. I know some preferred performance mode for 60fps, but the graphics on fidelity mode were just way too good so I was fine with 30fps
Control is pretty damn fun. I finally got a video card for my new computer a couple weeks ago and put about an hour each into Hitman: Game of the Year, Grand Theft Auto V and Control. While I’m loving and looking forward to all three, Control won the tryouts and I’ve been playing it exclusively ever since.
Love the atmosphere. The murmurs from levitating people provide a nice soundscape. All the flavor (notes and media and whatnot) are excellent. Despite not buying the ultimate edition so I don’t have any DLC, I am a bit of a completionist so I check out every room and pick up every clickable object. I also do side quests as soon as they become available. This has served me well so far in Control.
For progress, I have shield and evade and I just restored power with a director override. (I think?) So still early but a fair few points spent on upgrades. One single point each on all four starting categories seemed the best ROI, and every point (mid-teens-ish?) since then has gone into hit points and launch damage. Except two points did go into launch grenades, which is super fun and well worth the two points.
Someone upthread said something like the game makes you feel sufficiently powerful and I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly. The game does give you a fun and satisfying sense of power against mooks.
On the downside, completing the second mission unlocked upgrades and crafting. That immediately and inevitably transformed the game (for me) from an immersive story experience into more of a wiki crafting experience. That’s fine, I dig those, but now that the wiki seal is broken I go to wiki as a first resort instead of last. Now I find myself opening wiki immediately for every new mission just to get clear directions how to get there. Something is lost when wiki becomes the norm but that’s more of a me thing than a game thing. Even still, I don’t mind wiki games so it’s not the end of the world.
Good thing I went to wiki too because crafting is a trap, at least when you first get access to it. Very happy I read wiki before wasting all my mats on common upgrades.
The other thing crafting and upgrades introduced is now it’s more of a farming experience for me. Again, that’s fine, I can get into those, but I think I liked the game better before I started farming materials and upgrades.
Speaking of upgrades, I guess you really have to unlock all five weapon forms just to experience them but honestly I’m kind of annoyed I wasted mats unlocking Spin, and will be pissed when I waste mats unlocking Charge. Pierce is supposedly great so I just unlocked it but I’ve never even fired it yet so no clue on that. Not having experienced Pierce yet, my current ideal loadout I’m working toward is:
Grip: +Damage, +Headshot damage, Free ammo on hit
Shatter: +Damage, +Projectiles, -Spread
Pistol and shotgun? Hell yeah, sign me up!
Hate the stupid timed missions that keep appearing and breaking immersion. I just ignore most of them. Also hate the countermeasures, which feel like unfun farming and have terrible rewards. I do appreciate that I can just accept and dismiss them to troll for easier ones from the RNG, but the rewards are so bad I don’t even bother.
All in all so far I’m really liking this game, and could very well end up loving it. Not quite there yet, but it’s still early.
EDIT: The only thing so far I really hate is how long and frequent the loading screens are. I could always just get good to reduce the loading after dying, but I frequently find myself fast traveling to the executive suite to take the elevator right there. That’s two loading screens just to use my “main hub.”
My computer isn’t particularly fast but it’s definitely not slow and these loading screens are 20 to 30 seconds each. That’s about 10x longer than I’d like to see, especially in a game where you might die a bunch of times in a row and have to reload every time. The fastest computer money could buy would still be over 10 seconds per loading screen, probably; that’s way too long.
Or is it just me? Anyone get loading screens lasting less than 10 seconds?