I played it on a PS5 and I don’t remember the loading screens tbh. It seems the next gen upgrade on consoles shortened them significantly.
The loading screens are when it displays hints and tips, several which are long enough that it looks like it expects a loading screen to take at least 10 seconds or you wouldn’t have time to read it.
I’ve gotten the hang of the board countermeasures and so now I’m running with three active all the time. The busywork of accepting and rejecting around a dozen or so each time before landing on a good one is a bit grindy but easy enough.
I’m up to mostly prime mods with a few rares, plus a couple absolutes thanks to countermeasures. Both grip and shatter are level 2 with grip’s level 3 coming soon.
So I saw the Witcher 3 thread got bumped and of course it’s 80% off on steam right now so I had to go and get the bundle with both expansions. I fired it up, made some headway into the tutorial, liked what I saw looked really fun and then just went straight back to Control.
Control is just too fun. I’ve got like a half a dozen AAA titles I can’t wait to play but I can’t tear myself away from Control.
I’m starting to think you’re not even supposed to use the map. Every time I’m supposed to go somewhere it seems like the exact text of where I’m supposed to go is either a fast travel point or an elevator destination, and then when you get there just follow the glowing red.
Well hrmph. Game bugged out on the required mission “My Brother’s Keeper”, meaning I can no longer progress in the game. Google says the fix is to restore from the previous mission, and that should actually work. The bug is when I talk to Frederick Langston, the cutscene never starts so the quest can’t progress.
The problem is I’ve done a crapload of side missions since the previous main story mission. Restoring to the previous mission would cost me many hours of progress. All of sudden every other AAA title I have waiting for me is looking far more appealing than redoing hours of Control with fingers crossed hoping I can get past the bug.
So, erm, yeah. Control was pretty fun, I guess. Kinda disappointing to end like that. At least it was free.
I’m some way through it, and I just want to say I’ve been gobsmacked by the experience. The gameplay in isolation is unremarkable, but the world-building and atmosphere is ace.
Ahti is tops, by the way. Disagree with me at your peril.
My only major complaint is a philosophical one. The developers have made clear they feel the optional bosses should be really hard. Their idea of “really hard” has been the Heap of Fungus, which bordered on obscene. Even the “triplets” weren’t on the same league of obnoxious as that.
But though the game had lashed out there, I still love it because of the world the game’s in.
I didn’t notice load screens, but I did not time them. I usually notice games with long load screens.
Googling “control long load time” brings up this reddit thread:
Most of the complainers are talking about load times around twice as long as mine, so I got off easy. Mine that I timed were between 22 and 30 seconds, which is a long time when you die like 6 times during a boss fight or whatever. The people in that thread talk about 1 minute or longer load times, which must be infuriating.
People in the thread speculate it’s an ssd issue, as everyone complaining in the short thread has the game installed on an ssd and people who installed it on a mechanical hard drive didn’t notice anything unusual. One of the people with slow loading times mentions having a samsung evo 850 ssd. I have the game installed on a samsung 870 evo plus, which is an M.2 drive, meaning it’s an ssd but twice as fast. So I guess it makes sense that I have the problem and it’s only half as bad.
Still pretty annoying, but in this context I feel oddly better about it.
EDIT: In a steam thread about it they theorize it’s a directx issue, something about directx 11 vs 12. Not sure which one is supposed to be the fast one yet but edit window is closing.
Looks like switching to directx 12 largely fixes my issue. Central Executive was always the slowest load at 30 seconds. Tried it just now and was 8 seconds.
Since I got the base version free from Epic Games last month (as opposed to the Ultimate Edition on steam) I had to go to Epic Launcher => Settings (in the bottom left corner of the launcher), scroll down to the bottom where the individual games are listed and expand Control, then add “-DX12” (no quotes) as a command line argument.
Some people reported “popping” with DX12 but I don’t even know what that is and I’m running with Low details so maybe I won’t even notice anything different. Just 4x faster loads.
Played and finished it a few weeks ago. I thought it was pretty great; probably the top game I played this year.
I loved the architecture almost more than anything. I always liked Brutalism (well, some of it: there’s a bunch of really terrible Brutalist buildings out there). The Long Lines building in particular seems to be the primary inspiration for the Oldest House.
The SCP Foundation stuff is also a favorite, and it was done very well here.
I used Pierce and Launch almost exclusively. Never got into the shields or melee, only rarely use seize. The weapons aside from Pierce just didn’t have enough punch, particularly for shielded/flying enemies. I didn’t mind the slow charge time; it just meant I had to make every shot count.
Mold-1 was definitely the hardest boss. I must have done that one a dozen times.
Once you got the talent to seize the larger enemies, you could seize the healing orb, seize a couple more, and you had your own healer, plus two unkillable henchmen too. I think it worked with allies too (for those you were protecting). I struggled with healer supported invisible monsters a lot till I found that out.
My problem with Seize was that it was unreliable even when you put a lot of points in it and could do it more quickly. I had trouble targeting it, and I couldn’t do it while moving around which sometimes got me killed. It was counterproductive. It was nice when it worked, but it was too clunky to be a reliable tool (at least on Xbox, maybe PC controls make it more viable).
For anyone like me who got the base game free on Epic, or only bought the base game originally, the season pass is currently on sale for $7.50. Gets you both DLCs.
I’m currently playing it (over half done, I think) and so far I would give it a 10/10 for creepy atmosphere and maybe a 7/10 for gameplay. The thing that annoys me the most so far is bad guys spawning out of my field of vision and then knocking off a big chunk of my life with a rocket to the back of the head (or the like). I remember people were complaining about waves of enemies spawning from the ceiling in Dragon Age 2, and that was over 10 years ago.
I hated that bad guys re-spawned in areas you defeated them already. I found the map confusing and if an area was empty, that would have given me a clue I’d been there.
The map was one of the worst in a recent game I’ve played.
While that is a fair criticism, I think the confusing map design was intended and part of the atmosphere of the game.
Constantly having to fight my way through rooms I’d already cleared really crimped my enjoyment of this game. I didn’t mind the confusing map - it fit the theme of the game - but having to clear out the same room multiple times while trying to get from point A to point B, because I got lost and they respawned while I was retracing my steps, finally got me to give up on it.
I had more problems with Essej and Former (so much fun falling through holes in the floor!) than with Mold-1 (where I used the fancy strategy of “stand behind a rock and throw stuff at it”).
I finished the game and I’ll stick with my assessment: amazing atmosphere, but the gameplay and boss fights just make me appreciate the Borderland series even more.
I’m maybe halfway through and losing interest to continue. As noted, the map is terrible, and the respawning enemies make exploration and retracing an annoyance, especially when the first awareness of them is a rocket launcher to the back of the head.
I’m a huge SCP fan, but the setting and lore of the game are simply mundane and fail at creatively being even a middle tier SCP story.
Picking up random objects and slamming them into mooks is just addictingly fun. And I like all the little unexplained bits. Like that there are only first aid cabinets in the female bathrooms? And the reactor was very creepy.
It seemed odd to me that enemy attacks would either do 3% of your health in damage or 83% of your health, with not much in between.
The massive attacks wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a better way to heal than running around the map like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to scoop up health orbs. (Again, that system made me appreciate the Borderlands games even more.)
The levitation and telekinesis were definitely the most interesting parts of the game mechanics.
My general thoughts on this game some months after playing it are:
Nice game, not the absolute best.
But that The Ashtray Maze was one of the best moments in gaming I have had in many a year. It helps going into that section totally unspoiled, as I did.