Control: Ultimate Edition Review
If SCP Stories Were Made into a Good Game.
If SCP Stories Were Made into a Good Game.
An impressive blend of supernatural action, paranormal/sci-fi horror, intrigue, strewn through an immersively lite looter-shooter, in what’s now one of my newest favorite video game worlds. NameBrand
CONTROL is, without a doubt, now one of my favorite games of all time. It’s not perfect, and I don’t think many things can be these days, but I’m floored by how much I’ve enjoyed playing it.
I think this love largely comes from my fascination and fixation on world building in games. On this front, CONTROL delivers one of the most interesting game worlds I’ve ever explored. This is one of the few games I’ve played in my entire lifetime where I have actively looked forward to reading all the notes and collectables I’ve found at the end of each play session. This additional lore content is of such high quality, that every so often I’d stop everything, just to watch or read what I just found, even if it didn’t directly influence the plot. The writing in these pieces are so good, and even the live acting is beyond impressive. Dr. Darling’s performance, especially so, which I believe is deserving of an award. Every extraneous piece of information Remedy presented me with served to pull me deeper and deeper into this massive, creepy, unfathomable world of the paranormal, and I cannot stress how much I enjoyed this part of the game. They absolutely knocked it out of the park.
Now, for the elephant in the room. This is, unquestionably, a near carbon copy of some of the groundwork that the SCP stories have built upon over the last decade. As someone who has enjoyed SCP stories and world building, I originally found the obvious comparison annoying at first. But the longer I played, the more I was able to appreciate Remedy’s take on the ideas. Maybe at some point, because of their similarities, my subconscious lumped the game lore with the SCP world I’m somewhat familiar with. Either way, it doesn’t bother me anymore, and over the course of my time with it, I grew to love it.
Despite this having incredible world building through extraneous stuff, the story strangely falls flat with some major character interactions and plot points. There are a few grandeur mysteries that unfold as the story progresses, which largely drew my curiosity. But when it came to interacting with the few specific characters connected to it all, I would race through their dialog as fast as I could read it, because I felt their writing was not up to par. All I wanted was to experience the larger plot at hand, get into some cool firefights, or both. I found the disparity between the quality of the lore and character dialogue quite odd.
Firefights are fun and interesting, with gun play and ammo management being intermixed with superpowers and management of them. Despite the physics chaos that these encounters provoke, the game plays SMOOTH as butter. My only complaint is that some weapons are lackluster even with good mods (that you’ll pick up from defeated foes during your journey). Some of these boring weapons get fixed (and become completely overpowered) with the new mods from the DLC, though, which was a fun surprise. The superpowers steal the show, though: They’re bombastic, make you feel cool, and are increasingly useful as you level them up and delve deeper into the game. Overall, CONTROL has a fun gameplay loop, and I enjoyed my progression from leveling up into a skill I fell in love with, to the small dopamine boost from grabbing better weapon mods.
I am still blown away by the fact that just about every thing in this game is an active physics object with weight, and damage. Even small cups and binders! Not to mention the destructible environments on top of that. I don’t have the best computer in the world, either, so when I saw all of these systems working flawlessly on my screen for the first time, it made my mind melt out of my head. This is technically the second time I’ve played through this game, and I’m still blown away by this at the end of my journey. It makes it one of the “most real” feeling games I’ve ever played, where the carnage from fighting enemies and bosses is displayed in the surrounding environment, and where all objects are believably THERE and not just set dressing. Very technically impressive.
If the “wow factor” of the physics don’t do it for you, there are a few sequences in this game that, I must say, are some of the best sequences I’ve ever played in a game, period… I don’t want to spoil them… and even if I wanted to, I can’t say that there’s a good way for me to adequately describe them… These select sequences are unique, ooze with style, and are amazing. Yeah, that might be the best word for it. It’s my hope that players who give CONTROL a chance to grow on them fall in love with this game, and enjoy these sequences as much as I do.
While this was my second time playing through CONTROL, it was my first time playing through the game's DLC. The one segment is entirely connected to one of Remedy’s other games, Alan Wake. As a player who has recently played through Alan Wake, I definitely am of the opinion that playing through Alan Wake is a must if you want to appreciate that little segment the most. It overall fits right in with the usual lore you’d find around the oldest house, so if you don’t, it’s not going to completely detract from your experience, but having that little bit of extra background really helps. The other DLC is serviceable enough. In Foundation, the new powers are pretty cool, and the extra spaces underground are gorgeous, but it does suffer from a problem I had in the base game: a character I don’t really care for is the core of the plot. Still pretty fun though. In the last remaining DLC, specifically the movie camera sequence from it, is very well done. Again, all of these little expansions are all serviceable enough, and at the very least let me continue to exist in the game world before I went off to complete the final mission and bring my journey to a close.
Ultimately, I recommend CONTROL: Ultimate Edition. It is one of my favorite single player action/adventure games. If you want a game that has a fascinating game world, fun superpowers, half-decent gun play, and some sequences that will blow your socks off… Then I hope you get this game, and fall in love with it like I have.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.