CONTROL [2019] PS5 REVIEW

🏆  MASTERPIECE  🏆

The positive:

💗 Mind-bending Art direction & stunning presentation

💗 A compelling plot with a great core mystery

💗 Jesse faden Character arc is masterfully realized

💗 Stylish combat with great gunplay & super powers hybrid

💗 Gunplay is heavy, responsive & satisfying

💗 Light RPG elements enhance the progression system

💗 The foundation DLC greatly expands both the playtime & the lore

💗 AWE or Alan Wake DLC is a love letter to Remedy fans

The negative:

👎 Having no difficulty setting makes 1st playthrough a crushing experience

👎 Bosses can be ultra frustrating, leading to boring repetition until you get it right

👎 Once you get the hang of it, the game becomes more balanced and satisfying

👎 Gunfights can grow a bit repetitive in the later chapters, still enjoyable

👎 My 1st experience with the game on consoles was horrible at 720p -30FPS

👎 The loading times were unbearable back then, enhanced version solves all of this now

Control is the 4th AAA game created by the acclaimed Finnish developer Remedy that has been raising the bar with every installment since 2001 Max Payne. Superpowered government agents from the Federal Bureau of Control FBC fight interdimensional invaders in this utterly compelling sci-fi 3rd person shooter. The writing, direction, and performances are consistently brilliant, not to mention the award-winning visual art. With intriguing characters, and stellar voice acting. This is Remedy at the peak of its game.  

CONSTANT EVOLUTION

Short after the Max Payne sequel was released in 2003, Remedy already made a name for themselves as masters of the 3rd person shooter genre, mixing new and original Physics based gameplay mechanics and slow-mo bullet time features with a strong storytelling focus using unprecedented tools. Then in 2006 they announced a partnership with Microsoft and started working on their next AAA title which would be an XBOX exclusive. Alan Wake was released in 2010 to great critical acclaim. It combined a Stephen King horror story base theme with a strong main character and a deep focus on the paranormal, with clunky 3rd person shooter mechanics that many gamers loathed, and others loved as it became a big cult classic over the years and even got a remastered version for PS5 recently. Finally, Quantum Break was released in 2016 as a PC and XBOX exclusive as a continuation of Remedy's partnership with Microsoft. Fully embracing the sci-fi theme of time travel and superpowers, this latest installment perfected the 3rd person shooter mechanics with awesome skills and an addictive combat loop, with a masterfully crafted deep lore. 

TAKE CONTROL

With a stellar presentation, the game starts with the mysterious main character Jesse Faden, entering the New York headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, in search of her kidnapped brother Dylan. This is the culmination of a life's work investigation. You can tell right from that moment that something's wrong with FBC, it appears to be empty. The Oldest House - FBC headquarters building - is as confusing as intriguing.  The lobby may look straightforward, but beyond that lies a twisting, turning beast that moves of its own accord. Early on, the game already showers you with paranormal concepts that will, later on, be backed by good science: The oldest House is a shifting place, and Jesse can talk to a paranormal entity that appears to exist within herself. That's how she found the place. And that's just a warm-up of the mind-blowing events to come.

As soon as you complete the opening, The Hiss is introduced as a resonance-based sentient life form that invaded the bureau and took control just moments before you arrived. Jesse is then encouraged by an interdimensional entity that runs the FBC known as "the board" to bind herself to the service weapon in the astral plane (you need to play the game for it all to make sense) becoming the new director of the FBC (?), appointed by the board. 

BECOME THE DIRECTOR

Faden’s Service Weapon is the main tool for the job: as you collect resources, you can repurpose or upgrade it from a pistol into a shotgun, sniper rifle, or machine gun; you can only carry two weapon forms at any time, making for fun gunplay as you identify different types of enemies fast swapping forms makes for tactical and exciting enemy encounters. As you unlock skills, you can upgrade your basic powers like melle and object launch, with a flexible progression tree that allows for gamers to invest their points into skills that better suit their play style. Optional skills might be unlocked like shield or seize, by completing side missions.  This mixture of RPG skills and progression with 3rd person shooter mechanics makes for an addictive combat loop and obsessive exploration for new goodies.

Control exploration is limited to the Oldest House, but it still uses an open-world formula with rewarding mechanics. Very similar to Metroidvania level design, you have lots of freedom to explore and to choose which missions to take. The game uses keycards and progression-based skills to limit the scope of the player's reach and rewards them with lore pieces, skill points, crafting components, and mods when they come back for those unlocks. But the Oldest House is not the easiest place to navigate, the classic 2D minimap serves as a navigation reference point, to get some idea of where you are standing, but the level design is so vertical and confusing that a 3D map would have been a better fit as a navigation tool. This might have been on purpose, to force players to navigate the place using the visual references, that once you get used to paying attention, it becomes way easier. 

BRUTALIST ARCHITECTURE & VISUAL ART

Control was nominated for eight Game Awards, including the 2019 Game of the Year. Despite Sekiro winning the GOTY award, many mainstream sites like IGN announced that control was 2019 GOTY for them, and I agree. Remedy still was proud to be nominated for GOTY and also won Best Art Direction for Control! The Oldest House brutalist architecture makes for a truly captivating and stunning setting, acting as much as the main stellar character just as Jesse does. This is a technical and creative achievement from the visual art team. Control is a trans-dimensional experience filled with vibrant colors that could not have been accomplished without the entire team's commitment to conveying this unique atmosphere. 

THE FOUNDATION & ALAN WAKE AWE DLC

After completing the main story, The Foundation expansion becomes available. We see Jesse getting used to her role as Director of the FBC when the Board informs her of an event that threatens to destroy the Oldest House and even the world. Turns out, the Astral Plane is leaking into our reality in what is called the Astral Bleed. As you explore the basement or foundation of the building, there are many new lore pieces scattered around that reward exploration. The Astral Plane fusing with the oldest house corridors makes for some interesting, mind-bending new areas to explore, as you uncover the origins of the Bureau and the Oldest House itself. Many players felt the game's main story was over too soon, and for us who were invested in the world's lore, it's a perfect way to expand the main storyline plot. As far as gameplay is more of the same addictive combat loop, which is great! it adds some new skills to interact with some crystals that only grow in the foundation, so it's not like you can take that progression into the oldest house later.  As the name CONTROL relays to many of the game concepts, THE FOUNDATION does that too. I think it's named that way not only because the basement is called that way, but it also establishes the foundation for the next game in the franchise, with a Jesse that has fully embraced her role in all this and she's ready to make changes to the FBC and ready for a long run.

The last expansion is AWE or Altered World Event, released by Remedy as a bridge between the Alan Wake and Control, connected weird sci-fi universes. While short and sweet, this fan service DLC may not be the full “Alan Wake Experience” that long-term fans were hoping for. It brings a new area of the Oldest House to explore: The investigations sector. As always, exploration is highly rewarding in Control, new Mods, and scattered lore pieces are meticulously examined by hungry fans that wish to know more about the oldest House, the FBC, and of course how this Control Universe is connected with the One Alan Wake is trapped in darkness. It thrills mostly with its exhilarating combat and trademark peculiarities. 

The mysterious voice of long-missing novelist Alan Wake leads Jesse to Dr. Emil Hartman, the conspicuous psychiatrist from Bright Falls in Alan Wake. Then Wake explains, with his classic masterful use of words, that after he went missing, Hartman was about to be taken into custody by federal agents of the FBC. In desperation, he jumped into the lake and got taken by the darkness. They still captured him and placed him in the investigations sector for further study. After the Hiss took the FBC, they tried to corrupt Hartman too, but the Darkness inside him also remained, which turned him into "the 3rd thing" (Oh I missed wake). So being consumed by the darkness and then corrupted by the Hiss, created this interdimensional being that was once Hartman. His mutated form very much echoes the distinctively horror-themed tones of this expansion. While short and sweet, especially for big fans of Alan Wake’s story, AWE not only brings a good dose of the missed writer, but it also sets the stage for the Next Alan Wake game and possible integration of both universes.

CONCLUSION

Building mystery and intrigue are at the core of Remedy's DNA, and Control feels like the studio operating at its very best. For someone who started paying attention to Remedy since Max Payne 2001, I can really appreciate the studio's evolution, they have really come a long way. My 1st playthrough was not the best experience though, I haven't got the gameplay mechanics right at that time, how to use mods, or upgrade your weapon forms, my combat timing was off, and even the story felt like something that could only be happening in an institutionalized mental health patient, I was sure all of this was in Jesse's head. I experienced the game on its launch date on XBOX ONE, with lots of bugs, and brutal loading times (I died a lot on that playthrough). Performance was bad, 720p 30FPS and there were constant framerate drops during combat, the game could not keep 30FPS. The PC version was way superior at the time, but my rig was not powerful enough. So I completed the game and felt like an OK experience at that time. The lore was complex and confusing, and the combat encounters were extra hard with those constant drops. 

I recently replayed the Control Ultimate version on PS5 at 4K solid 60FPS, no bugs, no loading screens, with adaptive triggers and haptic feedback features, including the DLC expansions, I invested tons of hours in the game, and I can say it's my favorite Remedy masterpiece. I could write books about the game's lore. It's all so brilliant, and the gameplay is so fluid and engaging.  I found the PlayStation 5 version to be the ultimate way to experience it.