Control review: A mind-bending trip into cosmic horror

Control puts you in the shoes of Jesse Faden, a young woman who walks off the streets of New York and into the impossibly vast, shape-shifting headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC); The Oldest House. In the beginning, you don’t know why she’s here. You don’t know what The Oldest House or the FBC even are. Well...get used to not knowing things in Control.

This game is determined to mystify you. Every corner of The Oldest House raises as many questions as it holds secrets. Why is that hallway red? Why are there people floating in the air? Why is this one room painted head-to-toe in yellow sticky notes? 

The journey is what makes Control so addictive. All the stories, trinkets and little bits of lore the game feeds you throughout - each and every one are spellbinding in their own way. Remedy Games have undoubtedly created the weirdest - and perhaps one of the best - games of the year. Let’s talk about why:

Hello, gorgeous 

You don’t dedicate an entire section of your review to a game’s visuals unless they are truly outstanding. Control certainly lives up to this, especially so if you have a PC powerful (specifically with an NVIDIA RTX graphic card) enough to try the game out with ray tracing. Lighting has never looked better in a video game. Rich yellows and reds often dramatically paint key parts of The Oldest House, stunning me every time I came across them. 

Remedy Games takes a lot of really unique creative choices here, dialling up the weirdness to a 10 with some really freaky environments and enemies. You’ll constantly feel like you’re playing through a really twisted H.P. Lovecraft story, and this game pulls that off in all the right ways. 

The game also has some great environmental destruction. It feels awesome to wreak absolute havoc during combat, ripping boulders from the walls, shattering tables and chairs with the push of a button and slamming enemies into explosives and watching the pretty fireworks fly. It does feel a little weird when you brush past a table and everything on it proceeds to explode dramatically, but you come to accept that The Oldest House is basically built from cardboard.

The Evil Within meets Warehouse 13 

The Oldest House is probably one of the most memorable video game environments I’ve had the pleasure of exploring yet. I’m a sucker for X-Files/Warehouse 13/SCP type of stories where the supernatural is just a balloon or water bottle away, and that’s exactly what this game is. 

The Oldest House contains many dangerous ‘Altered Items’; that is, random objects that have suddenly come to possess supernatural traits. For example, you might meet an FBC employee in dire need of help. He’s been tasked with staring at a fridge, and taking his eyes off it would have some dire consequences. You might even find out about a sinister baby pram that incessantly bellows black smoke, or an anchor that hides a mini-boss of epic proportions. 

The Area 51-like nature of The Oldest House lends itself very well to exploration. You constantly feel like you want to explore every corner and uncover every secret, of which there are many. Even small things like notes and collectibles detailing the items contained in The Oldest House are absolutely fascinating to read. 

Control is nothing without this building. It’s the beating heart of everything: the story, the characters and your entire drive to move forward. It’s like watching a magician pull an endless string of handkerchiefs out of his top hat. How far will this madness go? When does it all end? Do you even want it to end?

Kill ‘em all 

At the heart of Control’s combat is your Service Weapon. This is a gun that comes in many different forms collected as you progress through the story. At first, it’s a pistol. Then, with the press of a button, it turns into a shotgun, SMG, rocket launcher and so on. Each of these gun forms have a specific role in combat, as well. ‘Shatter’ can blast away an enemy’s shields, whereas ‘Spin’ can quickly whittle down an enemy’s health. 

Also important are the many abilities Jesse can gain throughout the story. Chief among them is Launch, allowing Jesse to pick up almost any object in the environment and hurl it at the enemy. Honestly - I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ability like this implemented so well in a game before. Control’s destruction engine made ripping off parts of the wall and hurling them at enemies feel fantastic. I really couldn’t get enough of it 

Unfortunately, all these weapons and abilities only get you so far. There are points in the game where Control experiences an identity crisis: Is it an atmospheric journey into the unknown, or is it a chaotic, claustrophobic fast-paced shooter? It tries to be both at the same time, biting off a lot more than it can chew.

The ending sequence of missions was absurdly bad for this. This game was relatively good at pacing out enemy encounters and story sequences until the second-last mission, where all of a sudden it just hurls a massive amount of fights at you. These fights come loaded with bullet-sponge enemies and an utter lack of checkpoints that will have you throw your keyboard and mouse out the window. It’s excruciatingly boring, badly designed and lasts way too long. 

It almost put me off the game completely and when it came time to writing this review, I had to remember that I actually liked the game. To have the whole story climax in such an unimaginative series of badly designed encounters and then follow it up with such a lackluster ending? Just... disappointing.

Deep as a puddle

I came into Control extremely excited for the story it would tell. Unfortunately, this is the part of the game that really let me down. Control boasts amazing visuals, a wonderful atmosphere and an interesting combat flow (as bad as it gets towards the end), but the one thing it lacks is a good story to tie it all together. 

Jesse Faden has unwittingly become the Director of The Oldest House, inheriting the weapons, abilities and responsibilities that come along with it. However, this was never her intention, and although she grows into the role as the game goes on, it’s not why she’s here.

Control takes a frustratingly vague approach to its story. Half the time, you’re just moving from location to location with a very abstract idea of where the story is heading in the long stretch. Characters speak in riddles - including Jesse herself, who refuses to tell anyone what she’s actually doing in The Oldest House. The exception is when she starts inner-monologuing in long and boring exposition dumps, which just feels like such an unimaginative way to feed the player new information. 

This isn’t helped by how poorly the game handles its characters. They stand at such a stark contrast with the rest of the game. For example, I can recall 20 different locations in Control that I absolutely loved, but could only name you 2 characters I even moderately enjoyed. 

By the way, no amount of ray tracing (and the game is a great showcase of it) can help this game’s facial animation. It is absolutely awful. Characters often talk and move like they’ve just gone through several rounds of Botox, and it feels so weird to go from those stiff character animations to the absolutely gorgeous scenery all around you. 

The story never really has anything to offer otherwise too. You go from place to place, doing frankly boring kill or fetch quests, and then just when the game gets interesting, it ends. I realise that two DLCs are coming for Control later, but come on! Is it too much to ask for an ending that lasts longer than a 1-minute cutscene? And that’s after the painful mission that comes before it too. 

Conclusion

Honestly, at the end of the day, I really liked Control despite its faults. It gave me fantastic The Evil Within vibes, where you can’t really trust anything you see, with expertly designed environments and fascinating world lore. It’s certainly one of the best-looking games I’ve played this year, and throwing if you have an NVIDIA RTX card, this game is quite possibly the best showcase yet of how ray tracing can elevate your gaming experience.

The combat is flawed but interesting and the story is plain unsatisfying, but Control is ultimately a game worth playing and is unlike anything else I’ve played this year. Remedy is onto something new here, and I'll be massively disappointed if they stop with one Control title.

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