Control - supernatural third person action-adventure from Remedy

[DemonKing]

I've tried most of Remedy's games, and I haven't really enjoyed one of their titles since Max Payne 2.

That's pretty much my feeling. Everything since MP 1 & 2 has been more pretentious than fun.

 

[Silva]

Got this free on this month PsPlus on PS4...

...and dropped 6 hours later. Gameplay too repetitive and the story/atmosphere is too weak to compensate. Feels like a watered down system shock/half life.

And you know what's really weird? For a game about the supernatural, it's not minimally scary or suspenseful. Which feels like it's biggest crime. All the super GFX, production values and cool real footages can't save a game if it's not minimally tense and engrossing, which is the case here.

 

[Silva]

I went back to the game to see more of it's setting and ended up finishing it.

What a missed opportunity. The Oldest House is an amazing concept. It makes the kind of cosmic horror that I grok in a very stylish and unique way. With an actual good gameplay, this could have been Bloodborne in modern times.

It's a CRIME that such a setting and ambience were wasted on a mediocre game like this.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This game is good for one thing only - making nerds lust after raytracing cards.

 

[Silva]

Playing the beginning of the expansions makes me think the devs actually learned something, albeit little. The AWE one actually has some spooky moments in the dark, at least in the beginning (dont know if it's sustained as I dropped it), and the Foundation one has more interesting, branching exploration with more relevant lore and puzzles.

The expansions also make me think the base game was padded as fuck - the devs probably envisioned something much smaller in scope but noticed halfway that it doesn't reach the 30 hours or something the market asks and had to resort to filler, resulting in the lore dumps, shallow writing, repetitive enemies and inconsistent story.

Also, and this may be the biggest problem to fix, is the complete inability for the devs to hit story beats and twists effectively. The story is flaccid like my grandpa's dick. There's simply no emotional or dramatic beat, and whenever they try to insert some èlan it fails so miserably that it becomes (unintentionally) humorous, like that rding a cart with rock n roll in the background part. Wtf?

TL;DR: the expansions improve the gameplay a bit. But these devs can't tell a good story if their lives depend on it. So I dont have high hopes for a sequel.

 

[Silva]

This post says what I wanted about the story but in more articulated fashion..

https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/d4av4m/how_much_did_controls_narrative_matter_to_you/

I'm seeing "game of the year" proclamations all over the web since Control released. Everyone is citing the gameplay and how fun it is to see all the SCP stuff in a full-length videogame.

Nobody who says they love Control ever mentions the story when you ask them why. Does this mean most gamers don't care about the story in a game they play? To me, Control's story is exactly what disqualifies it from "game of the year" discussions. If we're charitable, it's nothing. If we're more honest, IMO, it's actually a poor story that's told poorly. There are writing devices and details in this story that are so counterproductive they could be classified as "sins." Here are some:

1. Jesse's inner monologue: Completely pointless. At choice moments in the game, the game makes us listen to what's going on in Jesse's head. It never matters. It's never anything that couldn't be conveyed through conversation or facial expressions. And sometimes it's outright exposition to make sure we're not confused. In a word, it's patronizing.
   
   
2. Jesse's what they call a "Mary Sue" in writing circles: She's flawless. Her brother is the crazy one. The old director was selfish and possessed. Darling is a stereotypical blind genius--he causes problems by giving into his scientific ambition (even if you could otherwise call him somewhat altruistic). Jesse shows up, determined to help. She's immediately the director because fuck yeah she rules. Nobody can do anything, but Jesse can do everything. She cringes at abuses of power and blossoms when called to help those in need. She's boring.
   
   
3. None of the awesome shit going on matters to Jesse even the slightest: She gets a weapon with unlimited ammo and can change shape to mimic other weapons. Nothing from Jesse. She gets the power to dash through tables and chairs and planters all without even feeling it. Not even a grin from Jesse. She suddenly gets the power to fucking fly. Jesse could give a shit. She gets the powers in extremely unceremonious fashion, and then she just uses them without comment. And that detail doesn't even matter in the story. It's just because videogames, I guess.
   
   
4. Nothing happens in the story until the very end: You're basically exploring the Oldest House and taking control points without any plot advancement until you start exploring the Ordinary sector toward the end. Then you get all this backstory at once, and you're off to fight the final boss. The story is all lore, no plot. Isn't that boring. It's like reading an encyclopedia. You get knowledge, but there's no emotional journey with it.
   
   
5. (Bonus) They retconned Alan Wake into being dumb: That game's story was about creative pursuit sometimes necessitating self harm. He's writing a horror story, and the actual game's narrative is him getting lost in his creative process. He's not really running around Bright Falls shining flashlights on monsters. He's journeying within himself to uncover his own anti-social tendencies (he somewhat hates his own fans after having the same detached experiences with them over and over again). His wife isn't stolen from him by the lake. He detaches from her when he loses himself in his creative process. To him, his wife's been taken from him. To her, in the real world, this just looks like a husband who never leaves his studio and is grumpy and drunk until he finishes his work. Control says "nah, that was all literal and the coffee thermos was an object of power. Weeeee!"

Anyway. This stuff makes the game meaningless. A game like this with really satisfying gameplay is just a toy. We've spent 20 or so hours with it, and now it means nothing to us. We didn't learn anything new from it. It was easy, so we didn't develop any skills relevant outside the game. We just spent 20 or so hours having empty fun. To me, no videogame can ever be trumpeted as one of the best the medium has to offer if it doesn't give us something we can take with us when we're done with it.

 

[GewuerzKahn]

This stuff makes the game meaningless. A game like this with really satisfying gameplay is just a toy. We've spent 20 or so hours with it, and now it means nothing to us. We didn't learn anything new from it. It was easy, so we didn't develop any skills relevant outside the game. We just spent 20 or so hours having empty fun.

Developing skills from playing games. What?
I really hate Reddit.

 

[HoboForEternity]

This game is the most fun i have with remedy games since max payne 2. Got it on humble, i like it so much i bought the DLC immediately. I admit it's a bit repetitive but damn the combat is fun. It's chaotic and satisying and tbh i like the story and worldbuilding.

I always thought SCP would make cool videogame setting and this game is basically it. I love the tie to orevious remedy games too.

 

[Bad Sector]

This game is the most fun i have with remedy games since max payne 2.

Yeah that has been exactly my take on it. Even better because while Max Payne 2 is good, it is heavily story driven (meaning that after you play it there isn't much of a reason to replay it until something like 10 years pass and you forgot most of it) whereas Control is much more gameplay driven meaning it has better replayability - not only it is Remedy's best game (IMO) since Max Payne 2 but it is for a very different reason than Max Payne 2.

 

[Kainan]

Sure MP2 is linear story heavy but it involves Max Payne. I could listen to his monologues every day.
This Jesse just seems kinda bland

 

[Bad Sector]

Sure MP2 is linear story heavy but it involves Max Payne. I could listen to his monologues every day.
This Jesse just seems kinda bland

She is, Max Payne 2's story is more interesting and has a good atmosphere. However it is a game that heavily relies on its story and it is a good game because of the story, whereas Control relies on its gameplay more and is a good game because of its gameplay. Of course MP2 gameplay isn't bad nor is Control's story (and both games have an unusal way of telling their stories).

The reason i brought that up is that they're both very good games but one due to its gameplay and the other due to its story, which is not something you see often done by the same developer - at least as far as "flagship" titles go instead of offshoot side projects - since they tend to have a particular strength they focus on (writing, gameplay, level design, etc).

 

[Israfael]

https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/d4av4m/how_much_did_controls_narrative_matter_to_you/

To this guy something like PF:KM is a bad game, I guess, while HrpaDrwp of Eternity is a narrative masterpiece People somehow forgot that most of the cult classics of the past had either no plot (or something written in a quake.txt or doom.txt supplied with the game) or something really banal and trite like all early BI/Troika/Bioware games (and games with akshual deep story like P:T never sold well, actually). Games should be primarily games, not narrative vehicles to ram in the authors' worldview into your head (and since it's not a book or a movie, you are forced to assume some part of agency on part of the PC character(s), which never flies too well - many people would read/watch movies about willing nazis, but not that many would be happy to actually press the button and gas some NPCs etc)

 

[Straight elf]

Sure MP2 is linear story heavy but it involves Max Payne. I could listen to his monologues every day.
This Jesse just seems kinda bland

She has her moments though.

Guy: Perkele, perkele, perkele!
Jesse: He must be from Sweden!

 

[NJClaw]

Didn't expect throwing tables and fire extinguishers at boring braindead generic enemies to be this fun. Seeing the environment get devastated around you during a fight is captivating, and being able to pick up and throw actual debris from a wall destroyed by an enemy's missile will never get old for me. It's a pity the enemies' AI is so predictable and repetitive, but the game is fun despite it.

 

[kangaxx]

The Mary Sue comment above is right, but it didn't really bother me when playing. It would have done if the gameplay loop wasn't entertaining enough to carry 20 odd hours.

I also quite like brutalist architecture and I think that heavily supported the fun I had with the game.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Raycevick has uploaded his Control review
Anyone familiar to his channel knows he's a big Remedy fan, so I was quite curious to hear his opinion
And right off the bat he claims that this game is "the ultimate Remedy experience"
But that, despite being a game people should play, it is ultimately boring...
Well... I don't know what to think of this

 

[Bad Sector]

Note that he said that he found the game boring after a while (actually he found Act 2 boring, but it picked up on Act 3 again - his issue was with the game being long enough for the parts he found boring to last too long) but others didn't and he not liking it enough to replay it isn't a problem and nothing should be for everybody (these are things he mentions in the video at the end). I think it is a valid stance to have, after all personally i really liked the game's gameplay loop (i was going out of my way towards fights and rarely skipped one of those random events, even though i do agree that some were badly timed) and wouldn't want the game to be anything else.

The "ultimate Remedy experience" part was about the weird stuff that people came to associate with Remedy and was largely in contrast with Quantum Break (with which he compares it - i think that phrase was also used in Quantum Break's promotion too). I haven't played Quantum Break TBH so i can't comment on that, though bis comments made me not be that interested.

 

[1451]

The enemies become damage sponges after a while so it's reasonable to consider this boring.
But in terms of aesthetics, story and general presentation the game is unique. And just for this alone it's worth experiencing, even if you don't finish it.

 

[ferratilis]

I also tried this game recently and dropped it, not because of bad story or gameplay, but because of false advertising. Nowhere in the requirements does it say that an RTX card is needed, so I thought my RX 5700 XT would run this well. And it does run well, but the game still looks like shit. And it all comes down to raytracing.

So this is how the game looks with everything on Ultra, including Screen Space Reflections. The problem is that this game is supposed to use raytracing, so when you use SSR there is this horrible noise on every reflective surface. It looks really jarring.

Spoiler

Then you might think "well, just turn off SSR, it's not that important." And you might be right when it comes to normal surfaces, but a lot of 3D objects completely disappear with SSR turned off, as shown in the screenshots below.

Spoiler

And this is the same kind of noise in Cyberpunk 2077 with SSR on the highest setting, non RTX card:

Spoiler

So if you are somewhat interested in good graphics, but don't have an RTX card, don't buy this game. Just wait for the prices to drop, you're not missing much.

 

[Bad Sector]

I played the game on an RX 5700 XT too and it looked absolutely gorgeous to me. The only issue i noticed with reflections was the usual fade out when stuff went off the screen, but it was mainly noticeable in a couple of areas -mainly some stairs- where there were highly reflective materials at the walls left, right and on the floor. But after a while i stopped noticing it, the game looks great regardless.

Sure with raytracing you'd get slightly better reflections but... of all things to be annoyed to the point of calling the game 'false advertising' (or annoyed at all, really) that is one of the nit pickiest IMO.

 

[1451]

It's understandable for people to feel scammed by Remedy. If they don't want to make the game for amd gpus, they should not be selling it to amd owners.

 

[ferratilis]

Well, the game doesn't look gorgeous to me, and I trust my own eyes more than anyone else. And I'm not nitpicky (I mostly play cRPGs and 20 year old games so graphics are not that important), but this is the kind of game you play for its graphics, and it doesn't deliver in my case.

Anyway, I wasn't complaining, it's more of a warning to others, to know what to expect from RTX centric games on non-RTX hardware. If you want to defend laziness of developers, that's your problem.

If you think this looks gorgeous, I really don't know what to say.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Note that he said that he found the game boring after a while (actually he found Act 2 boring, but it picked up on Act 3 again

Yes but he also said that he doesn't want to replay the game because the combat got boring due to:

1. Telekinesis throws are far too OP, as they trivialise every other power and weapon
2. Enemy AI lacks aggressiveness and their design is not varied and versatile enough to properly challenge the player
3. The character and weapon progression system is just bland

If you think this looks gorgeous, I really don't know what to say.

Dude you're cherry picking screenshots
The game does indeed look gorgeous, and mostly due not to techincal prowess (although the raytracing is sweet) but the very well crafted art style and enviromental design
The fact they used Brutalism (a architectural style so ugly it struggles to even be pretty) and still managed to actually make it mesmerising is a testament to Remedy's talent

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah that has been exactly my take on it. Even better because while Max Payne 2 is good, it is heavily story driven (meaning that after you play it there isn't much of a reason to replay it until something like 10 years pass and you forgot most of it)

Fun shooting was reason enough for me to replay both Max Payne games ton of times. On top of that they have great atmosphere. They are just complete package in a way that happens rarely in video games. Remedy never made anything even remotely as good since.

 

[Bad Sector]

Anyway, I wasn't complaining, it's more of a warning to others, to know what to expect from RTX centric games on non-RTX hardware. If you want to defend laziness of developers, that's your problem.

What exactly do you think is laziness? The game has a lot of reflective surfaces (though it isn't like it is set inside a mirror house), how exactly do you expect it to handle them a non-"lazy" way?

If you think this looks gorgeous, I really don't know what to say.

This is cherry picking, most of the environment isn't even that reflective (if it is reflective at all - no, this isn't a contradiction with what i wrote above, the game has a lot of reflective surfaces but they are not very reflective themselves), here, i just installed the game again and took some screenshots from reflective surface (note that i actually had to run around to find something reflective enough to show it because a lot of the environment is concrete, rocks, etc that do little or no reflection) in the highest settings on my RX 5700 XT:



Also screen space reflections are a bit grainy (it is how they work) but not that grainy, especially not for most materials.

(sorry for the imgbb but imgur was converting the PNG images to JPG with shittier quality)

And honestly that is exactly what i mean with "nit picky": even with the SSR limitations the game looks and plays great. All you'd get with RTX is better reflections in the reflective surfaces, it won't change the game much. Or to put it another way, if you do not like how the game looks without RTX chances are you wont like how it looks with RTX too.

Yes but he also said that he doesn't want to replay the game because the combat got boring due to:

1. Telekinesis throws are far too OP, as they trivialise every other power and weapon
2. Enemy AI lacks aggressiveness and their design is not varied and versatile enough to properly challenge the player
3. The character and weapon progression system is just bland

These are subjective reasons though that apply to him, personally i found #1 very fun and at no point i got bored of it - it is my favorite part of the game's combat (alongside with levitation: flying around and throwing all sort of shit to enemies never got old for me). Also i think he simplifies things a bit, i had to upgrade and switch to different weapons during the harder missions though I mostly agree with #3, the progression system is kinda meh.

Fun shooting was reason enough for me to replay both Max Payne games ton of times. On top of that they have great atmosphere. They are just complete package in a way that happens rarely in video games. Remedy never made anything even remotely as good since.

As i wrote, i find Control as good as Max Payne though for a different reason - gameplay. Personally i liked Max Payne but that was largely for its story, the gameplay is good too but after a playthrough i never felt playing it again.