Review - Control

The Remedy Entertainment Hype is Real

Control

• 505 Games, Remedy Entertainment

• Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen, Juha Vainio

• August 27, 2019

• PC, PS4, Xbox One (Original Release)

• Played on Xbox Series X with Ultimate Edition Version

Sam Lake’s Remedy universe has slowly but surely become a staple of modern gaming. I had yet to play any of their games, so with some time available and Game Pass providing the option, I finally decided to try out the game Control. By the time credits rolled, I had finished up one of my better gaming experiences with a new appreciation for the studio and Sam Lake.

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Plot, Characters, and Setting

Control starts us out with our protagonist, Jesse Faden. She’s been looking for her brother Dylan ever since a secret government agency kidnaped him called the Federal Bureau of Control. She arrives at their headquarters, known as the Oldest House, and finds herself in circumstances that lead to her becoming the new director and being tasked to help deal with an outbreak of the “Hiss,” a paranormal entity. As you play the game, more secrets are revealed, and you can find a lot of lore about the agency through notes and recordings. These include notes showing how the character and events around Alan Wake are tied to the game and the agency.

Now, I fell in love with the concepts and story. The FBC is like an FBI-type agency that deals with paranormal and weird phenomena. There are even some recordings of calls to a radio show that remind me of the infamous Coast-to-Coast AM paranormal show I briefly listened to in my High School and early adulthood years. The lore around the agency and the characters that make up the staff was out of a well-written movie or television series. If anything, by the end of the game, I wanted more background about the agency and some of the cases they tackled.

Jesse became an interesting hero to play, even if it takes a while to understand her motivations and personality, as the game starts pretty fast. There’s a lot to her as you peel back some layers of her background and her reluctance to become the new director. As you clear out the Oldest House, you’ll bump into some memorable, likable, and suspicious characters. I liked Ahti, a paranormal entity that shows itself as a janitor and helps you several times in the game. The entire story is well written from the pacing standpoint and what Jesse goes through. That being said, it can get confusing, and I admit I had to watch one or two YouTube videos to get a handle on what happened. But I can’t be hypocritical and attack that as someone who loves the Souls games, which pretty much requires understanding lore to come close to understanding them.

The winner in this game, however, is its setting. The Oldest House is the headquarters of the FBC, and it's a great example of how the environment can tell a story. The place has a brutalist architecture with large, colorless walls and ceilings. Everything is simple, and you’re stuck in a soulless building. As you encounter possessed and dangerous regular everyday items that hold paranormal entities, it becomes apparent that the design of the building is on purpose to help keep them at bay. It’s a pretty cool way to make the setting a big part of the story.

My only gripe is that the villains, the “Hiss,” were not exactly the greatest villains. You got a couple of cool-looking versions, and some of the boss battles had their moments, but I didn’t find them particularly memorable outside of one of the villains in a DLC expansion. They’re serviceable, but nothing that’s going to be making my greatest villain lists anytime soon.

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Gameplay and Fun Factor

Jesse gets access to a special gun that gives you extraordinary powers. As you progress through the game and deal with more possessed items (also called Objects of Power by the FBC), your power expands, and you get stronger. The main one you’ll utilize a lot is the ability to use telekinetic-like powers to throw items at enemies. The gun starts to gain other ways to use it, including different styles of shooting mechanics that go from typical to a shotgun to a more rapid-fire technique. You can mod the gun to add effects such as better accuracy or more damage when doing a headshot. It’s a fast-paced action style when playing, as standing still is not an option. It might take a couple of tries to understand how to pace yourself during combat, but once you do, you’ll be having a blast.

I was surprised at the difficulty of the game. I know that you technically can go into the settings and adjust aspects of the gameplay to make it easier, but the lack of a simple easy to hard option was a negative. The game is challenging at times. There was one area that had me ready to throw my controller. That being said, I wouldn’t say it’s From Software hard. I was just taken aback at the difficulty in the some areas of the game, it is just something for you to note. Also, it doesn’t help that the checkpoints are not very good. Some of these are too far for me to like, and I wish the game had started you much closer to the spot you died in. The checkpoints were easily my least favorite part of the game.

Outside of the combat, the game's pacing is similar to Resident Evil. You’re stuck in a building with multiple departments and floors, so you’ll slowly unlock them and explore the building more. Sometimes, there is some backtracking as you access some locked doors. This style of pacing in a game is one hundred percent my jam. The moment I realized that would be the pacing, I knew I would love this game.

A moment near the end of the game has become one of my favorite video game moments of the last ten years. It’s nothing emotional or story-wise, but it’s a gameplay segment that makes you feel like a complete badass as you listen to the song “Take Control” by the Old Gods of Asgard. It’s one of those moments when you experience something in a game and immediately realize you’re experiencing something special.

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Graphics, Presentation, and Soundtrack

The presentation of Control is incredible. I couldn’t help but get a genius director feeling out of it. When you discover new areas of the game, you have big, bold letters tell you, and it feels like I’m in a movie from one of the best directors in the industry. It’s a game that plays like something a great storyteller would make. It’s unique and gives personality to the game and creator, Sam Lake.

The graphics are pretty darn good. The game uses Remedy Entertainment's Northlight Engine, and even in performance mode, it looks incredible. The game has a look that uses the setting’s brutalistic design well. Particle effects and colors pop more when you’ve been traversing such a soulless building. I will say that the facial animations were, for the most part, great, but sometimes, they missed the mark or looked a little weird to me. With all that being said, Control has excellent graphics and an art style that fits perfectly for the story and concept.

The soundtrack is another incredible part of the game's presentation. The score during combat or essential moments in the game just fits. Even the sound of the big words hitting your screen to tell you about the new area you are discovering is just perfect. It’s one of those games where every sound, from the enemies to the score to the music, compliments the experience. The song “Take Control,” which shows up during that moment I explained earlier, is a good song if you like rock and/or metal. It’s easily one of the best soundtracks of the 2019 gaming year. Composers Petri Alanko and Martin Stig Andersen should both take a bow.

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Grade - A

Highly Recommended!

Control is an example of a well-directed and well-written video game. Sam Lake and company deserve all the credit for what they pulled off here. It’s a game that uses environmental design, characters, lore, and a unique idea to tell a story that is perfect when you want something a little less predictable and conventional. The game delivers good action, memorable characters, memorable moments, and one of the best presentations I’ve seen in a video game. While it does have its flaws, such as the bad checkpoints, unmemorable villains, and a story that can get confusing at times, it still delivers a solid gaming experience that makes me believe the Remedy Entertainment and Sam Lake hype. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this one.

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Pros

+ Incredible presentation and character writing

+ One of the best modern video game soundtracks and score

+ Action-packed gameplay loop paired with good pacing

+ Unique concept and idea, just waiting to be filled with new lore and more content

+ A memorable and likable protagonist, as well as many side characters I liked

+ Two awesome moments that will definitely be up there in my 2019 video game list

Cons

- It can take an hour or two to grow on you

- Bad checkpoints

- Unmemorable villains

- The story can get confusing at times

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