Control
Epic gave it for free years ago. I decided to play it. I'd rate it between 7 and 8 because it's a good experience, but also full of things that hinder that same experience. I can't say anything about the DLC because the version Epic gave doesn't have the DLC included. It's very much using the same core of Alan Wake. It has empty places, darkness, some terror, some thriller, supernatural entities and powers, photorealistic graphics. Except that Control is designed to be an action game from the start. I abandoned it before the ending, somewhere before the Ashtray Maze and watched the rest. The rest of the game didn’t have any more bosses and the ending is anti-climatic because there is no final boss. Only the regular enemies and some platforming to reach some important character.
First, this game has many cool ideas. The concept of a secret government agency and supernatural gives room for multiple storylines and infinite possibilities. The game seems to play around the idea of non linear spaces or non euclidean geometry. We are inside a building, but this building does not obey the laws of physics. It can shift walls, ceilings, floors in what appears to be an ever shifting reality. The elevator doesn’t travel just up or down, it can go sideways and disobeys the laws of physics. Think about Men in Black and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a fantasy world and it can be expanded infinitely. We also get to see other dimensions.
In comparison to Alan Wake I can see how Control does things better than the former. It has skills and upgrades. Alan Wake was a pretty linear game with no upgrades or power ups, except for some stronger flashlights. The combat in Control has more variation with more enemy types and the addition of bosses and sub-bosses. With the supernatural powers and the modifications to the weapons Control offers more than Alan Wake’s which repeats flashlight + gunfire till the end.
Another thing that I see as an evolution from Alan Wake to Control is that Control presents those classic “Gain new power, train here” moments. Alan Wake being devoid of any character progression or level up system skipped those. The gameplay in Control surely has more depth than Alan Wake. In Control you have a skill tree and modifications that can be applied to character and others to weapons. The addition of bosses, each one with its own combat tactics also helped with the progression and with the repetition of the same combats over and over from their previous games. I liked the few puzzles in Alan Wake and the surrealistic environments in the DLCs of it. In Control we see many more puzzles and many more surrealistic environments. I can only praise those aspects of the game.
In Control the character can run without draining stamina. This contrasts with Alan Wake, but it also matches the differences. Alan Wake is slower and a horror story. Control is pure action. In Control the weapon has auto ammo regen and it matches the action oriented style. It wouldn’t have made sense for it to have the player to look for ammo or crafting of ammo for that matter. However, unlike Alan Wake, health doesn’t regen over time and you have to kill enemies to collect health.
I’m being honest here, the combat is pretty repetitive. It does offer powers and upgrades. However, it repeats the same combat patterns over and over. For me it felt that this game was more a technological showcase of graphics, physics and destruction. One idea of mine here: what if they could have made enemies with specific patterns tied to certain areas of the building? For ex: enemies with electrical attacks in the maintenance sector, enemies with shields in the communications sector, enemies with teleportation in the research sector and so on. It could have avoided the repetition of the same combat patterns.
The interface is clean and relies on icons. It has a minimalist design. I've found it to be a bit confusing because it displays tiles and there are so many of them on screen at the same time that I became harder to read. The weapon upgrades and skill tree were OK. However, the mods for the weapons were confusing. I didn't test them much because the benefits were all small and combining multiple modifications seemed to force the player to do lots of calculations and added to the complexity. There is also crafting, but I didn't bother with it due to its random nature. Similarly, Shadow Warrior 2 had crafting and multiple affixes, but this one was at the highest peak for complexity. Control really could have made something better than plain lists with scrolling.
Much like other Remedy’s games, my biggest grip is the non linear plot. It’s very hard to understand what is happening. There are TVs, recorded voice messages and a lot of text in the form of documents and logs. Sure they give you background and help you get a feeling and understanding of the game’s world, but at the same time why can’t Remedy adopt other ways to tell a story? The player is forced to stop by to read or listen and this disrupts the pacing. The non linear narrative is always confusing for me. Another detail that makes me dislike Remedy’s storytelling is that they keep doing cutscenes with different graphics from the game. This staggering contrast between game’s action and cutscenes always severely disrupted the immersion for me.
One of my complaints is about the level design. Not because they made irregular places or the environment art was bad. In terms of architecture and interior design this game is pretty much a lesson for artists to study, learn from, inspect and admire. They did apply circular level design that brings you back to the beginning without forcing a long backtracking journey after you complete a mission. However, at the same time they reused the same doors for different corridors and rooms. Made levels full of turns to the right and to the left, much like Dark Forces from decades ago. The minimap didn’t help at all because it disregards floors and heights. It also doesn’t have icons indicating locked rooms or goals for instance. I got lost multiple times.
Another complaint, this time about design, is the sandbox nature that they tried with this game. There are optional side missions that deviate from the main story. I was often lost because I didn’t know that the side mission was a side mission. It led me somewhere and I lost track of where to go next to continue the storyline. Or the opposite, side areas such as locked rooms that you cannot access without a certain permission level. You obtain such permission way later on in the game and have to backtrack and remember where those locked rooms were in areas that you have already visited.
I wouldn’t call this a flaw by itself, but the non linear narrative and level design in this game created a confusing situation. To access the last part of the game you have to complete a quest to gain the key to pass through the maze. The thing is, the maze can be accessed much earlier and before having the key. When you do so, the maze just shifts and keeps the player running in circles and back to the beginning. It’s only after obtaining the key that the maze opens up the path to progress to the final part of the game. I wasted some time thinking that the ever shifting maze was a puzzle to be solved when it wasn’t.
Two examples that I commented on on my site. One is that giant mold boss at the lowest depths of the building. There you meet an NPC that asks you to grab some samples for her to create some antidote. The NPC says that it’ll take some time. How much time? There is no progress bar or clock. It depends on how much you have advanced through the storyline. If you have already completed many missions, it should be immediate. If not, you have to advance more in the story to receive it.
The other example is the boss with the clocks. There is a chasm and to pass it you are required to possess the power to levitate. The thing is, when I reached that part I didn’t have that power yet. I didn’t even know that that boss was optional. This is the kind of confusing design that makes players lost in games.
The random Bureau Alerts also added to the confusion of not knowing where to go. It took me time to fully understand that they weren’t mandatory missions. I spend time and time again rushing towards them, which made me get lost in backtracking and objectives to progress in the main story. I think that games with sandbox nature or free world roaming should make a clear distinction between what is primary and what is secondary.
Overall it’s a very good game, but I didn’t enjoy it very much.
