Every time I see bemoaning that high budget, AAA gaming has become stagnant and devoid of cool weird ideas, it makes me realize the gaming community at large does not appreciate Remedy Entertainment.
For many years, Remedy has operated at such a high concept level within the established AAA mold, it pains me their games don’t enjoy the mass market success they absolutely deserve. From Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break and Control, even though they play within tried-and-true genres, the vibes and execution are entirely, uniquely their own.
Now, three years after delivering their masterpiece in Alan Wake 2, Remedy has now made its return to their mind bending Control franchise. After it provided the bedrock to deliver on its long gestating connected universe, their return to Control with Control Resonant provides them another chance at a bold new approach for the studio. Eschewing their original protagonist and their pretty established third person shooter bonafides for an open world character action based game, Remedy is now playing in a different sandbox. Does Control Resonant prove the studio has the chops to deliver its trademark style regardless of genre?
A World I’m Ready to Live and Die For
Set seven years after the events of Control (and some three years after the events of Alan Wake 2 if we are still counting the Remedy Connected Universe), Control Resonant continues the story of the Faden siblings, their dealings with the Federal Bureau of Control (the FBC), and the supernatural entity known as the Hiss.
After Control protagonist Jesse Faden and the FBC tried hard to contain the threat of the Hiss within the walls of the Old House over the past seven years, the Hiss breaks through to the streets of Manhattan. As Jesse, who at the end of the last game became the acting director of the FBC, disappears into the unknown as she finds an ultimate solution to the Hiss threat, all hope for the FBC rests on the hands of Dylan Faden, the former vessel of destruction for the Hiss. Waking up from a comma after Jesse prevented the first full invasion of the Hiss, Dylan has to retrace his sister’s steps as he now becomes the FBC’s only hope, trying to atone for the destruction he wrecked as a vessel of the Hiss while putting a stop to the increasing shattering of reality plaguing the world.
Whereas the story in the first Control was mostly mystery box storytelling that mixed Jesse finding out the whereabouts of Dylan, the mysterious nature of the Old House and the paranormal events that would eventually connect the game to Alan Wake, Control Resonant is actually a more straightforward tale more concerned at making all the paranormal nonsense of the first game something more real and tangible. What that does is make Control Resonant have less of a mysterious allure overall, but in turn allows Remedy to more explore the toll and consequences the Hiss has inflicted both to the members of the FBC and even the general population of Manhattan. So much of the visual imagination of the deterioration of Manhattan is more tied to the psychological break of certain people, and it helps leave an indelible visual memento of this psychedelic experience.
The change in focus helps a lot at justifying the switch of protagonists from Jesse to Dylan. While Jesse had a cool no-nonsense deterministic personality in the first game, the mystery box nature didn’t leave enough room to fully flesh her out as a character. When it was announced she wouldn’t be the protagonist of the sequel, I was initially annoyed about the opportunity cost of missing the chance of getting a more fleshed out Jesse against her brother which seemed more fairly one dimensional and questionable as a protagonist. Obviously I should have never doubted Remedy’s choice here.
The more straightforward focused tale of Control Resonant helps find the depth to Dylan Faden that wasn’t there previously, and the game in turn uses Dylan’s newfound humanity to also help flesh out Jesse in the fleeting moments she appears in the story, in turn killing two birds with one stone and building expertly from the first Control. And when you see Dylan reckon with his trauma paired with some of the returning side characters from the first game alongside newcomer (and the game’s true new MVP) Zoe de Vera, and I found Control Resonant a more satisfying story than the original game, even if its ending was just a tad too open and abrupt.
Fight For Control
If you’ve played a Remedy game before, Control Resonant is pretty notable for being their first game with no gunplay in it, instead being their first crack at a character action-based melee game set in what’s also their first open world. Whereas one could argue Remedy has become the masters of their craft when it came to great feeling third person shooting, Control Resonant has the hallmarks of being the studio’s first crack at both a Devil May Cry style game and an open world. They’ve nailed some of the fundamentals that make for a great “one of these games”, while still not quite nailing certain little details that could have elevated this to an all-timer.
A character, action-based game lives and dies on how great it feels to move and fight. From that perspective, Remedy hit on the fundamentals. Dylan moves around in Control Resonant with such a swift nimbleness that it makes traversing through both the remains of The Old House and the warped New York such a joy. If you remember floating around the city in Sucker Punch’s Infamous and the speed reactivity of Housemarque’s Returnal, you basically have an idea of the kind of responsive movement Control Resonant provides the player. Combat is no slouch either, with Dylan swiftly accessing his weapon constructs for some great combo attacks and combining them with a great selection of powers. Jesse had access to powers in the first game, but Control Resonant builds upon the variety on offer in great, inventive ways.
But while the combat has a nice feel to it, the pace at which you unlock its best elements and the sponginess of certain enemies were not tuned quite right at first. Control Resonant commits the cardinal sin of locking away a lot of fundamental moves inside the skill tree that makes the initial hours of the combat feel overly limited. Where in the first game the act of shooting alone immediately gave you a “oh this is another Remedy banger” even before you started unlocking different weapon variants and some powers, Control Resonant initially gives you some doubt character action was the right move for Remedy…until those upgrades and powers start unlocking and the full scope of the combat flow and potential build crafting start making sense.
Due to the timing of this review coinciding with the physical version of the game, it also has to be noted that Remedy has been working extra hard to address a lot of the feedback that arose during the 48-hour early access period and the first few weeks of Control Resonant being live. The sponginess of enemies was a major sticking point during the initial early hours where you barely had any unlocks, and the game establishes a flow of trying to build a Falter meter (AKA their version of stagger) to stunlock and increase damage output, but your options were so limited and it would take longer that you’d like to proc what’s needed. The included Assist Mode could serve as a way for you to tweak certain damage values more to your liking, but as someone that liked to see how a game felt as normally intended, the early impressions weren’t good.
The subsequent patches Remedy put out tweaked the combat balance for the better and allowed for a better power curve that mitigated the limited options of the early combat. And I’m glad they tweaked that because once you unlocked further upgrades in your weapon constructs and more powers come at your disposal, the game has quite a few ways for you to buildcraft, all while looking stylish and powerful in the process. The moment you unlock combo finishers and start mix and matching them with your alternate weapon constructs, some air juggling, power elemental buildups, combo canceling and the like, the game’s bonafides as a character action based game start to shine, and shows Remedy has a handle of the core fundamentals.
Now, there are a few tweaks that I wish Remedy could implement to fully clean up any tiny hangups. Considering you have access to 6 different weapon constructs for your main and secondary attacks, its a crime you can only have access to two at a time alongside 6 different powers. The power limit makes sense to really think of the build you want (especially since it all fully unlocks near the end), but weapon swapping in a game like Devil May Cry is what allows you to immediately keep things varied at a moments notice and can help extend your chance at combos. It wouldn’t be a hangup if I didn’t see PC modders insert that to the game very quickly, which shows there’s already systems within the game for that to be added. With all the feedback that Remedy has patched so far, I hope they see some of the mods and work them into the game. They’ve done great work at fixing tiny little details elsewhere, including some within the game’s resource gathering which was vague at first, I want to believe they’ll get there.
The final hangup with the game’s combat system is how its tied to its upgrade system. At first glance its a pretty straightforward skill tree system for improving weapons and abilities with meaningful upgrades. However, Remedy has integrated a power scaling system similar to a looter shooter where you have to keep raising that number to keep up with harder enemies. But in order to do that you always have to keep spending on moves and abilities you may not even want. This can become a catch-22 where you’re aiming to get the next specific upgrade for something you want for later, yet the game is pushing you to spend your skills and currency now in order to keep up with the power scaling or risk making the game unnecessarily harder for you. It’s a confusing system at first, and emphasizes the need for a quicker way to access other abilities and weapons, because otherwise you are spending your upgrades and currency on things you don’t even want for an arbitrary number to go up.
While all these systemic hangups may be notable, in the grand scheme of things, its basically small quibbles for a game that nails the core overall. When its your first time attempting to do this kind of game, you are not going to get everything right, so the fact Remedy got most of it right on first go is commendable. Its an extremely fun game to play on the macro level even with those hangups. The fact the rest of the game around it helps elevate the proceedings is just icing on the cake
Another World
Taking some of the exploration backbone done with the first game, Remedy has now tried its hand at open world exploration and side activities with Control Resonant. For the most part, the transition worked surprisingly well.
Right out of the bat, the idea to move away from the intricate brutalist design of The Old House and out to the streets of Manhattan was a questionable idea. The Old House was an intricately designed play space with plenty of thought provoking imagery, and while navigating the place with the provided map was sometimes a nightmare, it was ultimately a really unique play space that gave a lot of personality to the original Control. While at first glance moving out to Manhattan seems like a step backward, that’s just initial impression. The further you get to the different areas of New York and its different sub areas, Remedy starts tapping into really creative, awe-inspiring, mind-bending visual design that complements the level design exceptionally well. If you remember watching the movie Inception and wanted a game that could bend the way that film does, Control Resonant does that and then some.
While exploring the open world and doing its activities can be reminiscent to a traditional Ubisoft open world checklist game, Control Resonant proves how you can still play within that established framework in a way that doesn’t feel “been there, done that.” Control Resonant benefits from the marriage of its incredible movement paired with the level design to make the different sections of this broken New York more appealing to traverse, all while completing a wide variety of activities that never become overwhelming thanks to the restraint at how they’re doled out during the story progression. The game also expertly separates how you can prioritize the main tale from other main story threads, like the whereabouts of Jesse and the elimination of the Resonant boss fights, and how doing each will guarantee a game changing combat or traversal upgrade. It’s structured itself very well in order to let the visual imagination of every aspect to the game shine.
And I can’t stress enough just how visually mesmerizing this entire thing is. The game has a sense of scale and visual creativity that will often leave your mouth open agape at the imagination of it all. The initial sections of the game barely scratch the surface at how visually imaginative things get, where the moment you hit the game’s halfway point, you’ll feel the moment you go from “yeah this game is neat” to “THIS IS PEAK.” Remedy was inspired by the reception the first game’s iconic Ashtray Maze sequence received and really went “how about we do seven sequences like that.” And the best part, even when you are expecting the moment this game gives you its Ashtray Maze moment, it always hits you in subtle ways that never cease to amaze, particularly when the game’s custom made songs fully kick in. This is Remedy at the peak of their weirdness, and the way that manifests near the end left me stunlocked. It will be one of the most defining moments of the year for me.
Running on their custom Northlight Engine that’s powered their games since 2016’s Quantum Break, Control Resonant is once again a visual marvel, proving Remedy continues to squeeze every ounce of visual oomph for their long running tech to provide some of the most spellbinding visuals seen in high budget gaming. However, where the restraint of 2023’s Alan Wake 2 provided arguably the best looking game of its year, the move to the bigger scale does see their engine taxed slightly more with Control Resonant.
On a base PS5, when all the game’s insane particles are flying around, the games framerate does buckle under the pressure of the craziness seen on screen, and while its Quality mode still delivers some great ray traced reflections, the framerate tax to enjoy them is not worth it. At the same time, while the Performance mode absolutely keeps up with all the craziness, the visual hit is a little too much for my liking. This game definitely sings more on a PS5 Pro and a high end PC, so definitely consider those platforms to see a lot of the visual wizardry of this game with as little compromise as possible.
It was easy to imagine a scenario where Remedy could have just given us a more straightforward sequel to Control, and I would have been perfectly content with that. But once again, Remedy proved they are not happy resting on their laurels and took the riskier approach. While they may have not nailed everything on the first go, hitting the bullseye with the fundamentals shows they understand what makes character action based games click. Add in their industry leading imaginative visual panache, and you get another winner in their ever growing list of winners.
You may find other action games that play better than Control Resonant, but you’ve never played an action game that’s quite like Control Resonant. At a time where players desire fresh and unique takes on familiar ideas, I can’t imagine a better exhibit for that desire.
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