Control """"""Review""""""

I just beat Control and so as a completely unqualified person who doesn't write beyond notes for ttrpg campaigns this means I can now write a review of it surely. That's how this works right? :)

Anyway, I liked the video game, but I had a few gripes, and sometimes you just gotta get all that in writing in a blog post for some reason.

I don't wanna end the """"""review"""""" on a bad note given that I liked the game so I’m gonna put the things I disliked here at the start:

• There's a graphical glitch/error that means even on my bulky gamer laptop the game will sometimes just decide to make texture look bad, and there's no way to stop that. While having low quality textures isn’t a problem for me by itself it was the constant swapping between high and low quality, often having them next to each other that made this bother me
• The game makes unlocking some abilities optional, and so it only has so many puzzles that it can throw at you, meaning by the end of your time at it puzzles become more of a “Oh this one again” situation than a difficulty. This problem is less present in the Foundation expansion, that actually expands the players toolbox
• When you get low on health the massive bloodshot overlay that takes up the screen is incredibly intrusive and borderline annoying once it overstays its welcome. If you are bad at videogames like me you may find yourself with this on your screen for minutes at a time and in a game about constantly being aware the lack of visibility is more annoying than anything else. The game already has a health bar, I don't know why it needed a red fade in as well.
• Speaking of strange decisions, it feels like there is a lot of needless busy work in the game. More than once you will have to wait for an incredibly slow moving platform and defend yourself while you wait. This is fine and fun gameplay imo. However, when you then ride that platform about 4 times, and everytime it is just as mind numbingly slow as the first time you waited, except without any interruptions to keep you occupied, it just feels boring. I understand the appeal of the movement being consistent, but I probably would have been happier if some of the “stand here and wait” sections were just loading screens instead. Why do you have a limited number of slots for each weapon mod you can carry? The only excuse I can think of is array size restraints in the code but I don't see how that could lead to them being capped at 40, a cap that meant I would often have to interrupt a tense situation to empty my pockets of all the garbage I picked up. I also don’t know why the enemies have levels. I never re-exploited early game areas because I didn't want to, and the constantly scaling enemies just made it feel like I was never getting that much more powerful, leading to a feeling that I was at the same level for the entire game. This is probably a personal taste thing, but reviews are subjective anyway (especially this one) and I didn't like it.
• Some cutscenes feel like they last too long
• The AWE expansion. I don't know why I just really stopped liking the game during this expansion. It takes a sudden swerve into light based puzzles and horror that I was there for but some extremely long sections with instant death obstacles, no health recovery, the same situation played out four times in a row and just generally me being tired led to this expansion leaving a really sour taste in my mouth. It definitely didn't help that I played it last either.

Happily, that's it for the outright negatives. The only other thing that could be considered a problem is that control is very much a modern open world game. While not as massive in scale or empty as a Ubisoft game, opening a map or the missions tab can still make one's heart sink from seeing all the things to do. I certainly am not the world's biggest fan of open world games, and in my opinion control borders just enough on the side of still remaining a nice concentrated experience that I enjoyed.

So that leads to the things I enjoyed about the game, which are a lot. Again, I want to reiterate that I think Control is a very good game and I would recommend it to anyone interested in a decently sized third person shooter about using superpowers and navigating a giant cool office building. So, features I enjoyed.

• The gunplay and combat is slick af, and super fun to play. There are a lot of different avenues and types of gameplay you can use. I stuck to playing the game like I was playing bloodborne and darting around rooms while shotgunning people, but the different styles are there and the game doesn't appear to have any massive preference to one style or the other. You are free to play however you like with the tools it gives you.
• The movement is fun, free and easy to use while still allowing for complex gameplay. Not much more to say than that, just that being able to fly and dodge around is really fun to me and reminds me of infamous in a good way. A lot of this game reminds me of infamous in a good way.
• ”The Oldest House” (the setting of the game) is very aesthetically nice imo. I'm a sucker for the whole infinite architecture schtick, and parts of this game definitely hit that Naissance vibe that I like. It's good, and despite being an enclosed space you usually really feel free to fly about and explore in it
• The story itself isn’t like, the greatest thing ever written, but it's fun. There's mystery, there's at least one twist, there's fun sci fi and stuff that reminds me of SCPs. Basically all I need to be honest, I didn't go into the game expecting the best story ever written but I still came out with one slightly better than I thought it was going to be
• When the graphics work they look pretty sick
• The game really just lets you ignore as much content as you like, which is good. I ended up playing the entire game without unlocking two whole powers in the skill tree, and while I kind of regret not getting them (again, how exactly am I qualified to review something if I never bothered to see that much content) I do really like the fact that the entire game was perfectly beatable without them.
• It's a small thing but the assist mode is really good, and I like it as an alternative to having difficulty options

Yeah so overall it's a good game. It's not going to become a new one of my favourites, but its definitely very fun. Game score numbers are dumb but if I really had to arbitrarily assign one I’d give the game an 8/10 - far above the average of a 5.5 but not quite exciting enough to me personally to break into the 9/10s.

I don’t know why I bothered writing this because as I’ve stated I’m pretty clearly not qualified to review any game let alone this one. I guess I just wanted to write down my thoughts or something. Idk thanks for reading I guess I don't know why you did that.