Control is an action/adventure third person video game which comes developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by 505 Games. The game is available on the PS4, Xbox One and PC.
Control was a game that I had become interested in playing throughout the year. The trailer looked good and lately I’ve been quite interested in the many games that 505 Games has been releasing. When I first got the game I was very into it, but found it to be much more difficult and time consuming than I initially thought.
The game is all set within one building in which paranormal things happen. As a player you are to get through the various missions inside this building, but the game encourages you to explore that building, read notes, discover audio files and uncover secret unlockable items. While these are the traits of many games, I found it at times to be a bit much for me. This was mainly due to the type of character you play as in Control.
The main character that you will play as in Control is Jesse Faden who goes to the Federal Bureau of Control building in search of her brother who has gone missing. Inside this building there are a lot of paranormal things going on and the type of agency that exists there, the Federal Bureau Of Control, is trying to deal with it. There is a major threat in the building known as the Hiss and the Hiss are taking control of all the people inside the building. Jesse has to both find out what happened to her brother and discover what is going on with all the paranormal stuff and the Hiss. The problem I have with the character in all this is that Jesse is completely without any charisma or much emotion at all. She’s a very one dimensional character and I never at all got invested. This made me not interested in exploring the world of the building because every time I did discover something interesting I never saw much change in the character I was playing.
The story I guess is interesting and the developers have presented Contol in a way that to know what is really going on, you have to find notes, watch little videos and uncover many secrets. Then you piece it all together or if you are still very confused you have to go on Reddit to figure it out. As the story is told through little snippets of things that you discover like random videos on TV screens within the building you are exploring, much of the game feels like the season of Lost when they were trying to figure out what the Dharma initiative was. The story and setting itself is interesting, but it’s intentionally mysterious. If you are not playing the game daily and paying attention to what’s happening and remembering everything that you found it’s easy to get lost in it actually and have no idea what’s going on.
The main draw for Control I feel though is for the gameplay. The game rewards you for exploring the building. There are a lot of very nice things you can unlock like gun modifications and some very awesome outfits for Jesse. There are also ability unlocks you can get which will give Jesse her powers in the game and these are actually very cool. The unlocks feel very rewarding and I always felt good when I had any of my things upgraded in this game.
The gameplay in Control is a lot of fun. Jesse has special abilities such as jumping very high, or picking up objects and throwing them across the room. The game uses a lot of particle effects so throwing things across a room in an office will send desks, paper and all sorts of things flying all over the place. Enemies once killed kind of explode and there’s more particles everywhere. I love this actually and it was the most fun I had in the game.
Control is a game that I’m actually happy to recommend. I know I complained about the main character having no charisma and the story being difficult to understand. But I say this because I feel that for casual gamers who are going in for just a few hours then maybe coming back to it a week or more later that this game is going to be very hard to follow. This is a game that I recommend to a much more dedicated gaming audience who can take the time to play just this game only and focus on the exploration. If you put time into the exploration of the in game world and explore the Federal Bureau Of Control properly, then the issue of having the complicated story actually is not there, it will simply be an intriguing story that you worked hard to unlock. You will feel rewarded each time you unlock new abilities, gun upgrades or outfits. The game actually makes you work hard to achieve good things in it. If you can do this and commit to it, then Control is one of the most rewarding experiences you will have in gaming this year.
