Control has been out for around a year and unfortunately when it did arrive it was scooped up by Epic as an exclusive to their store. As many of you will know, I have been very critical of Epic on their exclusivity policy as I believe it damages, fragments and ultimately weakens PC gaming. Alas, I boycotted the game despite it looking incredible but vowed to take a look once it arrived on Steam. Twelve months later to the day and Control (Ultimate Edition) is now available on my preferred store, so it’s time to step into this latest title from Remedy Entertainment and see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Rum Doings

In Control you play as Jesse Faden (voiced by Courtney Hope) who has been looking for a building called the Oldest House most of her life. As kids, you and your brother encountered an Altered World Event (AWE) which resulted in your brother being taken against his will and you now believing he ended up at this mysterious building. With the help of a Shawshank Redemption analogy, we learn that the world we take for granted is just the tip of the iceberg, that behind the curtain (or poster) there is another world filled with strange powers and dangerous creatures. The Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) is the agency which is tasked with monitoring and ultimately dealing with these powerful forces. Interestingly the Oldest House is an object of power itself and like Doctor Who’s Tardis, the inner rooms go on for untold miles of shifting corridors and chambers. 

The game opens with you literally walking in off the street to find a deserted front desk, not an issue seeing as this building is only visible to those who know it is there. Very soon you discover the previous Director is dead, seemingly by his own hand and now the mantle has been passed to you in what must be the easiest job interview in history. At this point, you pick up the old director’s sidearm, which seems to shift and pulse with life and form a bond to the mysterious hotline. The otherworldly gun is the first proper object of power you will come across and it seemingly binds you to the role of Director. 

Taking Control

From here on in you have the means to defend yourself and like clockwork the games main threat turns up to test your metal. The Hiss is a malevolent force that has swept through the Oldest House transforming most humans into a whole manner of vicious killers. Some people still look relatively human (apart from having chewed their own lips off) while others have been warped into hideous beings that can fly through the air and explode on contact. The more human foes still have enough nouse left to use their weapons which include machine guns to grenade launchers. In the first few hours of play, the enemy types come thick and fast but this does hurt the variety of threats later in the game.

Everyday items such as floppy discs, telephones or fridges can become objects of power. These items can affect the world around them in bizarre and often dangerous ways. It is by tracking some of these objects down in the Bureau that you gain some of your most potent abilities. First of these is the awesome launch which lets you pick up objects with telekinesis and hurl them around as a deadly projectile. This is possibly the most useful and well-used ability Jesse picks up and that’s ok because using it never gets old. If there isn’t a sizeable object nearby you will literally rip chunks of masonry out of the building. I also love that when holding an object, other smaller items within range will be teased into the gravity field. Other skills include evade, seize and levitate; all of which give you more options in combat. If you didn’t know any better you could be playing as a Jedi in the next big Starwars game. The levitate skill especially will give you access to previously out of reach places in Metroid style gating system.

Breaking Good

If there is one thing Remedy Entertainment is well known for it is realistic and breakable environments. The in house Northlight Engine (first used in Quantum Break) handles the environmental damage system like no other game. It really does seem like everything is breakable, to the point I spent hours at the start just testing what I could demolish. Smashing objects into a tiled wall will leave a cool impact pattern, masonry crumbles away to expose iron supports and so much more. Wooden furniture splinters with so much accuracy you can literally blast away the supports and watch the objects roll off onto the floor with delicious physics. 

This dance of destruction of course translates to combat with the ability to hurl explosive items that decimate crowds of Hiss trying to nobble you. It is also a great design choice to give players a weapon with unlimted ammo but keep things in check with a small cool down. Giving players the ability to wreck entire areas of the bureau with your raw mind power is pure satisfaction but who is gonna clean up the mess? Fortunately, the Oldest House will reset the areas you have blasted through allowing to you do it all over again. While I was initially affronted by this lack of appreciation for my destructive art, I can now see the merits of this mechanism and it saves the game having to remember where every splintered pencil ended up.

Human Resources

As with any third-person action game we have other things to consider such as a skill progression system and weapon upgrades. The former works on a levelling system, every time you level up you gain ability points, in addition to finding secrets and getting missions to compete. Each area of combat is represented as well as the other skills you can pick up. Some of these are a simple increase such as levitating for longer which others allow you to pick up heavier items such a forklift trucks (I hear these hurt when pitched at three hundred MPH).

As you play you will pick a whole manner of resources can then be used to either upgrade the gun modes you’ve unlocked or craft new mods to change how they work. There are also personal mods which are tiered in rarity and can really be essential to the later parts of the game. These resources are the primary reward currency for finding secret areas and hidden locations. The game has a central mission which will always be available to progress but every so often you will be presented with repeatable missions that ask you to return to previously visited parts of the complex. These only take a few minutes thanks to the fast travel system in place and can be a welcome distraction from the main quest. 

Things That Go Bump

The excellent action combat is the bread and butter of this game and but there are also a few other elements to write home about. As you progress through the game world you will meet key characters who will offer interesting information or new missions to take on. They are well animated with excellent facial animation for the most part and yet there also seems to be the odd creepy expression. Emily for example, her face really expresses the words and emotions of her speech, but she can also occasionally look like she’s about to start screaming at you. While overall I like the main Character Jesse she can come across very dismissive and even childlike on occasion, maybe this was intentional. Also considering she is the main character her face is one of the lowest quality with an almost permanent sneer and weird vampire eyes. 

Another strange juxtaposition is when you come across footage of the actual actors that has been spliced into the game world. I think for characters like the crazy doctor Casper Darling it works because you only ever see him as a real person on the many films scattered across the game. I also found these small videos both entertaining and they added a great deal to the atmosphere. Where the story falls down is in the final few hours as I felt the final conclusion was a big disappointment. As you play the game there as so many interesting plot lines teased but many of these never get an explanation or conclusion. Like the creepy puppet videos, you occasionally come across, who made these? Are they an extension of your own paranoia. many things are just dropped into your path with no real context or effort to explain why. 

Is it PC?

Control is a beautiful game to behold, with some insanely detailed textures and an overabundance of clutter (which makes scenes look lived in). Sometimes I would enter an office or lab and spend a lot of time just poking around the objects and reading notes let lying around (before blending it all with telekinesis). One downside to these high definition textures is that often there would be a delay in them appearing on objects and it seems to affect painting in particular. I have read that Control also suffered from a performance issue, more so on console that PC. All I can tell you is that present-day on my system the game runs really well at 1440p on the highest settings. This is no doubt due to the magic of DLSS 2.1 which is the new secret weapon for PC gamers will lower-powered systems. Of you are not sure what DLSS is I will link a video below.

The sound work in Control is largely excellent across the board, with wonderfully spooky music and sounds effects playing as you explore. There are also some absolutely fantastic musical secrets in the game which I won’t spoil but I’m really glad they are there. There is also a section of the game involving headphones and I think this was possibly my favourite part of the game. The sound effects, in general, do a good enough job with all the various gun modes having plenty of umph. I also like the malevolent chatter coming from the floating workers that are omnipresent in the facility. 

Conclusion 

It is very unfortunate that the publisher for Control, 505 Games, has somewhat tarnished this excellent game by forcing to people buy the Ultimate edition again to access the ‘next-gen upgrade on console (even for those who bought all the DLC). What makes this situation far worse is that they had a big sale of the normal version before announcing Ultimate and then telling lies by saying upgrading these customers wasn’t possible (when it was). We do often see these situations crop up and it is difficult to know how much of a say the actual developers have over the situation. Of course, this doesn’t affect PC gamers but I thought it was worth mentioning as my opinion of 505 games isn’t the best to start with due to them going Epic Exclusive.

I really love the world Remedy have created here with Control, it is mysterious, horrific and vast. When you are not delighting at the way physical objects break apart just by your sheer will, there is actually a decent yarn to follow. I will say that while the DLC wasn’t bad per se, it wasn’t all that great either with reused assets and more of the same. So Control certainly does have a few wrinkles that I have mentioned but would I still recommend this game? Even with said issues considered, Control is a fantastic action game that pushes environmental destruction to a new bar and is exhilarating to play. 

Thank you for reading my review of Control: Ultimate Edition on PC. If you like the site and would like further updates on my content please follow me on Twitter @riggedforepic