The Service Weapon has five forms: the default is Grip, a versatile and powerful semi-automatic pistol; Shatter, a high-powered shotgun; Spin, a fully-automatic SMG; Pierce, a long-range and high-damage charged shot; and Charge, a grenade launcher. I mostly used Grip, switching between Shatter and Pierce as my secondary, and decided shortly after getting them that I didn’t like Spin or Charge and never used them. Grip is by far the most consistent, reliable and versatile form, while the others are more situational. Pierce in particular was hard to use well in the type of engagements Control usually throws at you, with fairly close quarters and enemies that move around too much for Pierce’s charged shots. The various abilities are really what makes combat enjoyable, as you eventually are able to do things such as telekinetically launching objects at enemies, taking control of enemies and having them fight on your side, and creating a temporary shield of debris in front of you. It reminds me somewhat of Bioshock’s Plasmids (along with the general atmosphere vaguely reminding me of a weirder Rapture), but with less variety. That said, I still never got bored of the combat, although it’s not without its issues.
The only bosses you’ll encounter in the main path are particularly large groups of Hiss enemies, often with one stronger-than-normal enemy standing out from the crowd. These fights can be frustrating, largely because it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the legions the game likes to throw at you. It’s easy to get flanked, and if it happens to be by one of the enemies that explodes, or one of the several others that can do large amounts of damage all at once the fight can take a turn for the worst very quickly. Either you’ll die outright, or you’ll be forced to leave cover in search of the health pickups that enemies drop when killed. In the side missions there are some fights against bigger, non-standard enemies that feel more like proper bosses, and each one is frustrating in its own way. One such frustrating boss fight is against a gigantic alien monster that creates holes in the stage when it attacks, which you can fall through, killing you instantly and forcing you to restart the fight from the beginning.
The biggest problem with the combat, and the game as a whole, is the performance. The frame rate drops precipitously whenever there’s a lot happening on the screen, which includes the biggest fights. One of the final fights in the game ran the game at 5-15 frames per second the whole time, which made an already difficult gauntlet even more infuriating. It would also freeze completely for a few seconds whenever a main story mission ended, along with other erratic frame drops here and there. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I was playing on an original-model PS4 and it would run better on a PS4 Pro, Xbox One X, or sufficiently high-end PC, but it should have been properly optimized even for the regular consoles. Maybe this will be fixed by a day-one patch, but at least when I was playing it was a problem. The pop-in was also really noticeable, even becoming a problem where sign textures wouldn’t fully load fast enough, forcing me to wait for the sign to become legible so I could figure out which door I was supposed to take.
One of the things that drew me into Control when I first saw it was the visuals. While the art style itself is generally realistic, the otherworldly effects from the Hiss corruption and the various Altered Items contrast with the otherwise mundane environment, enhancing the game’s atmosphere of general strangeness. The Astral Plane looks great, with its angular surfaces and simple black-and-white color scheme. The music is mostly not much to speak about, but while exploring I found a vocal track by Finnish indie alt-rock band Poets of the Fall (who have been featured in previous Remedy games), which I enjoyed more than I expected. The character models also sometimes fall slightly into uncanny valley territory during cut-scenes, but generally they look fine.
Control is a game with an enjoyable variant of standard third-person shooter gameplay, an excellently unsettling atmosphere and setting, a big but not overwhelming world to explore, and surprisingly fun and charming collectibles to find. However, it’s held back by an underwhelming crafting system, some particularly frustrating boss fights, and sometimes-severe performance issues, at least on an original PS4. The length and amount of content is respectable for $60 USD – I’d estimate my playthrough took 20-25 hours for the main story – and there’s still things to do once you finish the story missions, mainly cleaning up any side missions you have left and the few postgame missions, or just exploring more of the Oldest House and finding more collectibles. If you like Metroidvanias and you want one with its own special brand of weirdness, I’d definitely recommend Control.
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Review copy provided by publisher
