I had so much fun playing Control that I literally couldn't believe how long it actually took me to play this title. After I played the original Alan Wake a while ago, since this game ties up to that one through AWE expansion, I didn't like very much this whole new universe that Remedy was trying to push at the time. The first Alan Wake had a decent story, but what Control gives us afterwards is an absolute expansion of what Alan Wake has started all those years back, and it made me a definitive fan of the New Weird genre. Lets take a look at what makes Control so damn good:

Main Character
You play as Jesse Faden, a new director of the FBC, the Federal Bureau of Control. She enters the Oldest House, which is FBC's headquarters, to look for her brother Dylan. Jesse is very lighthearted but troubled young woman, she got the jokes and all-in-all is a very likeable character. Some might be put off because you play the game as a female character, but that's just idiotic. As the game develops Jesse turns into a real heroine. The actress that portrays Jesse, Courtney Hope, did a great job and shoutout for that.

Story
The story is very unique - some will like it, some will hate it. It's rather complex at it's core and it won't sit well with everyone. The game doesn't necessarily tries to explain everything, but if you care enough about what is really happening in the game, you will understand most of the context. What starts as a brotherly search becomes a surreal experience relatively fast and the moment you meet Ahti, the janitor, and enter that first elevator prepare yourself for a rollercoaster of emotions. Personally, I liked the story progression, the pacing is good and if you stick to the main missions you will progress very fast through the game. The game has a knack for storytelling through scattered documents that you can find and read in order to try to understand the game better, but I find this often full of relatively unimportant information and a lazy way of explaining what is actually going on in the Oldest House. Everytime you want to read these documents you have to pull up the menu which slows down everything, and I personally didn't like that feature very much. Also, most of these documents are redacted, so you can have a hard time to connect to what's actually written in there. Expansions are decent, and they expand on the main story so I recommend playing them and checking them out.

Gameplay
This is where the game shines the most. Jesse is really special. The Oldest House holds several Objects of Power, and Jesse can bind to them to get more and more supernatural abilities. The Service Weapon, which is the only gun you use in the game, holds many different mods for player in order to tailor the gameplay whichever way the player wants. All these supernatural abilities that Jesse can have are very different and very fun to play with. I advise everyone to upgrade the Launch ability as fast as possible, it's by far the strongest ability in the game and it literally lets you mow down hordes of enemies relatively quickly. You can absolutely tear apart the combat areas, the walls, desks, computers, tables. Everything is mostly destructible, which increases immersion and gives more realistic feel to it.

Graphics
Control was one of the first games that used ray tracing. The game can be very GPU intensive, but the game also looks and plays amazingly well. Remedy's Nortlight engine does wonders and at the time was the peak of graphics power. Game is beautiful, even on medium settings. I'm playing on RTX 3070 Ti and I haven't had any problems to run the game at 60 fps.


Conclusion

Control is a great game, there are some minor dislikes, but as a whole package it feels very refreshing and I'm looking forward to the next chapter in this New Weird universe. Remedy did hell of a job.

We live in a room, and there's a poster on the wall....

Control - це надзвичайно динамічний шутер від третього обличчя з неймовірно цікавим лором. 9/10.

Проєкт пропонує одну з найатмосферніших пригод з нескінченними загадками, містикою та науковими теоріями. Це одна з небагатьох ігор, де читати величезну кількість записок, слухати дослідницькі аудіо-логи та дивитись live-action відеоматеріали - один з найголовніших плюсів гри.

Геймплейно Control також пропонує вагому кількість цікавого контенту. Бойова система та переміщення виконані на високому рівні. В грі весело бігати та літати, стріляти та відбиватись від купи різноманітних ворогів. Розробники знають, що в них вийшло зробити найкраще, і постійно підкидають різноманітні активності, де все зводиться до динамічних боїв, де все залежить від того, як гарно ви оволоділи стрільбою з різних режимів зброї, бойовими параутілітарними навичками, а також швидким переміщенням по горизонталі та вертикалі.

Мінуси в гри також є, і найбільшим з них - це, неочікувано, сюжет та основні персонажі. Control настільки багато уваги приділяє тому, що відбувалось до подій гри, що трохи забула про основні події. Особливо розчаровує те, наскільки різко сюжет стрибає від розкриття передумов конфлікту до різкого завершення. Фінальна сутичка навіть не має боса, хоча в додаткових активностях є приклади цікаво зроблених босфайтів.

Загалом, Control посідає особливе місце в моєму серці, як і всі сучасні ігри від Remedy. Це оригінальні, незвичні та дуже цікаві ігри, котрі варті уваги ширшої аудиторії. Рекомендую!