Control review: a technical marvel, and an artistic achievement

Control ’ s history and characters challenge, confuse, and intrigue me from its literal first moment .
The game ’ sulfur eldritch manipulation of abstemious, shadows, and reflections astounds me. Its dialogue sometimes feel odd and artificial — particularly at the beginning — but I understand the utility of that approach the more I play. Everything in Control is careful, but it takes a retentive time for it to explain itself and its reasoning. Being lost is a feature of speech, not a bug .
But I ’ m in commodity hands. Developer Remedy Entertainment is in full committed to its pulpy, phantasmagoric premise, and Control is adenine much a technical marvel as an aesthetic accomplishment .

Whatever walked there walked with plenty of company

control begins as its heroine, Jesse Faden, walks into a functionally invisible skyscraper in New York City. Things go orotund vitamin a soon as she crosses its threshold, and she ’ second just american samoa puzzle as I am. I know that because she ’ second already narrating her actions as separate of a mental conversation she ’ second having with … person. Or something. Or possibly me ?

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Weirdness runs like rebar throughout the build, which is truly a world-within-a-world called the Oldest House. It is besides the headquarter of the Federal Bureau of Control, a U.S. representation focused on research and understanding the “ paranatural. ” This is a universe in which surrogate realities bleed past their margins, the stellar plane is a very ( and very reasonably ) place you can visit, and casual objects like floppy disks carry psychic system of weights to siphon for might .
The Oldest House is like a conduit for the supernatural, and Jesse and I — that ’ s how I think of us, as a team — are compelled to demystify its inside workings. It ’ s a large job in an impossibly big construct. As we travel further, the mystery deepens and everything becomes more bizarre earlier even hinting at becoming apprehensible .



The Oldest House is a character without a talk function but with enough of agency. It ’ mho designed in the distinguished exposed concrete of Brutalist architecture. That concrete, with indeed many 90-degree angles, should be boring, but the finnish developers at Remedy make it fascinating. somewhere in the stew of fluorescent light and soul-deadening desks, filing cabinets, and office supplies, beauty sprouts. This is what it would look and feel like if the Ghostbusters were a bureaucracy that planted a booth farm in the most haunt family it could find .
Nothing about the environment should be attractive, and surely not beautiful, but even the smallest details seem to hum with unavowed determination and life .
exploration of the apparently mundane offices pays off, because there are items to find everywhere. At first base, I ’ thousand intrigued. The much heavily edit documents I discover and read add to the mystery alternatively of explaining it — my sidearm used to be what ? ! — but sometimes all of the reading feels besides much like homework .
Or possibly that was its own head juke. Doing my homework pays off when objects and people I ’ ve read about for days or known about for years reappear dozens of hours later. They ’ re more than busywork. They ’ re Control ’ s narrative support beams .
Remedy knows how to create an elaborate, internally consistent worldly concern possibly better than any other developer, and its ability to do so with a unaccented dust of sparse details mix with the courage to withhold answers for an uncomfortably long time is one of its best tricks. There is a reward for that gamble, delightful surprises for making sure that the studio apartment is showing and telling .

Using the Force

restraint is more than an inflict office build simulator filled with fluttering paperwork .
identical early on, Jesse and I pick up our Service Weapon, which is a herculean tool that lone the Bureau ’ s director can use. I know this because Jesse knows this, and Jesse knows this because the stopping point director pretty clearly used the weapon to kill himself, and he seems to be speaking to us through the fastball lodged in his genius .
The weapon is effectively a pistol at first, but we learn how to transform it into arcane versions of standard video game firearms like a shotgun, grenade launcher, and more. The “ gun ” doesn ’ thymine have bullets, and we never have to reload. a retentive as we can avoid pulling the gun trigger for a few seconds, it will always refill ( reform ? rebuild ? ) itself with ammunition .
Those pauses between clips are an effective incentive to use the other one-half of Jesse ’ s offensive capabilities, which are fair ampere trippy as her Service Weapon. The first, a Force-like office called Launch, allows us to telekinetically hurl objects at enemies. It ’ sulfur easy to use and easy to forget, so I only remember to use it when I can ’ triiodothyronine shoot. At first.

But Launch — which cleverly ditches the preciseness of aiming a artillery and rather locks onto enemy targets — promptly becomes my basal method acting of attack and the concenter of my skill upgrades. The ability besides plugs us into our environment. Everything we pull toward our raised right hand is an interactional part of the world, whether we ’ re picking up items like filing cabinets or, when those aren ’ thymine available, literally yanking chunks of cement out of the walls and floors. And those objects are arsenic deadly as bullets. There is no greater satisfaction in Control ’ s fight than putting a bad guy between the objects that we ’ ra fudge with our minds and another foe, braining him from behind, and then launching the still-flying makeshift rocket at his buddy ’ s confront .
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The number of physical objects that fly through the vent during these battles and the way in which they interact with each early is one of Control ’ s most impressive technical foul achievements. But again, it ’ s not barely a reasonably effect. Watching a fuel fire extinguisher rip through an enemy and collide with a desk whose papers explode, scatter, and flutter down to the prime around us as we continue to fight has a secondary function : It makes the absurdity of Control credible .
I upgrade abilities good like I upgrade our artillery, and our newly powers become indispensable. It ’ south unfailingly fun to fire my gun to empty, toss facsimile machines at shields, and tear out some nearby concrete for a killing blow out. The universe is mine to manipulate and disassemble, and I always do .
My sidearm used to be what ? !
The bible “ baron ” is a leitmotiv in Control, and rooms often look like what you ’ five hundred expect from the consequence of using that incredible come of power to batter your enemies. Everything is either smashed or silent in the process of floating back down to the ground. The battle is bombastic and satisfy, and I am capable of creating beautiful havoc from the first hours of the game. And I only gain access to more might from there .
Control ’ s most glare flaw — the one that caused me to get torment and spook the pawl a few times — is its discrepant health barricade. We can crouch behind cover, but it ’ randomness nowhere near vitamin a safe as a bona fide cover arrangement. Control attempts to mitigate that with a skill, but besides often the moment between having a large total of health and being wiped out feels impossibly immediate. We frequently died from an attack that felt like it came from nowhere. Being cautious about constantly pays off, but Control ’ s movement options, offensive capabilities, and environments don ’ metric ton always support that scheme ampere well as I would like .

A showcase for Nvidia RTX ray tracing

Remedy has constantly been an atmospheric and ocular power station, but Control on Windows personal computer is packed with a surprising come of technology — adenine long as you ’ ra play on a GeForce RTX graphics card .
Control isn ’ t the inaugural game to use re trace, the budding technology that promises to bring ever more realistic light to video games, but it ’ s the beginning game I ’ ve seen to demonstrate its aesthetic potential .
While great graphics can ’ t make a badly game commodity, they can make a game better at the margins. I played Control on a Polygon-provided gambling personal computer with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080, and the light effects helped turn surreality into reality. Walking past panes of guileless glass only to see absolutely rendered reflections of the environment behind me was stunning, and I kept finding fresh areas and new uses of the engineering that made me stop and gawk at the visuals. Control remains an impressive game on consoles and modest personal computer hardware, but it ’ s besides one of the best showpieces for ray trace that Nvidia could have hoped for. I have no doubt it will sell video cards .

Control ’ s dizzying, hallucinatory visuals exist in military service of an experience that remains exciting from its open hours until the credits peal and, without spoiling anything, that ending goes to amazing — and confusing ! — places. so many games, movies, and television shows that are this obviously inspired by David Lynch or Stephen King fall into the trap of providing excessively much atmosphere while failing to deliver the narrative or wages necessary to make it all feel like it was worth it.

control does not suffer from that problem, and I can ’ t expect until more of you are able to play it so we can discuss the answers that it gives and the questions that it poses at the end. I can ’ thymine separate Control ’ s deliberate oddities from its beauty or from its characters, and that ’ s what makes it so comfortable to recommend. This is one of the best games of the class .
Control will be released Aug. 27 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed using final “ retail ” Windows PC download codes provided by 505 Games. You can find extra data about Polygon ’ sulfur ethics policy here .
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