Whats your interest level in Remedy's 'CONTROL'?

[Powerogue]

It looks, like graphics wise, good, but from that trailer I can make out sweet FA about what it's actually about or why I should care.

[dope_danny]

Well i finished it and honestly? didn't really like it that much. It does a couple of clever things, particularly one thing near the ending, but on the whole its the worst problems with Alan Wake -bland combat, totally reliant on existing media for its premise via references and literally unfinished and needing paid season pass dlc to finish the plot- but there is some good stuff, mostly Sam Lakes writing, pretty amazing lighting compared to other current gen titles and it definitely does make you want to know more once it confirms early on this IS the same universe as Alan Wake. But thats about it.

The world is largely brutalist government building on repeat and they try some none euclidian space by having a corridor curl or something but without any nuance to it the set pieces feel more like a retextured platformer and doesnt do anything nearly as effective as Silent Hill 2 did just by having a very long staircase walk in the dark for example. Compared to the gritty snowed in New York of Max Payne or the idyllic but twisted darkness infested washington state of Bright Falls the Oldest House is a lot of concrete, pipes, gratings and stainless steel and it just lacks any memorable staying power.

Then you have the actual story which can largely be summed up as "show up at SCP building under lockdown, instantly get made the new director of the place and go around with the half life gravity gun fighting generic military dudes under mind control for most of the game just doing things like unclogging pipes or chasing a 'artefact' which is either a very lazy boss fight or just reach a thing that keeps moving around and fight 3 mandatory bosses and a horde mode to break open a maguffin and be told the problem is ongoing, buy the season pass" which sucks. There are neat moments in it. The LOST Darma style training videos, little touches in dialogue that make you smile as they call back to things said earlier like the character is a real person remembering a train of thought rather than trying to be dramatic like Max or Alan but like anything based on SCP its what we don't see that grabs you. Notes that talk about children talking about a friend who "turned into a melted dog thing" and later finding a team investigating a werewolf rumour saying they "might have finally found entity 'dog-niel' from previous case blahblahblah" or some monstrous entity called "The-Not-Mother" which is forcibly breast feeding adolescents to turn them into mutant cave men that kill all adults on site. Really weird stuff that makes me wish this was some cross country freak of the week episodic X Files type structure rather than whats really just a super bland metroidvania-lite.

The combat is largely using your telekinesis to pick up a piece of concrete or an explosive barrel and one shooting enemies or stun locking larger ones, the gun and all its schlooter-lite mods become redundant the moment your throw gets a few upgrades and the other two powers are just weaker and not worth using. The gunplay itself is floaty with overly strong lock on and it suffers from Anthem style bad camera where an enemy can one shot you from off screen with an attack because the camera post gravity throw will sometimes stick facing in that direction and you eat shit and lose hard progress.

Overall the worst part is the aforementioned late 2000's design of "what was this?, who was that? what happened to these story hooks?" and seeing the game launched with a season pass -not called one obviously now its out of vogue- but you pay a further 20 quid or more for the promise of future story content updates one of which as a massive Alan Wake fan i find really painful as it seems to be the entire set up for an Alan Wake sequel or wrapping up his own games cliffhanger and i don't know which is worse.


Its a shame because you can tell in a lot of ways this is Rememdy's most expensive game, put out in a fraction of the time of their others and the subject matter is something they have talked about wanting to tackle for a long time. But then end product feels ten years out of date with all its mechanics, ideas and pricing model for its full story and it looks by all accounts to have sold like shit. Its the first game from a developer i love that i can't even recommend buying on sale because the experience wasn't worth the time for the payoff let alone the monetary cost.

[Skizzit]

I know this thread is a few months old, but I just wanted to talk about this game. After picking it up on the cheap mostly just as something to pass the time not expecting too much, I have to say I am really enjoying my time with it thus far. Is it anything ground breaking? No, of course not. It is a Remedy game after all. But it is pretty fun. At first I thought the combat was super bland, but after unlocking most of the supernatural combat abilities I am having much more fun with it. The setting and story are interesting enough to keep me pushing forward as well. Really, my only complaints so far are that the load times suck and I do wish there were difficulty options. I am the kind of gamer who mostly just plays games for the story and the fun of running around feeling like a badass and not really for the challenge so while I would never say the game is hard, there are times where I have wished I could down the difficulty down a peg so I could mindlessly blast through baddies. But those are both pretty minor.

Really, I would say if this game passed you by this year and you see it on sale for super cheap, it is worth a look if you are into third person shooters with a fun, if simple and cliche plot. A solid AA budget game imo.

[Poppincaps]

if I dont know when a game is coming out then i know nobody else will care about it.

Damn this post did not age well.

[Video Games]

Damn this post did not age well.

Still only 3 pages, a 4 month gap between posts, 2 people even talked about playing it. Sure lol

[Poppincaps]

Still only 3 pages, a 4 month gap between posts, 2 people even talked about playing it. Sure lol

I was talking about the fact that the game won multiple game of the year awards.

[ParanoiD84]

Never heard of it before looks alright though.

[Video Games]

I was talking about the fact that the game won multiple game of the year awards.

Journos who are terrible at games and whose opinions should always be disregarded AND were required to play the game anyway dont matter. Maybe ive seen it high on actual peoples list, but i mainly see sekiro. Not that i think its bad. Id play it if it came to steam at like 15 bucks

[Tech614]

I was talking about the fact that the game won multiple game of the year awards.

And sold like absolute garbage never appearing on any sales chart. Fucking Catherine outsold it ffs and that is a re-release of a niche ass game. She's not wrong.

[Poppincaps]

Journos who are terrible at games and whose opinions should always be disregarded AND were required to play the game anyway dont matter. Maybe ive seen it high on actual peoples list, but i mainly see sekiro. Not that i think its bad. Id play it if it came to steam at like 15 bucks

"I saw that video of the journalist playing Cuphead and now I think all Journalists are FAKE GAMERZ"

That's what you sound like right now. I'm sure that some journalists certainly fit that bill, but they are doubtless the minority. Regardless the game has been well regarded by many and your post didn't age well. It happens.

[Ealyssa]

And sold like absolute garbage never appearing on any sales chart. Fucking Catherine outsold it ffs and that is a re-release of a niche ass game. She's not wrong.

Keep playing your FIFA and Fortnite if you feel better playing a game that sold a lot...

I'd rather play Control.

But I never understood that "It doesn't do well, I can't play that" sheep gamer mentality you're heralding.

[Video Games]

"I saw that video of the journalist playing Cuphead and now I think all Journalists are FAKE GAMERZ"

That's what you sound like right now. I'm sure that some journalists certainly fit that bill, but they are doubtless the minority. Regardless the game has been well regarded by many and your post didn't age well. It happens.

Or dozens of articles whining about how hard and ableist sekiro is and that one guy who bragged about having to cheat to beat it. Journos get nothing but mockery are opinions are worthless. Aged just fine

[Mirishka]

I loved Control, still playing it. Brilliant world-building, great writing (perfect mix of things explained, things left cryptic), and I love Jesse (the protagonist). I'm finished with the story but I've got a bunch of alerts and side quests to finish, and I'm hoping for another chance to run through the ashtray maze. Its awesome!

The combat didn't hook me at first, I admit, but once I unlocked more and more of her powers I fell in love with it. I went from avoiding fights whenever possible to going out of my way to FIND fights. Throwing things like forklifts at guys with telekinesis just feels incredible, and hovering over the battles only to come crashing down with some much force that you spiderweb the concrete is awesome.

Oh and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the graphics, which are absolutely next-level, at least on PC. I'm running the game on ultra with full ray-tracing and it is gorgeous. I wanted to post a ton of screenshots but they make this reply take forever to scroll.



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Keep playing your FIFA and Fortnite if you feel better playing a game that sold a lot...

I'd rather play Control.

But I never understood that "It doesn't do well, I can't play that" sheep gamer mentality you're heralding.

Indeed. Some of the best games I ever played were sleeper types that didn't sell well. I'll take those over the 'sells 10 million copies because of the brand alone' sports games and such.

And contrary to what some of the wannabe insiders in this topic think, Remedy is satisfied with Control's sales and discussed making the game on a relatively small budget for an AAA title. Word of mouth has been great, and sales picked up over the holidays (likely because of all the GOTY awards it has won).

So yeah, no, sorry but the game isn't bombing or failing or whatever.

[Tech614]

Keep playing your FIFA and Fortnite if you feel better playing a game that sold a lot...

I'd rather play Control.

But I never understood that "It doesn't do well, I can't play that" sheep gamer mentality you're heralding.

Weak strawman attempt.

It's not that it didn't sell well by FIFA standards(Fortnite doesn't actually sell copies of the game anymore btw since you seem to be struggling to grasp it's a f2p game).

It released in August and didn't even chart. Astral Chain charted while only being on a single platform and coming out on the same day. Catherine charted in Sep in a far more stacked month then August.

Control was a massive sales bomb, the world by and large gives no fucks about the game. Sorry if that keeps you up at night Remedy dev.

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Oh and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the graphics, which are absolutely next-level

Ugliest faces and facial animations known to man but next level graphics because it was the kid's first time seeing RTX enabled lol. Also save me the developer claiming they're happy with the sales, what are they supposed to say? "Our game was a bomb"? They aren't a publisher. You say "sales picked up due to word of mouth" and yet there is no evidence that actually happened other then your own baseless speculation because it never appeared on any sales chart.

[Mirishka]

Weak strawman attempt

*snipped remainder of useless post*

Aww poor thing, it gets so mad when it isn't right.

Imagine having so much time on your hands that you have to rage and whine and try to play the 'ACKCHEWALLY' card about a game's sales when the developer/publisher themselves state otherwise. Baseless speculation indeed.

Maybe time to get a hobby?

[Poppincaps]

Or dozens of articles whining about how hard and ableist sekiro is and that one guy who bragged about having to cheat to beat it. Journos get nothing but mockery are opinions are worthless. Aged just fine

That's.... such a problematic mindset to have... You're generalizing a group of people based on the actions or opinions of a few. Pretty bad logic.

[Video Games]

That's.... such a problematic mindset to have... You're generalizing a group of people based on the actions or opinions of a few. Pretty bad logic.

lol a few. I loved when, weirdly, oddly, all the major sites made gamers are over articles. Its like, they're all collaborating, or something and clearly hate the audience they're suppose to protect by being consumer advocates, but instead act all high and mighty while getting buddy-buddy with publishers.

[Strangebrew]

That's.... such a problematic mindset to have... You're generalizing a group of people based on the actions or opinions of a few. Pretty bad logic.

"of a few" lmao fuck off.

[Tech614]

So just looked it up Control has 18 "GOTY awards". 18 from critics and 0 from readers.

vs

Death Stranding 39 critics and 13 readers.

Sekiro 37 critics and 2 readers.

RE2 28 critics and 7 readers.

But tell me more about how a post didn't age well because some fake "woke" critics gave Control a GOTY because it had a female MC and semi high production values. How many of these people gave Qauntum Break a GOTY because the gameplay is almost identical? Probably 0. Dude tried to post like this game was flaming up the internet and winning all the awards when it literally has a fraction of the ones above and no awards granted by readers. The world didn't care about this game on release and they still don't.

[Poppincaps]

Damn you guys got really triggered by what I said. Have fun with that.