CONTROL

[henke]

I am IN CONTROL, that is, I'm playing it, and I wanna rave about it, but first let me do the opposite of rave about it, which is to whine about it.

Which of Control's BAD VERSIONS should you buy?

Sad to report that the performance on PS4 is not great. First thing I did in the game was run up and admire a painting, only to be greeted with a pixelated mess of a texture when I got to it. Waited for 3-4 seconds and a more high-res version loaded in. Walked a bit down the hall and looked at a second painting, same thing. In heavy combat scenarios it usually turns into a LAGFEAST when lots of physics stuff is flying around and exploding. You could buy it on PC, sure, but you'll have to deal with the Epic Store. Honestly, if you wanna wait a few months for a sale/Steam-version/patches, I wouldn't blame you. Maybe it runs fine on PS4Pro or XBone tho, dunno.

HOWEVERRRRRRRR

Despite all that, I am truly engrossed by this game. It is a very strange and striking thing. The mystery is intriguing, the combat gameplay is awesome, and the visuals are bold and beautiful. In fact the game is so commited to being bold and beautiful that it actually stars an actress from The Bold and The Beautiful! In some ways the game feels very familiar (upgrades, loot containers, collectibles), but it also has enough personality to still feel fresh most of the time.

Anyone else playing it already? I'm at the bit where I'm about to meet Marshall.

[EvaUnit02]

I've heard Remedy have branched out and made a less story heavy, linear game. How successful has it been in your opinion?

In fact the game is so commited to being bold and beautiful that it actually stars an actress from The Bold and The Beautiful!

She played the main supporting character in Quantum Break as well, Beth Wilder.

The poor optimisation across ALL versions is a great argument for avoiding games at AAA launch. Quantum Break is on the same engine as this and that had similar poor optimisation upon release. I played the Steam version on current gen Nvidia hardware (RTX 2060) and it performed beautifully, so waiting on that game paid off.

[Sulphur]

Courtney was the best part of Quantum Break IMO - her Beth Wilder was just immediately likeable and charismatic from the off, in spite of all the weird shit going on around her. Control stars her because it's obvious Remedy felt the same way, and I'm kinda ecstatic about it.

I've just spooled it up, and it's pretty much classic Remedy in that it's weird, then gets weirder, and things keep getting shot up, exploded, or straight-up destroyed in the exhales between the weird. The destruction and physics at play are everything Max Payne 2 promised us a decade and a half ago. That fully realised vision is now - finally - upon us.

[henke]

Yeah, from what little I played of Quantum Break I did like her character as well.

I've heard Remedy have branched out and made a less story heavy, linear game. How successful has it been in your opinion?

It's certainly less linear. It's more of a metroidvania, with plenty of sidequests and backtracking.

[henke]

Man Jesus Christ fuck these checkpoints. I don’t mind replaying a boss fight ten times in a row, what I do mind is the minute-long load screen, followed by the minute-long jog back to the bossfight every time I die. Especially considering the main reason I gotta sit through the loadscreen is that the game needs to load in the other part of the level that’s 1 min away from the bossfight. The designers could’ve killed 2 annoying fucking birds with one stone here, but for some god damn reason they went with this design instead.

[henke]

Despite that tho, I am still engrossed by the game, spent probably 5 hours with it just today.

I wrote earlier that it's a metroidvania, but the more I play I wanna say it's specifically a Batman Arkham Asylum-alike. Except you're a Jedi. With a gun. And there's tons of SCP-esque creepypasta lore and I need to read ALL of it.

[Sulphur]

With less bat-biffing and a hell of a lot more levitating nearby objects and rocketing them towards enemies whose bodies explode into plumes of spectral iridescence. I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of holding a button, releasing it, and being rewarded with showers of sparks, concrete, and broken glass. If I find a hall filled with desks and chairs, you bet I'm gonna send a nearby globe ploughing through them just to watch the destruction and sheer physics mayhem unfold in its wake. It's all very pleasing. Things explode pleasingly. Just levitating something before launching it is pleasing, because it wobbles and floats like it's tethered to you by an invisible rope.

And that's because what's really grand isn't the story, it's the details. It's the big details, with the brutalist architecture, the stark reds and yellows bathing entire rooms and sections of tumbled geometry, vast halls of granite slicing upward and downward or dividing everything at eyeline in perpendicular strips; it's the small details, like how shooting a louvered window results in a single slat shredding itself to wood chips, or say you're levitating a fire extinguisher, which picks up a few stray books in its orbit along with little floating chunks of concrete, like it's collecting the most ordinary satellites known to man. And it's the background lore, which is entertaining (and very SCP-inspired), and more entertaining than the main story.

In short: I'm having fun, but not for the usual reasons in a Remedy game. I can take or leave the story at this point, five hours in, but the telekinetically charged combat and collectible side-details are what really keep me going right now.

[Shadowcat]

"SCP" in this context being...?

[Pyrian]

"SCP" in this context being...?

This: http://www.scp-wiki.net/

It's a weird shared universe fiction thing about an agency called SCP "Secure, Control, Protect" dedicated to studying bizarre phenomena.

[henke]

I haven't read much SCP but I found at least one instance where I recognized elements of one of their stories lifted directly into Control. One of the later missions features an object that someone has to look at all the time, or it turns violent. I've also found some other pretty cool stuff but I don't wanna spoil anything this early after release.

[Pyrian]

Pretty sure that was itself SCP's take on Dr. Who's Weeping Angels.

[Thirith]

Those of you who are playing it: would you say it's worth paying full price for the game?

[Sulphur]

Depends on what you're looking for, honestly. If I take a step back and view it holistically, it's still a very stylish game full of some great graphical tech and entertaining in the moment. However, it's repetitive and there's not really depth in the gameplay or narrative. It's weird in a good way, and the lore really is fun, but its lack of character hooks like the pathos of a Max Payne (from what I've played so far) means that the Lynchian overtones/cinematography are more or less style over substance. You won't really be playing it with the urge to know what happens next.

Having said that, if you think a game's done its job by its commitment to being entertaining , then Control delivers on that front.

[Thirith]

Cheers. Every now and then there are games where I enjoy playing it at the same time as other people I know, but from what you've written I think this isn't one of those games. I'll happily wait until Christmas or so to see how the price develops.

[henke]

Too soon to say until I've finished it, but I think it might be my GOTY so far.

Yeah on the storyside it's no Max Payne. But it is pulling me in more than Quantum Break or even Alan Wake did.

[Thirith]

Alan Wake didn't do anything for me. The Twin Peaks pastiche was shallow as a puddle, the story, characters and writing altogether was aiming for Stephen King but didn't even measure up to his more mediocre work, and as a game it just felt so damn flimsy. The production values were nice enough, but there was nothing there that could ground them.

Unsurprisingly, the thing that's appealing to me most is the location. The Oldest House does look pretty damn cool, though at the same time the screenshots and videos I've seen also make me think that it might get rather samey.

[Sulphur]

I think there's a nice amount of variety in the design and architecture of the place, with more than a few surprises, so that's not going to be as big an issue as it seems. There is, however, a fair bit of backtracking and criss-crossing if you're a compulsive collectible collector (the metroidvania angle means you have places you can't go to in the beginning, and many of these have bits of lore or materials), and that might grate after a while. I love the lighting, architecture, and material design enough not to be bored by backtracking, but YMMV. There's fast travel and a central elevator to each floor that help alleviate travelling tedium, at any rate.

[henke]

Ok I finished it.

Uhhh yeah. To recap my likes/dislikes about it:

PROS:
-very engrossing in a Arkham Asylum kinda way.
-it looks gorgeous.
-I read pretty much all the readables and lore, which practically never happens.
-combat is awesome. You really feel like a Jedi with a gun.
-game sets up mysteries and gets you hooked very easily.

CONS:
-bad performance on PS4. Epic Store exclusivity on PC.
-checkpointing is often very cruel and infuriating.
-combat is often so chaotic that you don't really feel in control, further aggravating the death-load-checkpoint-retry loop and sending me in a SPIRAL OF ANGER.
-game doesn't pay it all off all the big mysteries in a very pleasing way in the end.

Overall: it's a good one. My second fave game of 2019 after Void Bastards.

[icemann]

Man VB's was a major disappointment in the end. Good fun for a short while.

[henke]

Performance patch for PS4 came out yesterday, and it has indeed improved performance. Here's some gameplay I just captured:



The Archive (3:30 in the vid) is still pretty laggy tho, once that glitch-monster gets going.

I've wrapped up all the sidequests, and leveled Jesse up as far as she goes! Might still be a secret or two to uncover, but I think I'm done with the game for now. Might get back to it once the DLCs start coming out.

[henke]

PHOTOMODE TIME!











Yeah so I picked up the Season Pass and played through the first big DLC. The Foundation is set far below the Oldest House and its levels are made up of mostly cave systems and minimalist Astral Plane voids n cubes, giving it kinda a cheap feel tbh. The story isn't terribly interesting. Just like in the main game I found the readables on the side more interesting than the main plot. The combat is the real star of the show, of course, and it's as fun as ever. Great to be flying around and doing cool Jedi shit again. I do hope the next DLC, focused on Alan Wake, will be more engaging story-wise.

[Sulphur]

Altered World Event or ALAN WAKE EXPANSION!?

Yeah yeah - Wake, Alan, etc. I have an irrational hatred for his smarmy countenance, and here we go, he looks like a bearded Gyllenhaal for some reason. Fortunately, it looks like he's trapped in Control's motel performing some abstract version of Misery with it.

But: fuck off, Alan. Unfortunately, I guess Jesse will have to extract him. Maybe he'll shine a light on what's happening? Or will he just darken our doorways? Who knows, who cares, it's more Control, and it's a good game, so I'll play it. Bring it on.

But seriously: fuck off, Alan.

[Renzatic]

Why u no liek Alan Wake? Was good game. Had many woods.

[Sulphur]

I liked the woods. I know it probably reminds you of home, but my beef is with Alan and the rest of the game. The metatextual stuff wasn't even interesting, it was just... inane. A sort of Lynchian spin on In the Mouth of Madness's premise, yeah? I was hoping for something meaty and compelling, but the game's story was mostly about a master egotist being a douchenozzle throughout the game, which isn't my jam. The light/dark stuff wasn't scary for something purporting to be kinda hororr-action-y, and the dynamic of flashbulbing then shootening was fine in concept, but the execution was not fun.

They managed to correct all of that with American Nightmare, though. That was great.

[Thirith]

I would most definitely not be opposed to an Alan Wake Without Alan Wake version.