Control Freakery
Sue me or whatever, but roundabouts March I lost touch with playing a certain brand of action adventure game. All the talk of ‘swarms’ in a title like Gears V, all-round talk of biological apocalypse in any given Resident Evil, just hit a little too close to home. I am still swearing, every month-end, that some random Thursday evening will mark the occasion I close my eyes and click ‘buy’ on Doom Eternal: a heavy metal, blood-&-guts smorgasbord whose righteous carnage once represented the deepest and darkest recesses of my soul.
On just such an opportunity, pressed for PayPal dollars, I figured Control (Remedy Games) teased a worthwhile investment. A federal bureau tasked with investigating paranormal activity has had its building infiltrated and infected by an alien scourge. You are Jessie Faden, a young lady with a personal investment in learning what the hell’s going on here: her brother is dead or missing, or maybe even hosting extraterrestrial company if you catch my drift. Perhaps in spite of considerable load times, in between deaths and level transitions, Control drops you bang in the middle of its (at first) cold and administrative environment. The building is deserted save for a few maintenance workers, one or two helpful managers, and a diverse bunch of intergalactic gargoyles. The dull colour palette isn’t all that inspiring, and the game engine is sometimes at the mercy of sudden pauses and urgent jerks, especially mid-combat. But Control deftly weaves its (pardon) controller tutorial into the process of unfurling the world inside this building. Fairly quickly, the scene isn’t half as claustrophobic as you’d presumed.
I don’t know whether to be thankful or critical of how little Control’s story matters to its gameplay sequences - you drift from cubicle to cubicle, floor to floor, picking up classified files with no real bearing on acquiring skills or unlocking cordoned-off areas. I can’t verbalize the sheer joy of learning to launch objects in the air at reasonably clueless enemies, and the sweet reward of sharp-shooting at fools with jazzed-up weaponry. Even this may not be Control’s central charm. The game sets an eerie tone with its spectral vibrations, some of which distort the musings of Bureau officers who no longer take their meals in the cafeteria. Jessie occasionally exits the material plane for a dimension made of floating Legos, or accesses and explores a motel by way of ringing landlines. These not-subtle-at-all detours from an established path lend Control a vile dreaminess, which you (of course) must crash back down to earth by shooting hella guns and flinging stuff across emptied departments. I see from being the quality of man that occasionally relies on walkthroughs to make progress (I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU KIDS THINK) that you will eventually learn to levitate; but my God. What shelves and drawers and desks you’ll toss across space, just for how easy it is to do so.
I still have little beefs with this software. That enemies are granted so many respawns after they’re vanquished discourages one from really exploring the game’s hidden quarters, especially if it takes entire ass minutes to reload proceedings when they pop you. It’s also a little weird that whole ass missions often launch within whole ass missions, threatening distraction from objectives you’ve already set yourself in alternate spaces.
With a next-gen edition announced on the quite glorious occasion of Sony’s PS5 reveal, these are minor (even foolish) quibbles. Control’s got everything you’d brainstorm into a video game if you were high enough - laser-guns, mind control, flying - and makes it all work incredibly smoothly.
Control is available for purchase on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
