Control
Game Title: Control
Released: August 27, 2020
Game Length: 12 Hours
Grade: C+
Expectations: Yet another game that signed a year-long contract with Epic Games Store. Do you know how hard it is to find anything associated with this game using the Google search engine? That's alright, because now we get the "Ultimate Edition" with "The Foundation" and "AWE" expansions included. There is the "you must have purchased the content and completed the main campaign of Control" to access the expansions warning at the bottom, so I don't foresee it altering (pun intended) the main campaign much. The company Remedy Entertainment made it, and they worked on games like Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. I don't ever recall watching the Cinematic trailer, Playstation trailer, or even the Gameplay trailer. But whatever I did see a year ago made me think that the game would be "cool" enough to try without knowing whether it was going to be scary, weird, or interesting.
Reality: When it comes to world-building, the game is fantastic. As someone exploring a devastated supernatural-building full of mystical items like Warehouse 13, I will admit that they do everything right. The "Old House" feels like an actual building with various floors covered with offices naturally arranged for a large team of researchers. There are large pipes and corridors that are hanging all around that makes me believe they were specially placed by an expert builder. You can even enter bathrooms and swing open the doors to the stalls. The attention-to-detail by adding a large list of extracurricular activities through all of the various media collectibles is fantastic. I liked finding things that didn't contribute to the main story at all. Sitting down to read all the files and listen to the audio tapes might have been exhausting (to collect them all as well), but I enjoyed that level of world-building commitment.
Story: When it comes to the narrative, the game makes do. Some mysterious being breaks loose and ravages the main site of a bunch of scientists. A few things could have happened: you remembered to wear your protection suit allowing you to walk around, you got corrupted by an invading ghost-force to be used for nefarious purposes, or you wound-up floating high in the air chanting about random things. It is all text-book Paranormal 101 stuff. However, the protagonist of the story is some sort of "Chosen One" not only because she has some sort of metaphysical thing in her head from years ago helping her combat "The Hiss" (as she describes it) but she somehow suddenly becomes "The Director" of the building. This allows her - and only her - to interact with "Objects of Power" (aka OoPs) and gain their unique powers. I'd probably be more on board (pun intended) with all of this if she didn't act like a solid brick when it comes to... well everything. I'm not saying she needs to be vibrant like her counterpart. But a little more of a Ghostbusters reaction would go a long way.
Combat: The first question on everybody's mind is "when do I get to fly?" As you might have guessed, soaring through the air only comes when you have reached the fourth and final floor of the campaign. That doesn't mean the combat is dull. Your weapon and energy automatically reloads. It does this thing where if you run out of juice in one aspect, you switch over to the other. But the game does such a lousy job at balancing how much power one thing has over another. The only ways to upgrade your service weapon is using collected (tiered) material to add more slots and by collecting mods through missions. You would think this would mean that your gun would constantly be in tune with the enemy difficulty. Even set with 3 50% damage mods, it still takes a few shots to take down the simplest soldier for any weapon type. Forget trying to take down any armored ones without unloading a few clips. On the contrary, your "launch" ability is based on contributing skill points earned from completing objectives. After I had gained level 4 clearance, I realized that I could easily press a button to pull in objects and release to instantly kill enemies without bothering to aim. 250% launch damage only required 13 Trait Points.
Sadly, the game decided to make it nigh impossible to restore your health in the middle of battle without backtracking into previous areas. The only way to heal is to physically run into where an enemy dies, and that requires you to be an open-target for rockets, grenades, snipers, or kamikazes to name a few - all of which can kill you pretty instantly with the minuscule amount of health you have. There aren't even health packs in the shelter units! I tried stacking health, but I desperately needed a slot for boosted health recovery. And if losing 10% "source" when you die wasn't bad enough, the insane amount of load time to reset the game is perhaps the biggest sin of them all. If at any time I wanted to fast travel or respawn my character, it would take on average 90 seconds to 3 minutes of waiting for the game to load. A few corner spots might have taken 20 seconds, but why does it seem like the main Executive Office takes the longest time to load? I thought it might had something to do with my computer specs, but the problem that they were supposedly working on just keeps coming up.
Gameplay: The biggest drawback of the game has to be from its gameplay. I know they included giant signs in the landscape and an overhead map (which almost didn't happen) that you can use while moving, but I still got lost multiple times. I somehow managed to find my way into an area I wasn't prepared for on three separate occasions. I got so used to doors automatically opening for me when I got close to them for the first few hours of gameplay, that I'd turn around whenever I heard an error noise from a door requiring higher clearance. How was I supposed to know to hold the X button to swipe my clearance badge through a security checkpoint, changing the red light on the door to green? No wonder I had a hard time getting into Black Rock Processing and the Black Rock Quarry.
I liked the concept of the puzzles in the game, but they were so counter-intuitive... or should I say not gamer-friendly. For example, the Oceanview Motel requires you to ring the bell to open the doors. It sounds simple enough, but my first encounter with the oddball location didn't go too well. Seeing how you can't hear or see the doors move while facing the counter, you would have never known that was the "key" to the puzzle. I somehow managed to ring the bell exactly four times wondering what it did, causing the puzzle to rotate back to its original position. I actually left the motel thinking I needed to do something else first. Don't get me started on the punch cards.
Of course, we just have to talk about those side missions too. It would have been very nice if they provided side-missions on your way to an objective, like What a Mess: Burn the Trash, or offered them as part of a main objective like Old Growth. Even stumbling into AWEs like The Mirror would be an awesome way to reward active exploration. But no, they just had lock certain areas off of the game until you received the quest after you were done exploring the building. That way you have to revisit The Maintenance Sector to kill off 6 guys, find all those AWEs in multiple areas, and complete all the Janitor jobs listed on the board. I don't know about you, but revisiting areas to find some obscure spot for that one last thing you need on your list isn't exactly my type of fun. At least they marked the areas you have to go to on your map. As for the Emergency Board mission popping up every 20 minutes and the auxiliary board countermeasures, they were both extremely annoying and completely unnecessary. As for the Expedition Update released of December 2019, the Jukebox was merely a nice distraction away from the main game.
Secrets: What continues to surprise me is the amount of "unmarked" activities you could find in your playthrough. Did you ever run across a weird television set showcasing an interesting flame? Find all 6 of them in the Maintenance Sector and burn them in the Furnace Chamber for Eternal Fire Weapon Mod that adds an extra bullet to your chamber every time you hit an enemy. Did you ever get the Golden Suit by adjusting the amount of luck in the Luck & Probability Room? Come to find out, there are a ton of little secrets that aren't directly pointed out when completing the main objectives.
Then there are all those hidden locations. I hated trying to find that last walking mold monster that somehow climbed up a wall without breaking the glass to an enclosed office or leaving a trail on the ground for 30 minutes, but at least I got to discover a "hidden location" in the process. Most of these cubicles will only net you some crafting material or a random mod. However, a sheer number of them will provide you with an additional skill point.
References: However, Remedy Entertainment went above and beyond squeezing every single reference they could to their previous games. They grabbed old voice actors like Max Payne for Director Trench or Alan Wake as Dr. Casper Darling. There is that weird Dr. Yoshimi Tokui's Guided Imagery Experience for Playstation 4 owners. As someone who has never played Alan Wake, I grew kind of tired how many Easter Eggs there were explicitly tied to that one case. The one time I see a whiteboard that randomly talks about a shoebox, and that too was only added for the amusement of Alan Wake fans. Though, I guess I personally liked how the case at the American Embassy in Cuba mirrored an actual real life event.
Ending: Going through The Old House was certainly a trip. But I would be remiss if I didn't pay my respects to every awesome event that happens after finding out about your brother. First off, Ahti's Performance was awesome as he talks like a Finnish God in every cutscene. Then there is that moment where he hands you his Walkman and you listen to Old Gods of Asgard while going on a power trip through the Ashtray Maze. Then there is the fake credits and menial job you get as you lose your mind. Oh and that ludicrously off-the-wall Casper Darling music video in the motel room. I might have gone a little crazy after completing all those side-missions, but what happens in those last few hours when you finally figure out the cause behind the current situation definitely added a few extra brownie points in my book.
DLC - The Foundation: I hope you brought your reading glasses, because there are a ton of documents to glance through. What the DLC does right is expound your knowledge a little regarding The Old House and The Board. There's also a fun little scavenger hunt for cat figures that will reward Jesse with cat ears. You will unlock two abilities exclusive to the area - the ability to destroy crystals and the ability to extend them. Otherwise, I didn't really enjoy this add-on as much as I thought I would. I had an excruciating long time going through the Astral Plane like some sort of tutorial out of Assassin's Creed and I almost rage quit on the most difficult final boss before realizing I could hide in the opened area like a rat with a loaded shotgun. Exploring the areas around the red sand, navigating around the warehouse, flying around the extremely tall hollowed out stone, and checking out the secret lab in the basement all ended up being disappointingly lackluster. Oh wait! I almost completely forgot about that unexpected random encounter with an AWE on The Swift Platform. Now that might have been the only thing worthwhile in this DLC.
DLC - AWE: I thought this little extension to the game would have been a more pleasant experience. But no, they had to make me completely paranoid by adding some sort of night monster that could be best described as a hybrid of the Boogeyman and Slenderman. Not only that, but again they decided to make it some sort of love letter to Alan Wake fans by adding <Redacted> all while hearing the man himself work on his typewriter one finger press at a time. They finally resolved that age-old mystery of the hidden song lyrics by adding a new room with the Personal Mod: Aerobics. There's also a fun little activity regarding an AWE that copies Vending Machines. They added a couple of Shum Arcades that allow you to either face-off with several waves of enemies or revisit all those optional bosses including the Ashtray Maze (or not if it took you 20 tries the first time around). You also now have access to a new Service Weapon Mode "Surge" that acts like a sticky grenade-launcher. No, actually I was terrified for my life most of the time as you continue turning off the power to the only light sources you have and plugging them into the main generators. Stupid thing! Try carrying power cores and tiny lights around to attack the darkness without the ability to run and see how long it takes before you start screaming when he suddenly appears right in front of you.
Miscellaneous Notes: There are a few extra things I'd like to include down here. One thing that kind of bothered me was the lack of "weight" in certain items. Forklifts and vending machines definitely felt immovable, but tables and desks just sort of bounced around like any other ordinary object. There was a time I had a push-cart hanging between the front and back of my body. I carried that thing, with absolutely no resistance, down the hallway and through another room. I originally felt the lack of dialogue trees actually made the game a bit too linear, but it definitely made a much smoother experience in the end without stressing over how to respond to every situation. I agree that the main campaign would probably take you around the estimated 12 hours, but you could probably double that amount when considering how many times you will be wandering around lost, checking websites for help, back-tracking for side-missions, and reading all of the little collectibles. Add to that both the DLCs, and you are looking at around 30 Hours of Gameplay. The whole trip was definitely a unique experience that I would recommend to anyone who has played any of Remedy Entertainment previous games. Otherwise, I found the game frustrating in far too many aspects to have a thorough, enjoyable adventure.
11-26-2020