Our drive for knowledge and understanding stands as one of our greatest features but throughout history there were many examples where this thirst led to chaos and in extreme cases - death. Take the whole "explorers era" which saw imperialism and colonialism spread across both the Old and the New World or the atrocities committed by the conquistadors during the 16th century and compare that with all the contributions scientists, writers and philosophers have given our species throughout the years.
On a less extreme scale we reach the more nuanced things like forbidden books or practices which certain religions practiced very often and some examples, like the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, endured for centuries.
Continuing with the religious theme, magic was also among the many forbidden fruits the Church prohibited and I don't need to tell you how that panned out with the likes of Aleister Crowley appearing down the line and being very influential for their respective areas as well as music, in Crowley's case that is.
By now you may be wondering where I am going with this and I am very glad you (presumably) asked yourself that because this brings us to today, an era of willful ignorance and dare I say arrogance. Spoiled by the insane amount of free, always available information, one would think that would hinder that thirst for knowledge but of course that is not the case because there are seemingly no limits in creativity. The allegedly fictional SCP Foundation is a great example of this because of its constantly growing and highly collaborative nature. For the uninitiated, the Secure Contain Protect Foundation is a collection of tales, files, texts and everything in between documenting the so called SPC's which are things that break the known natural laws.
This is done online of course and the trick is that virtually anyone can contribute by adding their own stories, accounts, or even experiences dramatic string sounds. The whole community is very dedicated, creative and I'll list you some creators down below if you're interested. Now, what makes the SCP gang special is the influence they had over YouTube and the indie gaming industry.
If you were a part of the "Let's play" era of YouTube where people like Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye and thousands of other character vacuums came to prominence, you'll remember a little game called, you guessed it, SCP - Containment Breach. And if you've seen those iconic clickbait fiestas where YouTubers scream excessively during a jumpscare, you've probably seen this lovely peanut.
Everyone meet SCP-173, an Euclid class powerhouse whose main gist is you keeping eye contact with it because if you don't (notice the blinking meter in the left bottom corner), 173 will go full Weeping Angels mode on you but do extra step which includes instantly snapping your neck. Very stressful to deal with which is why doors are a blessing. Anyhow, 173 is without a doubt the most popular SCP but it was the sheer variety of potential SCP's that kept the community going to this very day.
Things range from monsters like Peanut Man here to: a rubber duck, plague doctor, Ronald Reagan tape, endless staircase, the list is truly massive and just as diverse.
So with all this hype, a TV show or a larger-scale game would look like a given right? Well, unfortunately, copyright licenses are a nightmare and I would rather have this bustling community than some shitty Netflix show after it bought the IP.
Game-wise you have Containment Breach and Secret Laboratory, both are free Unity-made horror games and both are effective and enjoyable in their own right but the notion of a big budget SCP-based or inspired game sounds like such an amazing idea and Finnish legends Remedy Entertainment saw the opportunity and made Control, a game I'll thoroughly analyze today.
For the uninitiated, Remedy are most known for the Max Payne series and Alan Wake, both of which revolutionized modern gaming in very different ways. Where Max Payne focused on highly stylized and flashy shooting alongside a very neo-noir storyline, Alan Wake was all about that atmosphere and episodic story featuring numerous twists and surreal moments akin to Steven King or David Lynch. Granted, I haven't had the opportunity to play these gems but after finishing Control, you can be sure I'll get through them eventually and when I do, you'll know.
Now after these two, Remedy started focusing on creating their own engine that will match their unique approach to games and cinematic aspirations and they have done exactly that with Northlight Engine which specializes in creating the most realistic-looking lighting effects, mass scale destruction, superb sound and excellent digital doubles, all of which was showcased in Quantum Break to mixed results as the game was half-game and half TV show, a bold move and something very-Remedy like but they learned their lesson and this is why I believe they changed their approach for Control. Maybe the word "reverted" is a better fit seeing how Control revolves around action packed third person shooting along the lines of Max Payne but also combining that with all the new technology they developed as well as the insane story which I'll set the stage for right now.
In true Remedy fashion, Control wastes no time in setting the tone with you playing as Jesse Faden, an unusual woman on a journey to find her brother that was kidnapped when you were kids and during a very peculiar event that took place in your home town of Ordinary. You find yourself in New York and enter the FBC which stands for Federal Bureau of Control. As with many government buildings, it's not particularly eye catching, in fact it's a grey, generic Brutalist skyscraper but as soon as you get past the lobby, you start noticing things are a bit off but you press on.
As you start moving through corridors and empty offices, Jesse is doing a lot of exposition through inner monologues but they're framed in a way like she's communicating with someone and as it turns out, she is. Ever since that event in Ordinary, Jesse had this voice in her head that guided her and acted as a support during her many days spent at therapy and psychiatry care. You see, what happened in Ordinary was anything but that, it was a disaster with almost the whole town disappearing, seemingly from thin air but interestingly, the kids were untouched until the government came and start taking them, one of them being Dylan, Jesse's younger brother but she manages to escape and from that point on, she was alone with only this voice helping her.
No one believed her stories and this is why she was often times evaluated psychologically, after all, the story of an entire town vanishing sounds insane enough, especially after the government saying how Ordinary had an industrial accident. As you can probably guess, this is not true and it was the FBC that said this as well as taking Jesse's brother.
Of course you're not privy to all that information from the get go, rather you discover it as you go through the game and let me tell you, you are absolutely not prepared for the wormhole that opens. Narratively speaking, I would say the reliance on inner monologues and expositions are a very tired trope and one Remedy has trouble separating themselves from and I found myself rolling my eyes on multiple occasions during the game's beginnings but luckily, the writing improves and the intrigue sets in when you enter the Director's office and see this.
Being Finnish, Remedy never shied away from dark subjects, on the contrary, they always embraced them so witnessing this really grabbed my attention, especially after you take the gun which the man shot himself mere moments ago. As you pick it up, you notice it moving a bit and you start hearing voices, different ones, voices from the man who lies dead by your feet and others more unsettling ones. As it turns out, the dead man was FBC's former Director Zachariah Trench and when grabbing the gun you inadvertently become his successor but knowing what the Bureau did to your family, you despise this role but you have no time for that because you start hearing other, much more disturbing noises and here's where you're introduced to the shooting mechanics and main enemy type you'll be facing. The reason why things have been so quiet, apart from one very strange Finnish janitor Ahti, is the Hiss which is an alien vibration that infects living beings and assimilates them into its fold and yes it's absolutely hostile. Each agent of the FBC that is infected with the Hiss mutates and as the severity of the infection increases, the subjects start looking less and less human.
As for the gun, it's actually a living thing which can change its form on the go and automatically recharge a limited amount of ammo, all of which can be edited with the game's customization system. You have to be careful though because changing modes does not replenish your ammo so you'll need to form a strategy or wing it because the game is no pushover, in fact Control is quite hard and you will be dying a lot if you're not an FPS player which I am absolutely not. There are some instances of bullshit but more on that later because look at this!
See those people seemingly hanging mid-air? Those are the agents affected by the Hiss but ones who did not survive the transformation. Harrowing but beautiful stuff, especially when combined with the architecture of the Oldest House you'll be exploring. For a 30-ish hour game, one building does not seem like a clever idea and you would be right but this is no ordinary building, this is the Oldest House. To translate this, the building is alive, always shifting, to the point the FBC agents are trained to be prepared for these shifts as they're often times deadly and always unpredictable, like earthquakes.
Which brings me to another extremely important aspect of Control, the background story. By this I am referring to all those files, faxes and letters you'll be coming across and there is a very good reason why the FBC are relying on paper instead of the internet or modern tech like smartphones. Being a living entity, the Oldest House has a "will" of its own and let me tell you, it's not a fan of some things which includes modern tech and the internet which is why you're banned from using them after you pass the lobby and this is one of the many clever instances of flavorful writing that translates to the gameplay as well as the universe's internal logic and I am not kidding when I say universe.
There are 262 collectibles scattered across the Oldest House and you can easily access them at any point when playing the game and I highly recommend you do because they contain some of the coolest things I've seen in any game ever. They can be extremely funny, unsettling or clever and each one is worth finding, some more than others of course but because of the way they're thought out, the Oldest House feels like a lived-in place and the universe much more fleshed out.
The SCP influence really shines through here, especially with the case files such as this one here which talks about "your gun". I LOVE the amount of thought that went into all of this. The acquisition date, ID, redacted words, the tone, everything has so much flavor and the game never treats you like a moron, instead it nudges you to embrace your curiosity and start connecting things which directly correlate to the redacted words. By the end of the game, you'll be able to easily tell what most redacted segments represent and that my peeps, is really fucking good writing and confidence in the player which is something many AAA publishers tend to forget.
I can't name any game other than Control where I found myself spending minutes upon minutes upon minutes reading and trying to piece this huge puzzle together while throwing around theories in my head. I even have some favorites like the book club series of notes where you read reviews from differing agents regarding a fictional book called "Unless You" and there is a theory that it's another Altered Item which I'll go through in just a bit. I told you this will be thorough!
Anyhow, every agent reviewed a book in a different way and in this small batch of texts you kinda get the idea of what kind of people they were. On the opposite side of the spectrum you have Dead Letters, unsettling, uncoherent and sometimes hilarious messes that resemble word salads which schizophrenia patients often times have.
An in-game example of this is the "Foot Gossip" letter:
Hello,
My feet gossip at night and now I have to wear shoes to bed.
Sincerely,
Me.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves because I haven't even touched upon the AWE's, Objects Of Power, Altered Items, the astral plane and all the insane stuff that goes on in The Oldest House. Let's start with Objects Of Power seeing as they are the rarest and most powerful. In the world of Control, anything that breaks our laws of physics and nature is called paranatural and these Objects do that in the most volatile ways and it takes only the strongest parautilitarians to subdue them which Jesse Faden is and the game does not shy away it. Simply put, you're a god that can levitate, dash and use telekinesis to make a shield or fire out objects, pieces of a wall or floor and even the Hiss when you get strong enough.
So many shooters of today feature "normal" people that do some very abnormal stuff like surviving insane falls, having infinite stamina, regenerate and all the other "gamey" stuff. But even with all that these writers never embrace their superiority, rather they play it off like it's normal but not Control.
Control plays into that power fantasy and revels in it. It harkens back to days of Prototype and Infamous that were all the rage in the late 2000's/early 2010's and it's honestly very refreshing to see a new game take this route but have all the quality of life improvements of the new generation. Now back to the Items at hand.
I mentioned OOP so think of Altered Items as their less impactful and more stable counterparts and Altered World Events (AWE) as big parautilitarian events that the FBC had to cover up, much like the SCP or the Men In Black do in their respective universes. Ordinary is one of the biggest AWE's to date and seeing how much I am already spoiling things, I won't go there, instead I'll mention The Board who play a very important role in the Oldest House.
No one quite knows who or what The Board are but they seem to be extremely powerful as they have a direct connection to the astral plane which you visit sometimes. They also only communicate with the Director, or in other words - you. Their speech is seemingly random as they often times struggle phrasing sentences coherently and leave things very open to interpretation which can be due to the fact they're alien. They're never shown as well, directly at least because every time you receive their message a huge black inverted pyramid appears and the potential symbolism behind it is just another instance of superb world building.
And now I wish to turn your attention to another great aspect of Control - the usage of live action acting. Unlike Quantum Break which had clearly animated and clearly acted segments, Control meshes the two and at times so well that I wasn't sure what was what. This is cool enough on its own but Remedy go a step further by implementing acted snippets of let's say Director Trench talking while you're walking down a corridor. It looks like it's getting projected from somewhere except there is no beam, very impressive stuff. My favorite performance out of all the characters here has to be Matthew Porretta's. He plays a role of dr. Casper Darling, the Head of Research and while you never actually see him in the flesh, you see plenty of his educational videos that are scattered across the Old House and they range from cheesy to down right disturbing. Absolutely loved the inclusion of things such as these, it was a risk but it payed off in a huge way for me and added even more character to an already very unique game.
Let's stop the praise train for a minute and talk what I didn't like and there are a few key things. Let's start with the performance, it's not good. It's important to note that I played the "Ultimate Edition" on my PS4 and while I am aware of technology Remedy utilized, most notably raytracing, I am of an opinion that they should've worked more on optimization rather than trying to translate that tech partially because I was getting frame drops very often and seeing how the PS4 is capped at 30 fps, that's not good. Loading times were also abhorrent but the worst offender for me was the pause screen. You see, each time I wanted to access photo mode, or, you know, pause the game, I would always get insane drops when coming back to the game from those screens, to a point where everything would freeze for a few seconds before coughing its way up to 30 fps. This ALWAYS happened and it's firstly very annoying, time consuming but most importantly unacceptable because the game has been out for more than one and a half year and they still haven't fixed it. I also had the game crash two times during key altercations so that was great as well but yeah, these performance issues really affected my immersion at times.
Another big issue Control has is lack of balance. Simply put, telekinesis is grossly overpowered, to a point where my gun felt like an accessory instead of it being my main tool for dispatching the Hiss. To add insult to injury, some forms of the gun are straight up not good and require very specific upgrades to make them viable. Of course that did not stop me from experimenting with playstyles which I highly recommend you do in every game but sometimes, Control got really hard, seemingly out of nowhere, especially on one very specific boss fight and the worst part is that the boss wasn't the most difficult part about it, the extra mobs were. Add that with no difficulty slider and you get very sad game "journalists" but I would've honestly loved if they implemented that because I am sure people breezed through this like it's nothing and some struggled for many, many weeks.
Regardless, the game is still quite fun with rock solid gunplay, nice movement and very flashy action which utilizes the Northlight engine and its destructibility and lighting features superbly.
The upgrade system is also disappointing because how generic they are. Dash, levitating, a shield, a slam, we've all seen these things in hundreds of games before and since Control is very unique, I expected something more exciting and daring
From a level design perspective though, Control is excellent, taking notes from platformers, action games and yes, even Dark Souls by the virtue of connecting everything in a very satisfying way but there is a slight issue here as well - the map. It's not good, actually its design is sound but the overlay and transparency is absolutely not. I pride myself on having good spatial awareness and efficiently making a map in my head but I found myself getting lost quite a bit due to my reliance on said map. My mistake but if you're gonna add the map as a feature, make it more intuitive. Luckily, there are signs through out the Oldest House and as soon as you get to used to your surroundings, start relying on them because they often times proved more useful than the map.
That said, let's get back on the praise train because holy shit the architecture of this game is stunning. Because of its brutalist base, the Old House feels alien and cold, sturdy and imposing, very fitting for the organization that resides within it. Now, I am no expert in architecture, or anything for that matter, but apart from brutalism, I noticed a much different approach when it comes to office spaces and decorations. Think 60's, Twin Peaks and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange clashing but never reaching a resolution. Organic architecture in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright also makes an appearance in Darling's Research sector where greenery and cold concrete intertwine in stunning fashion.
Things get even more insane the deeper you go with straight up open spaces somehow existing and the Bureau just accepting that fact and building a, for example, quarry like on the picture below.
I could go on but seeing as there are better people for the job, take a look at this and especially this which covers all the architectural things in a really great way.
Moving on, we finally reach music and sound design and those are another huge strengths of the game, especially the design. Despite it not being a horror game, the fear of the unknown, oppressive atmosphere and everything else I mentioned story-wise, Control can be very scary and immensely tense and rarely do you feel any alleviation or respite, save for the Central Office which acts as a hub for your operations.
The music plays into that sense of anxiety perfectly with a heavy electronic, at times even dark ambient soundtrack with occasional bursts of noise and industrial that accentuate the alien environments even further.
However, you won't be taking this journey alone, accompanying you is a quirky cast of characters, some being far more interesting than others, the most notable one being the janitor Ahti. His mocap performance and digital double are the best in the game and the reason why I am mentioning this are the others except Jesse... sometimes. It's odd seeing every pore on Ahti's face and then seeing Emily Pope's static, unnatural facial movements, it's really apparent and another slightly off thing about this game.
It's far from Mass Effect: Andromeda levels of bad, on the contrary, it's good but still noticeable during some key moments.
Jesus Christ I just saw the word comment on this thing and I am starting to seriously doubt if anyone's gonna go through all this hahaha. No wonder YouTube essays are so popular and why I am definitely not gonna make them in the future... anyhow, I won't let that stop me because we're almost at the finish line, just a few more things I need to mention. Carl Jung. He alongside Sigmund Freud stands as one of the most famous names in psychology and his views on the paranormal, synchronicity and collective unconscious served as a basis for some of the terms and events you'll be experiencing and the way Remedy "expanded" this is very impressive indeed and stimulated my curiosity even further. Trust me when I say, there's a lot of "heady" stuff in Control but it's never here for the sake of it, it all serves a greater purpose in the universe and to stimulate your brain to think about things that are in my opinion very interesting. Astral projection, astral dives, the astral plane, all of this gets multiple moments to shine and expand the glorious universe Remedy have created here.
And I have some really good news for Alan Wake fans because with the arrival of Control's second DLC AWE which sees us explore the Darkness Wake combated, Remedy pretty much confirmed how all of their main games take place in the same universe and I honestly cannot wait to see how they start tying that together. I have no idea what's next for the company but whatever they opt for, I know it will be something unique and very much in their style. But with the arrival of next gen consoles, I hope they address all the things that's pulling Control down and start experimenting more from a gameplay perspective because I am now 100% sure they can do so, they just need to invest time.
So with this behemoth approaching its end, what do I think of Control? Well, it's the best example of the phrase "diamond in the rough" I've seen in gaming for quite some time now and no matter how angry or lost I got, I always had like five things to look at and just swoon which is becoming increasingly rare in the "AAA" industry but to be fair, I would never put Remedy in that rotten basket because they were always above that but now I have definite proof of that because I experienced what I perceive as their most complete vision yet.
Of course, as I said, I haven't actually played Alan Wake and Max Payne so I could be talking out of my ass here but seeing how long and detailed this review is and I how I still wanna discuss a million things (Ashtray Maze being number one, goddamn what a brilliant level), this only reaffirms my opinion that Control is one of this generation's best games and ironically, its numerous flaws make it feel much more than a product that's just consumed, no, this is a result of hard work, ambition and many, many talented people. Trust me when I say, there is nothing out there like Control and I guarantee you'll never forget it. So grab your Hedron Resonance Amplifier, turn on your Walkman and Take Control.
Control was released for the PC, PS4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch, PS5 and Xbox X and S Series via 505 Games.
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