Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Publisher: 505 Games
Rrp: £24.99 (Epic) and £34.99 (Steam [Ultimate Edition])
Released: 27th August 2019
Available on: Epic (Steam in August 2020)
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Approximate game length: 20 Hours
Usually if you tell someone that the walls are moving they will assume you’re high or delusional, possibly both. Not so in the Oldest House, the walls moving is a daily occurrence and something barely worthy of your notice. However the rubber duck that is sitting on your desk that wasn’t there a second ago, that is important.
Welcome to Control, the latest game by Remedy Entertainment whose previous works include Alan Wake, Quantum Break and the Max Payne series. You control Jesse Faden, a woman who’s on a mission to find her long lost brother after he was taken by shadowy government agents when they were young. Now its important to note that I said you control her, not that you play her, she has her own thoughts and feelings that you have no say over, she’s a character in her own right. It’s an action adventure game with some platforming and light RPG elements thrown in for good measure.
The game (mostly) takes place within New York City specifically within the confines of ‘The Oldest House’. This building is unique in that most people don’t even know it exists and yet it stands within one of the most populous cities in the world. If I had to put the general feeling of this game in a single word it wouldn’t be excitement or horror (though there are elements of that) it would unsettled. From the very beginning of this game everything just feels… off and that feeling only grows the more you play. Part of this is due to the fact that you start the game in media res and are essentially playing catchup for the majority of the game. You don’t even know Jesse’s life story for a very long time.
As you play through the game you attain special powers, most famous of which (as is shown on the box art) is telekinesis, allowing you to rip up chunks of the building to hurl at… well whatever you feel like really. Using these powers uses up energy, which is illustrated as a white bar at the top of the screen when in use, this energy bar refills while powers are not being used.
The first and only weapon you get in the game simply has the title of the ‘Service Weapon’, like with the powers the Service Weapon’s ammunition regenerates when its not being used. This means you can alternate from the Service Weapon to your powers and back again. The Service Weapon can take on several forms that change the way it behaves, these forms include a pistol, a machine pistol and a shotgun. At the start of the game the Service Weapon can only assume a single form called ‘Grip’ which is the pistol form.
So I’ve mentioned the powers you get and the Service Weapon but not the enemies. Well for the most part your enemy is a force known as the ‘Hiss’. These Hiss come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from your standard grunt with a pistol to beings that fly in the air and attack you with debris through to invisible enemies that unleash powerful attacks when you least expect it.
When enemies die they drop health as well as occasionally mods and materials. These materials have names like ‘ritual impulse’, ‘house memory’ and ‘hidden trend’. Killing enemies also gives you a resource called ‘Source’ (more on that shortly).
Combat in this game is quite difficult, even with all the extra skills you gain. You’ll constantly need to be on the move or you’ll quickly get swamped and don’t think that you can hunker down for too long behind cover as most of the scenery in this game is destructible.
In the inevitable event of Jesse being killed she will respawn at the most recently accessed Control Point and will lose ten percent of the Source she has acquired.
Control Points are areas of the Oldest House that are the most stable, once you claim a Control Point you can fast travel to it from any other Control Point. These Control Points allow you to allocate any ability points you gain from completing missions or finding hidden areas. They also allow you to upgrade your Service Weapon to become more potent.
You can apply mods to your service weapon as well as yourself. These mods can also be broken down to provide Source. Source and materials can be used to craft new mods, weapon forms and upgrade existing ones.
As you play you will find that there are many notes, videos and documents to read through. With a lot of interesting lore and information to find. Most of this information is essentially useless but provides extra flavour to the game.
It’s clear that a lot of care has been taken in the creation of Control and it wears some of its inspirations upon its sleeve, such as the SCP Foundation and X-Files (and I’ve found interviews with the creators that confirm this). All in all this is a great game, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing through this from beginning to end. I’ve logged at least a good sixty hours into this game and I still keep finding more things to do and explore. And then I look to the coming months and see that there are two DLC’s coming… and I have to get them.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Alan Wake
Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order
Resident Evil 2 Remake
