Video Game Review: Control

 

 

 

 

Right, well its time for a new post with new content for a change rather than another revisitation and this time it will be on a video game I have recently completed, which is the action adventure game, Control, which sees its main female protagonist, Jesse Faden taken on a paranormal enemy called the Hiss.

Control itself has received some great reviews and was often praised as one of the best games of 2019 but what do I think? Well, let's take a look...

And the usual warning is coming up...

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD 

STORY

So, I will quote a bit of the plot from Wikipedia (just to save time).

"Jesse Faden arrives at the Oldest House under the telepathic guidance of Polaris, finding the building seemingly devoid of people. She bumps into a Finnish janitor, Ahti, who directs her to an elevator for her "job interview". Through the elevator, Jesse discovers that the Federal Bureau of Control's Director, Zachariah Trench, has seemingly committed suicide with his own sidearm. Picking it up, Jesse learns that it is an Object of Power known as the Service Weapon, and is transported to the Astral Plane, where she completes a ritual and is selected as the new Director by the Board. Jesse emerges from Trench's office and finds that the Oldest House has been invaded by a hostile force she dubs "the Hiss", which has possessed most of the Bureau's agents and corrupted the building's shifting topography. Jesse uses an Object of Power known as the Hotline to listen to the lingering presence of Trench, who relays that his former management team knows the secrets of the Bureau, and Jesse hopes they may be able to tell her the whereabouts of her brother, Dylan, who was kidnapped by the FBC years prior...".

THOUGHTS

Well, Control as I mentioned got plenty of great reviews on its release last year as it was praised for its visual design, action, gameplay and its easy to see why as I think it is also a very creative and imaginative action game, which is cross between Bioshock, Inception and even Dark Souls (more on that in a bit!). The story itself is somewhat confusing to follow at times but it is intriguing nonetheless as we learn bit by bit about Jesse and also what happened to her brother, Dylan as she progresses through the game. 

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay wise, the game is a sort of hybrid in some ways as its a third person shooter with some puzzle elements also thrown into the mix as well and even to a certain extent some platforming too. But to get into more details of the gameplay, I've split it into sections below.

MOVEMENT AND ABILITIES

Starting with the game's movement and abilities, as mentioned, your playable character, Jesse can do alot of the regular moves in game such as walk, run, jump and climb platforms but due to the paranormal nature of the game, Jesse's abilities go well beyond that. 

As the game progresses, Jesse will gain some telekenetic abilities by obtaining objects of power that are collectable throughout the game in specific missions. These abilities include the power to move objects and throw them as projectile weapons or simply move them out the way. Jesse can also gain the power of levitation as she can float in the air to traverse areas in the game making it easier for her to reach higher up platforms. Jesse can also even use her powers to pick up debris and use it as a protective shield against enemy gunfire or melee attacks. Further to this, Jesse can use her powers to allow to perform a charged sprint, which will allow her to quickly cover ground and reach platforms as well. And lastly, Jesse can also gain a unique ability that can temporarily allow her to control the minds of her enemies and turn them into allies that will fight for her.

COMBAT AND WEAPONS

As for the combat, Jesse will primarily use a service weapon that can take on different forms as she progresses in the game, the different forms can be a machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle and even a grenade launcher. Her weapon can also be upgraded for aspects such as stronger damage and faster reloading as well as particular upgrades as stronger headshots and better damage against armoured enemies. 

Jesse can also as mention used melee combat to hit enemies in close proximity but aside her weapon, she will also primarily use her telekenetic abilities to take down her foes by throwing objects at them. This can be particuarly of use against enemies that have shields, as Jesse can fire an item at them that will break the shield, so she can then take them down. Jesse can also even use her abilities to throw back explosive items such as rockets and grenades at her enemies and later even grab enemies themselves and launch them at other baddies! Now, that is quite a cool move of itself!

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

As for the game's enemies they are generally a mix of soldiers and staff that have become infected by the Hiss and they range in levels of difficulty that are noted by a number placed over their heads, which can range typically from 1 to 6 and they higher the number, the stronger they are. Most enemies typically have firearms such as machine guns, shotguns and most annoyingly of all, rocket launchers! Certain enemies will also have shields that protect their health, which Jesse will need to destroy before she can kill them. 

As for the game's bosses they vary in form but some of them are basically infected humans who have larger health bars and can also perform telekentic attacks and even shield themselves. Some of the bosses taken on different forms and there are certain tactics you need to use to finish them off and at one point there is even an evil version of Jesse you need to fight as well! So, yeah there is plenty of variety in terms of enemies and the challenge from them can be pretty daunting.   

CHECKPOINTS AND FAST TRAVEL

The game as I mentioned does to a small extent borrow elements from Dark Souls and that comes in the form of its checkpoint system as Jesse after she has cleared an area of hiss infected enemies, she will cleanse it and will create a checkpoint that she can travel to and from other areas. Also similar to Dark Souls, when Jesse rests at a checkpoint she can repelenish her health if she has taken damage during combat although unlike the Souls games, this will not re-spawn enemies. However it is worth noting that enemies can still reappear in areas where Jesse has cleansed the Hiss. 

ENERGY AND HEALTH UPGRADES

Throughout the game, you can also upgrade your health bar, which of course will you to take more damage against enemies and this again done through ability points that you score from completing missions. There are also upgrades that are often dropped by fallen enemies, which Jesse can store although she can only store up to 24 at one time and she will need to remove specific ones if she wants to make room for new upgrades. The same also applies to your energy, which affects the amount of telekenetic power you can use at one time and it will drain as you continue to use it but this can also be countered by using upgrades to speed up the recovery time. 

SIDE MISSIONS

As part of the game, Jesse can also take on side missions that will allow her to gain more ability points to upgrade her health, energy and weapons. These missions however can also be accessed during main game missions or even started from the game's main hub, the executive suit where certain NPC's are found. 

GRAPHICS

Moving onto the game's graphics, they are excellent as the game's visuals are pretty striking and distinctive and they do have an Inception-esque look to them, especially in the moments where Jesse cleanses certain areas and it shifts the structure of the room in doing so. The building the game takes place in, the "old building" of the Federal Bureau of Control, is massive, so its has plenty of different areas that offer variety to the game's environments. 

Its also worth noting that this game was one of the first to use the advanced graphics technique known as ray tracing, which can allow to create more dynamic and realistic looking lighting in games. However, in order to get this feature, at present you would need a high end Nvidia graphics card such as the Geforce RTX 3080 or even an AMD Radeon 6800 XT and it is a pretty demanding feature all on its own. However future support for the ray tracing feature will be added for the game next year to the new next-gen consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Unfortunately as we all know, getting your hands on one of these consoles just now is next to impossible, so you may have a wait on your hands if you want to play the ray tracing version of the game on those consoles!

Also character model wise, Control also looks pretty good with Jesse the main looking quite cute with her red hairdo and cool jacket and jeans but she can also access other outfits later in the game. The other characters also look pretty good too although some of the facial animations do at times look a bit unnatural but that aside things are still quite impressive in this department. 

So, overall Control is a very good looking game, which currently looks its best on the PC but with future ray tracing support to be added to the next-gen consoles, it should look just as good on them too. 

VOICE ACTING (Warning: this section may contain spoilers!)

As for the game's voice acting, the cast all do an excellent job.

Starting with Courtney Hope, who is excellent in the main role as Jesse Faden, the new director of the Federal Bureau of Control but she has her own reasons to being there as she wants to find her brother, Dylan, who as it later transpires has been taken over by the Hiss. Courtney's character model, while it isn't quite realistic, its still pretty good all the same and it compliments her vocal performance very well. Courtney herself actually does briefly appear in some live action cutscenes in the game also.

James McCaffrey is also very good in his role as the former FBC director, Trench, who Jesse finds apparently murdered at the start of the game. McCaffrey also previously appeared in several other video games and most notably in the voice acting role of Max Payne (also made by the developers of this game, Remedy) and later games such as Alan Wake (also by Remedy).

Matthew Poretta also does an excellent job in his role as Dr Casper Darling, one of the key researchers at the FBC and Poretta often appears in live video footage throughout the game. Poretta also has done voice acting with with Remedy as he voiced the titular role of Alan Wake in the game and also featured in Quantum Break. 

And last of all is Martti Suosalo also provides a pretty good performance as the game's most engimatic character, Ahti, the janitor, who has a rather bizarre accent, which I can't quite place in the film and can't decide whether he is supposed to be South American or even South African! Regardless of that though, Suosalo provides a fine performance and his obscure character keeps the audience guessing as to who he is. 

MUSIC

Music wise, the score overall is pretty good and very ambient, with a mix of electronica and even later on Heavy Metal tracks! In fact parts of the score reminded me of Elliot Goldenthal's score for Heat, particularly in the scene of that film where they perform a robbery and a similar sounding track appears in this game during combat scenes. The main score was composed by Martin Stig Andersen and Petri Alanko and it is quite distinctive sounding overall, so while its not a classic is definitely fits the game.

FLAWS

As for flaws...yes Control has some.

For starters, I felt the game becomes frustratingly difficult as you progress and while the earlier stages were tricky, toward the middle of the game it has a big difficulty spike that can make things more annoying to deal with. This is especially frustrating as the game enjoys throwing a ton of enemies at you that you need to defeat before you can cleanse an area and even after that, you can reload that area and the enemies reappear again! 

In fact to my shame, I have to admit that game got so difficult for me that I felt compelled to activate its assisted mode, which allows you to customise the game's difficulty level aswell as allow you to perform one-hit kills and even has an invincibility mode, so I enable the invinicibility mode just to get through the rest of the game! Because I honestly think I wouldn't have gotten through the game if it wasn't for the assisted mode it has to be said! 

Another issue is to do with the story as overall it is pretty confusing and alot of things don't make sense and there are even loose ends by the end of it all too, which may have been cleaned in side missions or even maybe the game's DLC content. So, I have to say I was left a bit baffled by the end although there is always Wikipedia to help you understand the convoluted plot.

I also felt that most of the characters in the game weren't interesting and felt a bit faceless and lacking personality with the exception of the janitor, Ahti. Also, Jesse's inner monologue could be confusing at times, as it made me wonder just when was she actually talking to a character and not just to herself!

I was also frustrated by the obscurity of some of the game's mission objectives as there are times where you need to locate certain items but the game really sets you on a wild goose chase in order to find them as they are SO hidden! In fact I often had to look at Youtube videos in order to complete some of these objectives as I was pretty lost trying to go through them. So, a bit more clarity really wouldn't have gone a miss in the game when it comes to its missions. 

And lastly another issue that bugged me was to do with the layout of the game's map for different areas as this also can be quite confusing at times and this particularly happens when you enter a new area and the name of that area remains blanked out until walk through it. So, yeah the maps for the game are definitely not perfect and there is certainly room for improvement there. 

SUM UP

So to sum up, Control is an excellent and gripping action adventure game with some pretty nifty combat in the form of melee, gunplay and most unique of all, its telekenetic action. The game's visuals are also quite distinctive and stylish and if you have the PC system for it, you can even enjoy them for their enhanced ray tracing effects, which should also be brought to the PS5 and Xbox Series X next year. I however played the game on the PS4 Pro, so the frame rate appeared to be only at 30fps and the visuals not quite so impressive and it did crash a few times but that aside it still worked well for the most part. 

And yes there are some issues with the game's high difficulty level, which thankfully can be customised to make it easier not to mention its confusing story and obscure mission objectives and unclear map systems. But if you forgive all that, then Control is still a really good game that is worth checking out.

So, I will give Control a rating of:

8.5 out of 10

Right, that's it for now and as I am on a bit of a run this month posts wise, I will be back soon with hopefully another couple before Christmas. 

So, till then its bye the now!