Late to the Tea Party
I’m late to the party with Control. I had heard the combat was fun, but beyond that, it’s often been described to me as generic or uninteresting. I hadn’t really considered playing it until I found myself looking for something at least mildly scary to play this past October. Knowing it was developed by Remedy, the team behind Alan Wake, I considered myself set up for a spooky, if slightly dreary, time. What I got instead was a game that had me hooked from the get go, equal parts menacing, zany, and a blast to play. I found myself moving through the world of Control with a sense of almost childlike wonder (and fear!), ever eager to explore each new avenue within The Bureau of Control – yet hesitant to see what lurked around every corner. Consider me shocked to find that what had been described to me as a pretty average game might just be one of my new favourites.
“After a secretive agency in New York is invaded by an otherworldly threat, you become the new Director struggling to regain Control. This supernatural third-person action-adventure game will challenge you to master a combination of supernatural abilities, modifiable loadouts and reactive environments, while fighting through a deep and unpredictable world.” – Remedy Entertainment
No Place Like (the Oldest) Home
Jessie, the new director of the bureau, is seeking answers about a suspicious supernatural phenomenon from her childhood. Her search for answers become more clouded the further she goes; nothing is ever straightforward in the bureau, also known as The Oldest House. Whether it’s corridors that shift location unpredictably, mountains of casefiles, research and letters, or the omniscient presence of the bureau’s past directors guiding her along, the story becomes more twisted at every turn. Control practically begs you to immerse yourself in the seemingly endless lore of records and documents, and to follow the apparently arbitrary rules of The House (absolutely no rubber ducks allowed, and the rule of three applies).
Do this for long enough, and things stop seeming so nonsensical. Much like Dorothy being blown into Oz, Jessie (and the player) is thrown into an entirely new world which oddly resembles the old one, confronting us with a place that looks familiar and yet…wrong. An admin-heavy office building is far from an uncommon sight, but the way in which Control relies on environmental storytelling peppered around the world, such as supernatural ‘objects of power’ to confront and classified files to read, makes The House seem too bizarre for even the most competent HR department. Immersion is heightened by the all around excellent voice acting and a plethora of live action ‘archival’ footage to spice things up. Your experience will therefore be significantly heightened by reading as much as the game throws at you, which tends to be darkly humorous commentary on bureaucracy, conspiracy theories and the pitfalls of office culture within a paranatural government agency.
Monsters Incorporated
Control has one of the strangest atmospheres I’ve encountered in a game. Traversing the grey concrete halls of The House can be bleak and scary, mostly due to the oppressive brutalist-type architecture and depressingly mundane office spaces. The secrecy of the bureau, the Hiss (former employees turned monsters), the maze-like structure of each floor and general strangeness of the place make The House feel like it has a mind of its own, which is intimidating to say the least. But it also feels like an inherently magical place if you consider the machinations of the building as more helpful than evil, and its various objects of power as ‘enchanted’. Originally I had thought of them as ‘possessed’, but really most objects of power aren’t particularly malicious – just a little strange.
There is an Alice in Wonderland feeling to the premise, again arising from the idea that everything looks normal but behaves… curiouser and curiouser. Though Jessie is essentially down the rabbit hole, she seems to relish exploring The House. Actually, it’s refreshing to see a protagonist who doesn’t waste time lamenting their situation and finding ways to escape, but instead dives in head first, willingly going deeper and deeper to seek answers and sort shit out. On the player’s side, this is bolstered thanks to the skill tree, which allows you to invest points accrued in combat into abilities, and also the various weapon modifiers and upgrades dropped by enemies that slowly build Jesse into the most intimidating director since Stanley Kubrick. Jessie’s morbid enthusiasm for going deeper into The House is pretty contagious, and I found myself only too eager to see what terrible secrets each sector held, and what wonderful ways I would be given to explore and fight my way through.
You Can Fly! You Can Fly!
Fighting in Control is absurdly fun and a satisfying challenge. As Jessie progresses, she is introduced to new abilities, though some are as basic as dodging, which feels a bit anticlimactic when unlocked. The ability to ascend into the air, and then slowly descend while pelting the enemy with the ‘service weapon’ (a magic gun, basically) is naturally the highlight of the combat experience. The telekinetic ‘seize’ and ‘launch’ power is a close second. With enough time – and you will have plenty of hiss to practice on – you are floating, throwing and blasting your way through every corridor in the game. In all, flying like Peter Pan and being carried by the palpable forward momentum of the combat keeps the pacing of this game quick and tight between story beats. The platinum guide for Control describes it as ‘easy to play, but hard to master’ which I completely agree with, but once you do master it, it becomes a real joy to play. For those who are less inclined to grapple with Jessie’s powers, Control has notably customisable difficulty modifiers, including invincibility and one-shot killing enemies. This is handy if you find yourself struggling with the optional side quest bosses, who I found significantly more difficult than any part of the main story, but again, proved to be pretty satisfying once I finally had them beat. To this end, Control is an excellent game to seek the platinum for if you’re interested, given that there are no difficulty related or missable trophies.
There and Back Again
Control exists as such a juxtaposition in my mind. I explored it with a sense of childlike wonder, and was equally perturbed by the more grotesque horror moments. It was exhilarating to dart across each area, but intimidating (sometimes frustrating) to fail due to poor timing or simply not having enough experience beating enemies (literal experience and XP-wise). You might consider yourself an Alice who can’t help but venture deeper into Wonderland, or more of a Dorothy who just wants to go home, but either way, Control does an excellent job of being an unnerving thrill ride. If that’s your sort of thing, feel free to click your heels three times (or in this case, your closest light switch), and you’ll be right at home.
Have you played Control? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments below!
