Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/27/review-control.html
Remedy Entertainment’s Control is a masterpiece of weird architecture and bold design, but a tiring shooter.
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I played it on PS4 when it first came out. I liked many of the things that you liked. The puzzles were fun, interesting, and challenging, and the Oldest House is a damn masterpiece. But the framerate drops during combat, combined with the limited save-points, turned it into a real slog. I got stuck on one particularly difficult boss battle with a particularly long runway back to the last save point, and set it aside. I’m told there have been some patches that cleaned up some of the performance issues, but I haven’t been back to play it again–it’s the kind of game that I like thinking about having played more than I actually liked playing it, I think.
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I would love a remix where Jesse visits the OIdest House earlier, gets an entry level job to infiltrate the FBC in search of her bro, and explores in a more leisurely open worldy way. So the game as released (Hiss invasion, Jesse picked as new Bureau chief) becomes a violent third act of a mostly adventurey game.
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Games writer Ewan Wilson has been doing some nice articles (and tweets) about design in the game, including a bunch about the Brutalist architecture and its real-world inspirations.
https://twitter.com/ewanwilson4
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-09-03-remedys-control-is-built-on-concrete-foundations
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Half-Life 2 meets The Laundry Files = ka-ching! 
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Not played it personally but the gameplay footage did look somewhat pedestrian to me, though the ballardian space you play in does look amazing, i would like to explore that.
I suggest that the lack of Ballard is a key factor in Control’s psychic space. It if were more Ballardian, it might have better integrated the environment and the violence.
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I only suggest a superficial ballard aesthetic really from the numerous screenshots i’ve seen of the game, but i was curious why you didn’t bring it up in the review. Now i’m wondering how a high rise videogame adaptation would work - trying to keep a check on your own psychosis (à la amnesia) while stalking the brutalist architecture, fighting the various middle class factions while looking for stray dogs to eat.
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do want, yes. Did you like the movie?
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It’s fun to watch though. I think I’d get tired of trying to control her flying, or learning how to control it, as well as the chair-hurling. But it looks cool in practice.
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The game was definitely built with an eye toward the future. On PC if you have the hardware it pushes ray tracing hard. Plus there are just a lot of particles flying around. I played it with minimal issue (slowdown coming out of the pause menu) on Xbox One X but apparently that’s the best console to play it on.
As for where you are stuck it sounds like you either missed a save point (it can happen) or you are stuck on an optional side quest and can come back later. I can’t recall any long stretches between save points and bosses except for one side mission.
Really it’s mostly just Laundry Files.
@beschizza no mention of the Threshold Kids? They seem to be very much your flavor of weird.
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They were great! I am going to add a reference
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Enjoy is a loaded word with this but I’m going to go with yes, on the whole. It came out during a particularly stressful period so watching it may not have been a wise choice at the time, on the other hand it might have been the perfect choice. I found it worthwhile enough that it became one of my rare dvd purchases but is it a good adaptation? I am unsure since the book kind of skittered across my brain pan when I read it and I couldn’t retain much of it. The film has certainly stuck with me, despite of or because of its anxiety inducing claustrophobia and superb use of ABBA covers.
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I was just thinking of the Spire in HL2.
seems like only one person actually played it, this is one of the best games I’ve ever played, after this I went back and tried alan wake and quantum break but this dominates both of them. the story, the environments, the uncanny feel of the game, I never felt like I was walking through a copypasta section of the game, I always was thinking "
hmm maybe that particular telephone MEANS something", like every area had been considered. and the detail is beyond bonkers. I’m flipping out as there is this one section towards the end that has a lot of red sand everywhere, and in the concrete form times of the surface textures they put in little bits of red sand into the holes, I didn’t notice it at first and then it blew my mind, these million little things.
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Threshold Kids reminds me of Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared
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