I'm glad that I played Elden Ring before I played Control, otherwise, I'd have little to compare it to. Instead of exploring a vast fantasy land filled with tenacious, vicious thing that want to kill you, Control sees you enter an ordinary building in New York, the Federal Bureau of Control; which turns out to be much more than an ordinary building.
It is filled with paranormal horrors, whispering that is uncomfortably loud and sounds like an otherworldly chanting; and a gameplay loop that mirrors what you find in Elden Ring.
Kill things. Get upgrades. Perish until you learn how to use skills to fight off new combinations of enemies. Explore a world with emergent story telling. Though linear, it has several branches, and finally, unravel the mystery of the world you're in.
While Elden Ring seems to be on a larger scope, and arguably, a higher creative achievement than Control; the comparison seems to be obvious. There's quite the difficulty curve as you come to grips with the game, and unless you follow along very attentively, you're bound to have little to no idea about what is going on, or where to go next; beyond the mild guidance supplied by the game's interface.
You play as Jesee Faden, a sister in search of her brother Dylan. She constantly refers to "you", "us", and "we", in what appears to be a fourth wall breaking constant throughout the game, but later on; this starts to make some more sense; and by later on, I mean pretty much only as the credits start to roll.
The pacing of Control; in terms of plot, is something that requires great patience and persistence. You want to move forward and learn more; but you're forever beset upon increasingly deadly waves of foes which are called "The Hiss", possessed humans who are not able to resist the lure... of well, being possessed by whatever unworldly entity The Hiss is.
It isn't meant to be understand, and that's okay; the game has a massive story hook about the fact that "we're dealing with unknown forces", and the facade of understanding expressed in the notes and collectibles you find as you traverse the "ordinary" New York building show the cracks starting to form and the fear bubbling to the top.
Control isn't a scary game in terms of content, jump scares or the usual tricks of the survival horror genre, which includes things like giving you just enough health and ammo to withstand just the right amount of hits from an enemy. It is more of a scientific and documentary exploration into the realms of the paranormal; with much of the "hard science" left to your own imagination.
I played through Control entirely on my Steam Deck, and between bouts of falling asleep half way through a play session in bed (treating the game as somewhat of a night cap) - it took me around 24 hours of in-game time to get from start menu to completion.
The game ran fairly well, with no crashes experienced. I used Lutris to run my copy of the game which was obtained through GOG, and it was smooth enough, being locked to 60fps almost always at the native resolution of the Steam Deck.
Truly impressive hardware; but without the benefits of ray tracing, I do wonder what visual splendour I may have missed along the way. It is clear that a lot of love and attention went into the particle effects featured in the game, but the physics seemed to be a little less grounded in reality than what it probably should.
Speaking of physics, one major part of the third person shooter gameplay hook here are abilities you get beyond the "Service weapon", which is a paranormal device that transforms from pistol, to shotgun, to sub machine gun, to sniper rifle; sharing a recharging ammo pool, are the telekinetic and mind-control abilities that you unlock later through the game.
You can pick up almost any object in the game world and hurl it towards your enemies, dealing an incredibly amount of damage. You typically then follow up the kill with a few blasts from the service weapon, then move onto the next target.
It is fast paced combat, fluid, and as you get to the later game, one that is filled with an incredible level of verticality. The game world, given that you don't see a single shred of sky the whole time; is enormous and expansive, but filled with props that go flying and are destroyed in real time as The Hiss and Jesse do battle.
Control is hard to recommend. It doesn't have the excellent and obvious story beats that Remedy Entertainment's previous games have contained, and is at the same time, a far more nuanced form of storytelling. If you like the other work the studio has put out, by all means, go exploring - just don't expect a title as brilliant as Alan Wake or Max Payne 2.
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