Control (2019)

Image: Remedy Entertainment

In between bites of triple-choc ice-cream and thoughts of the recently beaten A Machine For Pigs, I sit down at my desk and surprise myself by writing about a completely different game instead that I can't seem to get out of my head since the last few weeks. I'll be honest - I tend to avoid shooters. Many of them fall prey to a pitfall of the genre - repetitiveness. That's a major reason as to why I give them a wide berth and stick to acclaimed, narrative-rich walking sims. This probably comes off as ignorant - I know there are tons of shooters out there with a gripping story - but for me, the first ones I came across were made by Remedy. Today, five years after I first encountered Max Payne on a seedy website that promised me a free .iso, I'll happily fight swarms of enemies if it's a Remedy game.

I always appreciate innovation in a game. Nothing does it for me like the feeling of playing something new, something never seen before. Some games do it through new gameplay techniques or the story or building a completely unique world. Control distinguishes itself in this manner: it's full of innovative design and a setting that have never been seen before, and it utilizes them to the fullest.

Control introduces a ton of weird gameplay mechanics - the good kind of weird. You have a weapon that can shapeshift to function in different ways. You can hurl almost any object around you at enemies using telekinetic powers, possess your enemies to turn them against each other and levitate too. All of this against the backdrop of a secretive agency that has been invaded by a supernatural force. Control manages to do all this without seeming overbearing with its arsenal of new offerings. The graphics are top-notch, and I expected nothing less after Quantum Break, which was an amazing game (visually and story-wise) itself. The photo mode allows you to capture some stunning moments and show them off, which is an added bonus. 

The audio logs and documents found throughout the game add flavour to the overall setting, expanding upon the ideas and yet fitting perfectly within the confines of the overall world of Control. The documents scattered around the environment are heavily censored, with multiple words often redacted. This is a double-edged sword; while it works very well initially to foster suspense, after your 50th document you'll probably just skim through it instead of trying to fill in the gaps yourself. However, this isn't me complaining. Everything comes together to form an unforgettable experience; this was one of the best games I've played this year, and incidentally also the one that inspired me to get back into tinkering with Unity to work on my own little project. 

Definitely unmissable.

In case you were wondering, I never got the .iso, but ended up buying Max Payne instead.