I finished Control last week, likely the best game to marry a creepy funhouse with a sprawling government office that you’ll ever play. I was up and down on this one for a few months. There’s a fun narrative and plenty of atmosphere, but I wasn’t always enjoying the gameplay.
I hadn’t played a Remedy game since Max Payne 2. The shift from comic book-style storytelling to something literally cinematic was a change for me, but I was still able to comfortably slip into the narrative right away. I particularly enjoyed what was going on with the meta-narrative. For example, I’d get so damn lost running around even with signs everywhere. Normally, the existence of the signs would feel like a change implemented after tester feedback, but then I would see stuff like “Janitor’s Office” and think there’s intentional thematic design at play. Constantly questioning that in various elements of the game was part of the fun.
Unfortunately, my tendency to get lost wore my patience thin eventually, and the new gameplay unlocks bored me. It was a blast at first–I haven’t had this much fun with telekinesis since Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy forever ago–and the gunplay felt solid. But then, as more of the weapon options showed up, I didn’t click with any of them and preferred chucking rocks. It’s also a great looking game at times. This is the first game where my system has been able to handle more than basic ray tracing, but I’d get a lot of blurry textures. I even had to rollback my video driver to resolve a problem with the cinematics. It’s weird to call a game where I’d get a solid 60 FPS a rough port, but I think this qualifies.
I picked up the game again last month and made some more progress until a certain late-game section completely stonewalled me. I simply didn’t have enough health (or damage output, or both) for the encounter, and the choice was to either grind for skill points/mods or start looking at difficulty options. I quickly found a switch to an “Easy” difficulty wasn’t possible but there was an Assist Mode. I started with reducing incoming damage, but after a couple more five-minute attempts I was frustrated enough to turn one-hit kills on. I couldn’t tell you the last time I did something like that to get through a game. It was either that or likely drop the game permanently (a shame being that close to the ending). Still, I’m glad I kept playing, even if I’m not entirely sure in the end Control kept its end of the bargain. I don’t think the story quite stuck the landing.
Any thoughts on Control? I seem to be down on it more than most. I imagine Remedy fans in particular got a kick out of it. Or on a game that pushed you into cheats or breaking another gameplay tradition you have?
It baffles me that they create a great setting with a compelling story and then go “Nah, too easy, let’s push the difficulty to eleven, leet players only amirite?”
People who play for fun, to enjoy a moderate challenge and a good plot are prevented from doing so. I know about the “assist”, but the point is I should not have to google “why is Control so damn hard” to find out about it, nor should I have to dig in the menu system for help.
Games have been using difficulty settings since before Wolfenstein 3D, where “normal” is a balanced difficulty that an average gamer can handle. Experienced gamer can go for “Difficult” or “Nightmare”. What is gained by overpowering the player and preventing from enjoying the rest of the game?
I know this is nothing new, a lot of 80’s games were vicious, but when your game was 10 levels long and had to fit in 16KB, you had to make it challenging to keep the player playing. But in the mean time technology evolved and developers learned new ways to make engaging games that don’t rely on simple dificulty++ gimmicks. Or at least I they should have learned.
Maybe I’m simply bad at shooters? I don’t think I am, I’ve been playing for ages and I’m still quite good at it.
Ok, rant over. I’d love to love Control, but I can’t because it is not for me.
I like when games are difficult. I don’t think every game needs to be so easy every gamer can beat it.