Control Resonant Review

Seven years after the Hiss broke loose inside the Oldest House, the strangeness has reached Manhattan. The lead this time is Dylan Faden, the unsettling brother from the first game, searching for Jesse while a force called the Patterning folds avenues and towers into impossible shapes. Remedy's biggest gameplay team yet has built large, distinct districts full of side jobs, hidden fights and optional discoveries: not an open world, but far more room than the Bureau's corridors ever offered.

The bigger change is in your hands. Jesse's Service Weapon gives way to the Aberrant, a melee weapon that shifts between forms, three of them equipped at once, with stats, talent trees and upgrades layered on top. Early on the combat is fast, heavy and inventive, some of the sharpest close quarters fighting Remedy has built. Across a campaign of twenty hours or more, though, encounters repeat, the role playing systems prove shallower than they look, and a few critics find the fights flat almost from the start.

The Northlight engine makes the warped city look extraordinary. The story lands less cleanly: cutscene performances can feel stiff, and the plot and the fighting often seem to belong to different games. Those flaws sit beside something rarer: a studio rebuilding its own formula this boldly and mostly landing it, in the best-looking world Remedy has made.