Control Resonant's standout feature left me completely speechless

Remedy Entertainment has long been known for prioritizing narrative over gameplay. Titles such as Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control offered enjoyable gameplay hooks, but their real depth came from narrative puzzle-boxes, where solving one mystery only spawned several more. Control Resonant departs from that tradition in spectacular fashion, exposing an entirely different side of Remedy. With deep, engaging combat mechanics set in an unforgettable version of Manhattan, Control Resonant confidently delivers the studio's finest gameplay experience to date without ever abandoning its trademark weirdness.

Control Resonant picks up seven years after the original. The mystical Oldest House remains under siege by the Hiss. Beyond its once-hidden doors, a second Altered World Event now threatens Manhattan. Federal Bureau of Control director Jesse Faden has vanished for unknown reasons, and with much of the bureau dead or scattered, her brother Dylan is freed from his holding cell as Plan B.

If that pile of proper nouns makes your head spin, that's understandable. Control Resonant does throw a lot at players story-wise, but it also offers newcomers a helpful recap of the first game. The key point: New York City is under attack from a paranatural threat, and Dylan Faden—once a puppet of the Hiss and blamed for much of the destruction—reluctantly gets a shot at redemption.

Where Control was a third-person shooter, Control Resonant is a melee-focused action game that ends up feeling like a dark, superhero-adjacent adventure in the vein of Infamous or Prototype. Still, Resonant carries so much Remedy flavor that those comparisons work only as rough shorthand for something deeper and more satisfying.

Dylan's weapon of choice is the Aberrant, a shapeshifting piece of metal that forms the foundation for intricate combat builds. The Aberrant takes several forms: a pair of fast-striking clubs with a chance for critical hits, a larger scythe that deals slower but wider sweeping damage, and an in-between form that's neither especially fast nor slow but deals bonus damage from behind enemies.

The game encourages frequent build changes through respec tokens and a massive upgrade tree. None of the many options feels obviously superior, so you can experiment without feeling pushed down a set path. I loved trying out the many abilities and combinations. Across the 30-40 hour story, you strengthen both the Aberrant and Dylan with this trove of combat enhancements, equipping up to six special abilities at once and mixing different sets almost whenever you like. Each ability gives Dylan a distinct feel, but they all share one thing: they look and feel great in action.

Shields, telekinesis, friendly summons, and more become available the deeper you go. My experience with Resonant may differ greatly from yours, and that's part of why it works so well.

Control Resonant's power curve across those hours is deeply satisfying because it invites—and then rewards—thoughtful player decisions. Instead of just chipping away at enemy health bars, for example, you can build their Falter meter. Once filled, you can perform finishing moves that grant Dominance, a short-lived damage buff. Enemies normally drop health refills when killed, but enemies finished via a Falter execution don't drop health—they give you Dominance instead, which then causes enemies to drop extra health when defeated, creating a risk-versus-reward dynamic. With so many enemies often swarming Dylan, every encounter becomes a series of quick decisions as you trade health for damage at the right moments, keeping Dylan alive and saving buffs for the right enemies.

Resonant has no parry or blocking mechanic. Its combat is built entirely around aggression, including a dodge mechanic that rewards at least a perfect-timing counter window and possibly more buffs depending on your build. Played well, Dylan stays on the offensive, dashing around the map to bash ground enemies, double-jumping into the air to reach flying enemies, and carefully but decisively managing his powers so he has an answer to whatever each fight throws at him.

On its default difficulty, Resonant is quite tough. It's no souls-like, but it will give some players trouble, as it did for me early on. As I learned each enemy's strengths and weaknesses and kept giving Dylan his own remarkable tools for the job, I felt better prepared for what lay ahead. However, if you come to this Remedy game for narrative—which is what the studio has historically done best—and find yourself overwhelmed by the challenge, the game's Assist Mode offers nuanced custom difficulty options, with a few presets if you don't want to tweak each meter yourself.

So much happens at once in every battle, and all that chaos sounds like it might hurt performance, especially with all the visual noise—like the Hiss' wispy shadows, explosions going off in the streets, and the various physics and effects the game pours on. But I played this game for 45 hours on PC (RTX 4070, for the record) without a single hitch. As much as the gameplay depth is a novel showcase for Remedy, its in-house Northlight engine shoulders the burden handily and looks dazzling while doing so.

The strong technical performance only becomes more obvious the deeper you get into the main story, where Remedy's artistic efforts grow more ambitious. This vision of New York is unlike anything I've ever seen, and though trailers have hinted at some of the arresting art design Resonant features, it's truly something special to behold. Scenes of the city folding in on itself à la Inception are merely scratching the surface. Both the world and the enemies, especially the bosses, are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

In fact, some later areas of the story get so breathtakingly unique that my only gripe with Control Resonant is how often I'd get lost trying to explore some of these more elaborate spaces, especially since the map wouldn't often bail me out of those jams, recalling a similar issue with navigating the original Control.

But these frustrations ultimately feel like a small price to pay for the kaleidoscopic wonders Remedy has built. I'm writing this before much of the world has had a chance to see what I'm talking about, and it gives me goosebumps to think about living vicariously through the new eyes that will soon experience the marvels of Control Resonant's world design. Building on the already high bar set by Alan Wake 2's aspirations, Remedy aimed even higher and achieved something I've not seen in any medium.

Playing Resonant, I've thought a lot about how such engaging, complex combat design will speak to a new type of player previously not interested in Remedy games. Thankfully, if you're here first and foremost for the weirdness, it still has plenty of that too. Alongside the 30-hour main story, the several zones of the world each have tons to do, and in many cases, these side quests express Remedy's special brand of strange. I spent some time off the golden path chasing an elusive baby stroller across rooftops, singing life-or-death karaoke, siccing a cat on the Hiss, playing Spot the Difference with an extradimensional taxi cab, and investigating a covert surveillance operation that hides out in places like coffee shops and pizza restaurants, to name a few.

Every side mission I undertook was enjoyable, and I've done nearly all of them, though the map and quest log suggest I have a few more to go in what is a bigger game than I expected. Some missions have been especially strong reminders that, like Alan Wake 2 before it, Control Resonant feels like an experience only Remedy could've possibly made. Even with much more focus on combat, this has all the hallmarks of a Remedy game.

That means a healthy dose of levity, though I love how Resonant finds new depth not just in its gameplay and world design but in its emotional core, too. Remedy games have previously done mystery, action, comedy, and horror very well. But this is the first time a Remedy game has left me feeling choked up. I adored Dylan's story, both in the present—as he works to redeem himself while surrounded mostly by people who loathe him and tell him as much bluntly—and in the past, as I explored his relationship with Jesse and their parents.

There's a lot more to know about Dylan, and Sean Durrie plays him with an appropriate somberness. It consistently hurt to see him beat himself up because that antagonism is the only way he's ever been treated by anyone but Jesse. Watching his character arc take shape, and even informing it a bit with dialogue options that don't change the story but do change the shading of Dylan's thoughts and actions, was an even more unexpected achievement than Resonant's deep combat design. Despite everything it does so well, Dylan's personal journey is just about my favorite thing in the entire game, second only to the art direction that melted my brain.

Control Resonant

Though I enjoyed the story's way of catching up with characters from the original game and seeing how they've changed, one of my favorite characters is Dylan's handler, Zoe De Vera, a newcomer to the world of Control. She could've been the typical voice on the radio, giving Dylan orders to simply push the story forward, but Remedy pulls her into the spotlight enough to make her an empathetic character, too. As the Altered World Event reshapes reality around them, it's Dylan and Zoe's chemistry, not the New Weird circumstances, that really fuels the narrative intrigue for me.

Alongside the stellar art direction and a surprisingly touching story, Control Resonant's gameplay loop feels more mainstream than anything this team has made since Max Payne. Such intentional smoothing could've been damning if done poorly, but it doesn't feel like Remedy sacrifices any part of itself to chase a wider audience, even as Resonant may well find one anyway. Control Resonant is Remedy's take on a semi-open-world character-action game, and that might sound like an experience you've had before, but at the transdimensional intersection of its impeccable combat design and the studio's signature strangeness stands something unforgettably unique.

Source: GameSpot