Control Resonant is a bigger, busier version of the game that started it all. But it is also, by its own admission, the less focused sibling. The developer Remedy has described each Control game as a reflection of its protagonist, and Eurogamer’s review makes the case that the first game understood its genres and its limits far better than this one does. Control Resonant is a triple-A-flavored action RPG with a sprawling map of markers and missions, and it trades some of the original’s sharp focus for a wider canvas.
The review opens with a personal anecdote about mold, which sets a tone of familiarity with disgust. Dylan Faden, the protagonist of Control Resonant, is an indentured lab rat who became a man in a coma after being possessed by the malevolent entity called the Hiss. His sister Jesse, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, oversaw a seven-year lockdown of the Oldest House to contain the Hiss. Now the Hiss has escaped into Manhattan, and Dylan must help the Bureau deal with the fallout while searching for Jesse, who may not even be on the same dimensional plane.
Dylan’s Coma and the Hiss
Dylan’s backstory is the engine of the review’s argument. He was in a coma for years, and before that he was possessed by the Hiss. His sister Jesse, the Director of the FBC, locked down the Oldest House for seven years to keep the Hiss contained. That containment failed, and now the Hiss has escaped into Manhattan.
The review frames Dylan’s journey as an emotional exploration of family dynamics, but it argues that few of those moments land with much force. The reviewer describes the story as scattered across different paths, with writing that is often buried in minor side quests rather than the main thread. The result is a sense of narrative sprawl that the original game avoided.
Setting the Scene
Control Resonant is a different creature from Control. The original game was confined to the Oldest House, a moody, ancient Brutalist building whose shifting architecture was a core part of its atmosphere. You could not trust the walls around you, which made the setting feel like a government agency you were being pulled into.
Now the game is set in a big, wide city. Manhattan is fragmented and literally turned upside-down because of interdimensional physics, which the review notes feels appropriate for a man who just came out of a coma. But that scale comes at a cost. With a rooftop view showing all the areas brewing with Hiss or Mold, there is almost no suspense left.
The open-ended world is designed for team-building. Dylan’s handler, agent Zoe de Vera, serves as a buffer between Dylan and the bureau, trying to make peace with her own role in an organisation that made his life hell. World events involve supporting FBC rangers in the field, defending cargo and protecting workers. After a certain point, Dylan unlocks a chore board for escort missions and fetch quests.
The review describes this as a kind of inversion of the purpose that shaped Jesse’s journey in the original game. The pacing suffers at times, especially when Zoe radios Dylan with small tasks after a big urgent plot reveal. The cumulative effect is a sprawling main questline that the reviewer compares to the turgid and dull main lines of Final Fantasy 14.
Combat and the Resona
Combat is where Control Resonant diverges most clearly from its predecessor. Dylan is a melee fighter, and his abilities are straightforward button-spammers with a sprinkling of tactical support skills. New combat abilities are learned by defeating bosses called Resona.
The review notes that the combat systems were not very good in the original game, and they are still not great now. But the reviewer argues that no one plays Remedy games for the combat anyway. The focus remains on the world, the documents, the recordings and the found items that create the game’s speculative fiction.
“There’s just about no suspense left when you can climb onto a rooftop, look out, and see all the areas brewing with Hiss or Mold.”
The Review’s Own Experience
The review’s own experience with mold adds a human touch. The reviewer recalls eating mold in boarding school, where it was presented as a good source of protein. Complaints meant a weekend of collecting rubbish in a school uniform. Outside the realm of edible mushrooms and respectable fungi, the idea of eating mold is gross.
In Control Resonant, Dylan faces the Temptation of Saint Mycology, and his handler screams in his ear to put the mold down. The reviewer will not. The anecdote connects the personal to the fictional, making the game’s central conflict feel less abstract.
The Legacy of SCP
The original Control drew heavily on the SCP Foundation, a collaborative online fiction project that Remedy used as inspiration. The game mythologized a vast and indifferent bureaucracy, with arcane mythology imprinting perfectly on a whole administration of civil servants and 1960s-era pneumatic tubes. The tonal contrast of bland mundanity and eldritch freakshow worked because it was consistent.
Control Resonant does not share that consistency. The review argues that it feels pulled in different directions, with few family dynamics that are striking and few that add much to the story beyond what the player can infer themselves. The exceptions are rare.
A Different Kind of Game
Control Resonant is a different creature from Control. It is a triple-A-flavored action RPG with a big wide map, a chore board and a roster of world events. The Oldest House is gone, replaced by a city that is fragmented and turned upside-down.
The review acknowledges that the game is technically not an open world, but it behaves like one. The markers for everything from persons of interest to repeating world events fill the map, and the player moves between them. The atmosphere of the original game, built on shifting architecture and unreliable walls, is lost.
The reviewer argues that this is a necessary change. Dylan is a maladapted sadboy experiencing the real world for the first time as an adult, and a big overwhelming city makes sense for that story. But the scale dilutes the smartly-styled weirdness into Marvel-style blockbuster flatness.
The Verdict on Control Resonant
The review’s conclusion is that Control Resonant is a different beast from Control, and not necessarily an improvement. It is bigger, busier and more action-oriented, but it lacks the tight narrative focus of its predecessor. The combat is still not great, and the pacing suffers from a narrative sprawl that buries the best writing in side quests.
The reviewer’s own experience with mold adds a human touch. The anecdote connects the personal to the fictional, making the game’s central conflict feel less abstract.
Source material: “Control Resonant review,” Eurogamer.
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