Seven years after launching Control, Remedy returns to a paranatural Manhattan with Control Resonant.
Remedy has called Resonant a “not so safe sequel,” a perception some may attribute to the new protagonist. Players explore a paranatural Manhattan as Dylan Faden, the younger brother of Control’s Jesse Faden, who has since disappeared.
Control’s creative director, Mikael Kasurinen, envisioned early that the first two games would focus on each Faden sibling. Resonant departs from Remedy’s established third-person shooter formula by introducing a melee-focused, open-ended world.
This marks a bold shift for a studio with three decades of experience in a proven genre, but early critical response indicates success with a score of 84 on Metacritic.
“[Resonant is] driven along by strong character-first storytelling and Remedy’s best action in ages”
James Archer, Rock Paper Shotgun
For Rock Paper Shotgun‘s James Archer, the studio’s “gamble pays off spectacularly.”
“Resonant’s reality-bending trip across a kaleidoscopic Manhattan is as rich in stark views, eerie atmosphere, and creative quests as Control’s Oldest House ever was, driven along by strong character-first storytelling and Remedy’s best action in ages.”
Kotaku‘s Cole Kronman held similar sentiments. “This is, without a doubt, the most demanding, most video-game-per-square-inch video game Remedy has ever made. Imperfect, but relentlessly, characteristically interesting,” he wrote.
“I won’t pretend that Remedy is reinventing any wheels. But Control Resonant stands out in a sea of blockbuster releases whose storytelling instincts range from atrophied to nonexistent. Its narrative is built from the ground up for playability by designers concerned with, above all else, why video games should be video games.”
Combat
The action centres on Dylan’s affinity for melee and use of the Aberrant, a weapon that transforms into multiple types. In Michael Higham’s 8 out of 10 review for IGN, he found that the combat was “undercooked in spots, but that doesn’t sour everything around it. Frustrations aside, Remedy’s first crack at this style of action combat is admirable because it’s foundationally sound and does have fantastic moments of satisfaction that the genre greats pull off.”
“If anything, the fights are simply a slick vehicle for building up Dylan as a character and funnelling you through one of the more inventive open worlds I’ve seen”
Eurogamer‘s Alexis Ong, in her 3 out of 5 review, criticized Dylan’s traversal abilities, which are used both in and out of combat, writing that it “plays out like Spider-Man helping literal puppies and saving civilians.”
“[Control] was a game that understood the genres it drew from, and most importantly, knew what it wasn’t (the combat systems weren’t very good then, and they’re still not great now, but let’s be real – no one is playing Remedy games for the combat).”
However, Kotaku’s Kronman found a “gratifying synergy in how the game applies movement to both combat and traversal – mastering one puts you well on your way to mastering the other.”
Open-ended Manhattan
The original Control contained its story inside the Oldest House, filled with shifting rooms, walls, and thresholds to alternative dimensions. In Resonant, Dylan enters an open-ended Manhattan, altered by an otherworldly entity that causes the city to fold in on itself.
The world is split into zones rather than a typical open world structure. Rock Paper Shotgun’s Archer appreciated Remedy’s take on earning XP and rewards in these zones, which level up as you fight enemies and complete side quests.
“It’s a peculiar mechanism, but one that works. Tying power progression to time and effort spent in different areas motivates exploration, arguably more so than simply slathering the map in question marks, and in my mind creating a tidy, almost Elden Ring-like loop of ‘Get rewards, challenge boss, get rewards.’ Lending, in turn, a more tangible and digestible structure to the open world.”
The change in setting shone for IGN’s Higham, too. “The way the design language of The Oldest House has spilled into the streets gives it a personality that’s so distinctly Control. The environment seamlessly guides you on what’s what and where to go, so even in the absence of a more detailed map, I was rarely ever lost as long as I paid attention to my surroundings. This strikes a delicate balance, letting the world itself take the lead rather than waypointing every little thing.”
“The way the design language of The Oldest House has spilled into the streets gives it a personality that’s so distinctly Control”
“When you start to understand how these various planes converge and break from each other, I can only envy the genius of how it was designed and the headache it must have been to create, especially at this scope and scale. It’s not just for show; even when it gets unwieldy, it adds depth and texture to what would’ve felt like a fairly standard world.”
Kotaku’s Kronman described The Pattern (the force affecting Manhattan’s geometry) as “a visual and technical marvel.”
“Remedy has fully embraced the notion of video games as interactive art exhibits, designing environments under the guiding principle that 3D art and 3D level geometry can be the exact same thing,” Kronman wrote.
“There is nothing else that plays quite like this because there is nothing else that looks quite like this—the case for Remedy, once again, is that they understand on a bone-deep level what makes this medium interesting, and pursue their vision with a fervor begotten of generosity. They made Resonant because they want us to understand, too.”
But for Eurogamer’s Ong, leaving the Oldest House removed the innate weirdness of what it contained.
“The Oldest House was a moody, ancient Brutalist cocoon full of secrets – you couldn’t trust the walls around you, which was a neat setting for getting sucked into the bowels of a government agency,” she wrote. “There’s only so much you can do to spice up a repeated landscape of city blocks and same-y military blockades without losing aesthetic potency.”
“After a certain point it feels like Resonant leans a bit too much on quirky weirdness in New York, as a stand-in for narrative quality and substance. Not much comes close to the ‘oh shit, cool’ moments or impeccable vibes that made Control special.”
Boss battles
The main criticism of Resonant lay with the game’s bosses. Critics highly praised the design and implementation, but were less impressed with the level design and combat.
“Encounter design is where Control Resonant falters most,” wrote Higham. “Roughly half the bosses are spongy slogs that are less about testing your mastery and more about grinding out a war of attrition. Once you see their handful of tricks, you just have to rinse and repeat as you chip away at their health bar and hope you don’t trip up in the repetitive cycle that it demands from you.”
Rock Paper Shotgun’s Archer agreed, considering them representative of “Remedy’s character action inexperience.”
“Some genuinely are enjoyable, one-on-one paranatural duels, though others are overly simple, their sense of threat owed to massive health bars and the sheer damage of their attacks – not the challenge of recognising and avoiding them. They do all have the striking and memorable visual design you’d want from an action-RPG boss, at least, and their reward of potentially build-altering new combat powers meant I never felt I was wasting my time going after them.”
Narrative
Returning players will already be familiar with Dylan, who was host to the antagonistic Hiss entity in Control. But there’s enough lore and explanation for new players to understand what he’s been through, how the world reacts to him and how he reacts to it.
IGN’s Higham found that Resonant acted both as a sequel and a prequel to Control through Dylan and Jesse, as it “tidies up a lot of what was either left to implication or collectible documents in Control,” although he felt that the main story “relies on a few easy logical leaps to tidy things up, which means it may not be quite as moving in the grand scheme of the Remedyverse,”
Eurogamer’s Ong attributed overall pacing issues in Resonant to its open-world structure.
“There’s the usual triple-A dance between big save-the-world story beats and minor side stories where all the best writing is hidden”
“There’s the usual triple-A dance between big save-the-world story beats and minor side stories where all the best writing is hidden, but at times, like when Zoe radios Dylan to do nothingburger tasks after a big urgent plot reveal, the pacing suffers. The cumulative effect is a kind of narrative sprawl, an inversion of the purpose that shaped Jesse’s journey in Control.”
Kotaku’s Kronman felt that “dialogue is a bit hit-or-miss, something that could also be said of Control—there’s a tendency here, endemic as well to much modern TV, to mistake snarky, too-clever-by-half banter for genuine characterization.” He neverthless judged these “forgivable snags in what is, altogether, a thoughtful, effective story.”
Overall consensus
Remedy’s decision to move beyond its established formula was well received by critics.
“Surprisingly, this is one of Remedy’s most conventional stories, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t dare to be bold at times,” sauid IGN’s Higham. “Control Resonant is a game bolstered by a compilation of powerful moments – from the finer details in its superb world design to the twists that elevate its characters beyond the paranormal happenings that dictate their lives.”
However, Eurogamer’s Ong felt that Resonant is “chasing the hallmarks of a live-service game, only partly successfully, to echo the very deliberate structure and style of the genre storytelling that worked so well in the first game.”
“It’s not a question of giving us something we haven’t seen before. It’s a question of being able to sustain that distinct, uncanny weirdness that brought Control to life. And to expand on that core magic, without muddying what made it special in the first place.”
But for Kotaku’s Kronman, Resonant was what he needed it to be. “I was excited about Control Resonant because I thought I knew what to expect; now I’m excited about Control Resonant because I don’t know what comes next.”
