Review Roundup: Remedy’s Control Resonant

My time for gaming is pretty limited these days, so I can only allow myself to get excited about a handful of times every year. For 2026, those titles included Halo: Campaign Evolved, a satisfying enough remake of the original Halo game, and Control Resonant, a sequel to 2019’s acclaimed Control.‘

I didn’t play Control until several years after its release, and immediately fell in love with almost everything about it. As I wrote in my review, the game’s mix of brutalist architecture, liminal space imagery, Cold War relics, and creepypasta hit a real sweet spot for me, and I couldn’t wait for a sequel.

Revealed last year, Control Resonant returns us to the world of the Federal Bureau of Control, the secretive government organization tasked with protecting humanity from paranatural threats. However, the otherworldly Hiss have escaped the confines of the Oldest House, and have begun remaking and rewriting Manhattan. It’s up Dylan Faden — brother of Jesse, the first game’s protagonist — to take on the Hiss with his own paranatural abilities, and undo their damage.

Everything I’ve seen of Control Resonant to date looks amazing, and I’m eagerly searching for some time in which to play it. In the meantime, critics have begun weighing in. So how well does Control Resonant stack up to its acclaimed predecessor? Is it worth the seven-year wait? Read on for a selection of critical reactions to Remedy Entertainment’s latest.

Comfort zones don’t exist at Remedy Entertainment. The team has always been adamant about pushing their limits and expanding their horizons, whether it works or doesn’t. This has resulted in one of the most creative companies of our era, and even though that is welcome, it’s a scary conviction to hold in regard to Control Resonant. Here is a sequel to a game that was a critical darling, but that steps away from the original protagonist and genre to make something new. It’s a risky bet, and while Resonant has its issues, it pays off in ways I couldn’t have expected.

Control Resonant is yet another piece of evidence that we need to protect Remedy Entertainment at all costs. The studio understands and openly embraces its identity, one that smells of coffee and creative weirdness, and this sequel proves they know how to reinvent themselves without losing an ounce of their soul.

Where Control Resonant really shines is in the mind-bending, gravity-defying world Remedy built for it. You’re not going to find your local bodega in the Lower East Side or the 4-train to Harlem in this version of Manhattan. However, 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.

When Control Resonant was first revealed in 2025, I was unsure how Remedy Entertainment would take on the action RPG genre. After spending nearly 60 hours with the sequel, I can thankfully say it’s not only one of the best action games this year, but it also has some of the best level design I’ve ever experienced in any game. Control Resonant might be Remedy’s most groundbreaking and genre-bending project to date.

Control Resonant can thus be taken as a pivotal moment for the studio, the first time its signature formal ambitions have been married with a design this rigorous and uncompromising (for player and developer alike). I’m very happy to report that they’ve stuck the landing: 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.

Whereas that 2019 title was a splendid synthesis of Remedy’s signature strengths, Control Resonant‘s many failures make it seem as though it came from a different studio altogether. Its melee combat is bafflingly hollow, relentlessly repetitive, and poorly balanced across the board… By failing to engage the fingers or brain, Resonant is not just a disappointing sequel; it betrays the very notion of what it means to be a Remedy game.

Resonantmay be a more technically perfect game than its third-person shooter predecessor — combat is sharper, the story is given more depth, and the expanded world has been designed with a perfectionist’s eye — but missing is that all-important Remedy magic that makes its games so compelling. Without it, Control Resonant completely falls apart.

There are parts of the demo I played that I don’t think would have made it into other triple-A games; creative decisions that would’ve either not been made or, maybe more likely, have been gradually whittled down and eroded over time. The result is something a little more rugged than even the first Control, that may not even always come together perfectly in the playing. But also something kind of fascinating.

It’s an interesting idea to switch genres to expand the world of Control with a radically different genre. It works, most of the time, though there are aspects that could use more polish and rethinking given that this is Remedy’s first stab at a large-scale brawler. For what it lacks in fleshed-out systems, it makes up in universe building and art direction. I do recommend you play Control first, as some have asked, and I do think that’s a clearly better game, but I imagine Resonant will find an audience as well. As for me, there’s still plenty more to do and see and smash with comically large paranatural hammers.

With a new protagonist and an expanded setting, Control Resonant morphs into a different, more ambitious beast of a game than its predecessor, all while building on its uniquely New Weird aesthetic. I’ve seen my share of apocalyptic virtual cities, but the unsettling sight of dead floating bodies, streets suddenly shifting upwards, or skyscrapers refracting into nothing is quite unlike anything else, while an even stranger phenomenon called ‘patterning’ might be the logical conclusion of genAI hallucinating a form into multiple uncanny versions of itself.

Control Resonant is currently available. Watch the trailer below:

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