There is a saying in modern culture: once you’ve reached the peak, there’s nowhere to go but down. That must have been what Remedy was feeling after the release of Alan Wake 2, which felt like the culmination of nearly 14 years of self-made hype, lore, and interconnected storytelling. Remedy had finally reached the top of the mountain, only to immediately stumble with FBC: Firebreak, a Left 4 Dead-style multiplayer experiment set within the Remedy Connected Universe that ended up becoming a major commercial disappointment for the studio. Now, seven years after the original Control, Remedy is returning with the game that really matters: Control Resonant. At first glance, it appears to have the same strange tone, visual style, and atmosphere that have defined Remedy’s previous games, but once you actually start playing, you quickly realize this is a very different beast. It has more in common with the 2013 DMC Devil May Cry reboot than the original Control when it comes to combat, mixed together with the open-world design philosophy that dominated the mid-2010s. Somehow, though, underneath all of that is still one of the most imaginative games I’ve played this year.
Instead of returning as Jesse Faden, Control Resonant puts you in control of her brother Dylan, who spent most of the original game as either a mystery or a walking supernatural disaster. After years of containment, Dylan is pulled back into the nightmare when Jesse disappears, and Manhattan begins collapsing under another paranatural event. The city is being reshaped by a new form of resonance, turning buildings, streets, subway tunnels, and entire sections of New York into impossible spaces that no longer follow normal reality. It is a smart change of scenery. The Oldest House was one of the best locations Remedy ever created, but simply doing it again would have been the safest and probably least interesting option. Taking Control outside and letting Remedy destroy Manhattan gives the art team significantly more room to play around, and they absolutely take advantage of it.
This is easily the strongest part of Control Resonant. Remedy understands surrealism in a way very few AAA developers do. Manhattan can look relatively normal one minute, only for you to turn a corner and suddenly find a skyscraper bent sideways, a street floating vertically through the air, or an entire environment seemingly folding in on itself. There are areas built around gravity anomalies where the normal concepts of floors, ceilings, and walls stop meaning anything, and Dylan’s abilities allow you to navigate through them in ways that turn exploration into an environmental puzzle. It is the kind of visual design where I regularly stopped progressing just because I wanted to look around. Even when Resonant starts falling into familiar open-world habits, the actual world you are exploring never feels familiar. The biggest change, however, is the combat. The original Control was essentially a supernatural third-person shooter, with Jesse throwing furniture across rooms while switching between different forms of the Service Weapon. Dylan is much more physical. His primary weapon, the Aberrant, can transform into multiple melee forms, and the entire combat system has been redesigned around getting closer to enemies. This is where that DmC: Devil May Cry comparison really started forming in my head. Combat is faster, flashier, and much more focused on chaining attacks together while constantly moving through the environment. You are launching yourself through encounters, pulling objects toward you, throwing debris, transforming the Aberrant, and mixing supernatural abilities into melee combinations. When everything clicks, it feels fantastic. There is an aggressive momentum to Dylan that separates him from Jesse while still making the game unmistakably Control. You are not simply standing behind cover and waiting for your powers to recharge. The game constantly wants you moving forward, and by the later portions of the game, when more abilities and upgrades become available, encounters can become controlled chaos in the best possible way. Remedy has always been good at making destruction look impressive, and Resonant gives you plenty of excuses to turn a room into complete garbage within thirty seconds.
Unfortunately, the move toward action-RPG mechanics also introduces one of the game’s biggest problems: enemies can take way too much punishment. There are encounters where the combat stops feeling intense and starts feeling exhausting because you are repeating the same combinations against an enemy whose health bar refuses to move. It is especially noticeable earlier in the game before Dylan’s abilities really begin opening up. This is not enough to ruin the combat, but it does occasionally turn what should be a quick, violent encounter into several minutes of beating on the same group of enemies. Then we get to the open world, which is probably going to be the most divisive part of Control Resonant. The game is built around large, distinct zones filled with optional discoveries, hidden encounters, upgrades, side objectives, collectibles, and plenty of reasons to wander away from the main path. On paper, that sounds perfect for Control. In practice, it occasionally feels like Remedy found an open-world design document from 2015 and decided it needed to check off a few boxes. Some of those distractions lead to incredible little pieces of Remedy weirdness. Others exist primarily to give you another icon to walk toward. That creates a strange contradiction. This is one of the most creatively designed worlds Remedy has ever made, trapped inside one of the most conventional structures Remedy has ever used. I wanted to explore because the world itself was fascinating, not because another symbol appeared on the map. There were moments when I ignored objectives entirely and just wandered through Manhattan looking for another bizarre altered location, and those were often some of my favorite parts of the game. Then there were other stretches where the amount of side content started turning exploration into a checklist. Bigger does not automatically mean better, and Control Resonant occasionally forgets that.
Thankfully, the actual storytelling still has that Remedy flavor. Documents, environmental details, bizarre FBC procedures, surreal conversations, and unexplained events continue to make this universe feel much larger than whatever story is directly happening in front of you. Dylan also turns out to be a surprisingly good protagonist. Making him playable could have easily felt like switching from the interesting Faden sibling to the backup Faden sibling, but his history with Jesse and the Bureau gives him a very different relationship with this world. He is not stepping into the FBC as an outsider fascinated by its mysteries. He is someone whose life has already been destroyed by it. That gives his story a more personal quality. Dylan is powerful, but he is also carrying years of anger, guilt, and resentment. The larger supernatural threat is obviously important, but some of the most interesting moments come from watching him deal with everything that happened before the game even started. I still prefer Jesse as a character, but by the end of Resonant, Dylan no longer feels like someone who exists primarily because Jesse needed a brother for the plot of the first game. And despite all my complaints about open-world bloat, RPG mechanics, and occasionally exhausting enemies, Control Resonant kept pulling me back in because I genuinely wanted to see what Remedy was going to show me next. That is ultimately what separates this from the countless other oversized action RPGs being released today. Another developer could copy the progression system, combat structure, or map design, but I don’t think they could copy the moment when Manhattan suddenly folds in half while some incomprehensible supernatural creature is attacking you and an FBC employee is calmly explaining the situation like they are filing an insurance claim.
Control Resonant does not reach the heights of Alan Wake 2, and I am not convinced that making Control bigger was necessarily the direction the series needed to go. The open-world structure occasionally dilutes the focused weirdness that made the original so special, and some of its RPG systems feel like they exist because modern games are simply expected to have them. But when Remedy stops filling the map and starts breaking reality, there still isn’t another developer making games quite like this. It is messy, occasionally bloated, sometimes frustrating, visually incredible, mechanically satisfying, and endlessly imaginative. Basically, it is Remedy trying to make a modern action RPG without completely losing the personality that made people care about Remedy games in the first place. Thankfully, most of that personality survived the transition.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 Pro
