Control Ultimate Edition

So far the game is very enjoyable and atmospheric, the style and effects are very appealing. Unfortunately the game is frequently crashing and making it hard to recommend especially as this seems not to be an uncommon occurrence for other players. The baseline version of the game has been out for quite a while now so you'd think any problems like this would have been ironed out by now, hopefully it's being worked on and I can revisit this review with a better score in the near future.

This is essentially Max Payne (Remedy 2001) with magic powers instead of Bullet-Time. The entirely skillbased core gameplay-loop is thus very small and tight with LOTS of intense, frenetic and chaotic (and vertical) fights and few rewarded quiet explorations in between The aggressive AI strongly encourages you to actively take the fight to the enemy, instead of hiding behind cover. You also have to mostly crowd control enemies. Not dealing damage equally often results in getting flanked, followed by sudden death that mostly comes from the angle of your blind spot. This is the premise to enjoying this game. The grind is rather low if you don't fast travel all the time and do take some timed missons. Difficulty is already high to begin with but ramps up quite a lot in the DLC stories. Unfortunately this doesn't come from more difficult enemies but from making the old ones bullet-sponges, drawing out fights into endurance tests and boss fights have heavy difficulty spikes, compared to the rest of the game and some bossfights are more annoying (IMHO bordering on unfair design) than enjoyable. CONTROL has no traditional difficulty settings, Instead gameplay aspects can be adjusted. While I encourage you to not give up too fast, !!!DO NOT HESITATE to use these!!! if it makes the game more enjoyable for you!!! esp. in the DLC. This is an awesome game with lots of great David Lynch / X-Files stories and moments! The pacing is slow _and_ always a step ahead of you at the same time, which generates a perfect level of spooky tension that never lets up but slowly but steadily gets to you. But I have a few issues: 1. buggy - CTD mostly during bossfights - worst is the Anchor-fight - only real workaround is activating One Shot-Option. 2. Bossfight difficulty spikes esp. but not limited to the DLC. 3. Dying costs 10% ingame currency - punishing experimentation 4. Respawn / continue only from the last Control Point, so only exit from here. 5. uneven lightning 4.5 Stars

I tried Control a year ago and had some problems, it was hard in some area and I stoped playing. Luckily I got Control Ultimate Edition later on gog and give it a second chance and realised that I selected wrong skilltree and went to endgame area in earlygame at the first try. So the second run didn't wake any frustration. Story is confusing, but combat is convincly fun. The art and atmosphere are also worth playing. @RICK-DECKARD Don't know if you have the same bug, but I had one too. Game crashes every few seconds if I had firefox open in the background. This was caused by a firefox plugin. So have a look at your tasks.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: The beginning of the game is quite boring. You walk through endless gray offices and industrial rooms, shooting the same couple of enemies, get a McGuffin, return to base, upgrade your weapon/powers, rinse and repeat. Very basic RPG stuff in one of the most monotonous environments imaginable. The fact that the protagonist rarely shows any emotion when faced with all this supernatural craziness doesn't help. And yes, one of the side quests crashes the game no matter what you do. It's not until about halfway throught the main campaign that the game mercifully gives you some more varied environments and creative side quests to mix things up, and the gameplay starts to get fun as you basically become Supergirl. The story is okay as it has some interesting, mysterious lore, but is fairly predictable and not very scary (unless you're terrified of red clouds and floating, chanting bodies). It's also extremely anti-climactic as it feels like it's building up to a big boss fight, but then you litterally just press F to win. Thank god for the DLC included in this edition, because otherwise I would have left the game quite dissatisfied. Both DLCs give you whole new environments to explore, new mods to collect, and a worthy boss battle. Overall, it's not the best RPG, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some fun with it. Oh, and the music is quite good, especially the song in the music room.

This game tries to be way more intelligent than it actually is. I finished Mission 5 now, an quite honestly, i dread the thought of running through the next retro office hallway, hurling objects against the same 5 enemies and collect a bunch of notes and nideos, before getting summoned to a time intensive side mission where i have to kill the same 5 enemies over and over again. The game is so obsessed with its oh so mysterious atmosphere and story that the gameplay itself becomes an aftertaught. Combat is overly simplistic. It never quite explains its crafting mechanisms, and for all the powers you actually get, you can never do anything interesting with them. Game world and atmosphere wise, Control seems to take inspiration from Prey 2017, but never quite catches what made that game so interesting: The freedom it gives the player while exploring and how to take on enemies and obstacles. Maybe i watch the rest of the game in a longplay , but gameplay wise this is just such a bore that i cannot be bothered to finish it.