Conclusion

Gameplay-wise, Control is an extremely solid release in which you get to explore a large world that has countless points of interest, secrets, and Easter eggs. The story is a little bit confusing at first, but does get better, even though I never really felt completely reeled into it (I did complete the whole game). Just like all other recent game releases, Remedy has sprinkled some RPG elements on to their shooter: you have a basic character development skill tree and some crafting. What reminds me a little bit of Metroidvania games is the fact that your character incrementally acquires new abilities, which not only make her stronger, but also lets you reach new areas in the lavish maps—to find all those secrets.

Control takes inspiration from a lot of successful titles in PC gaming history. Obviously, the company's previous title "Quantum Break" had some influence, but I also felt reminded of "System Shock" and "Prey", by how the world is structured and the events unfold. The ability to throw objects is a refreshing change and quickly turns into an additional weapon you use to destroy enemies. As mentioned before, gated-off-areas that you can reach later remind of Metroid, Castlevania, or Zelda.

You have multiple weapons in your arsenal, which are basically the pistol, shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher even if the game doesn't call them that. In Control, you basically have a single firearm that "reconfigures" itself. To unlock a weapon you have to craft it first, from materials you find in world chests and dropped by enemies. The weapons can be enhanced further with mods that are relatively simple in concept and give +x% to a spec like recoil, reload speed, damage, etc. Obviously, certain weapons work better on certain enemies—you can only have two weapons equipped at the same time.

The puzzles in the game are pretty basic and everyone should be able to solve them quickly enough to not get frustrated. Several optional side missions are available too, and you can even do them after completing the main story. Gun-play is good, and the character's special abilities enhance that even further. Especially being able to pick up and throw objects makes combat so much more interesting. The enemies could definitely do with an AI upgrade though, as they are mostly just bullet sponges. A few bosses exist with slightly more complex mechanics, but nothing that's too difficult to handle.

Graphics are good, especially the richly detailed world objects add to the immersive experience. I do wish that the floors would have been more detailed, as they are mostly just completely flat surfaces. Even at the highest quality setting, many textures end up looking fairly low resolution. To alleviate that, some textures use computational shaders that basically add a film-grain effect, which ends up being slightly distracting because it creates an unnatural noise shimmer on these objects. A great rendering technique is that text on some objects is actually rendered as vector text—not a texture, which ensures super sharp details and crispness even when walking right up to them. Unlike most other games, Control has some world destruction built-in; you can throw most objects, and they properly interact with their surroundings. Your "throw" ability also has the ability to pull material out of walls, which adds some visual damage to them, but not enough to actually affect the level design. Characters are richly detailed and well-animated, especially our female protagonist looks extremely impressive rendering-wise, with outstanding facial animations that are better than what we've seen in most games. Overall graphics look "good," but are certainly not the best we've ever seen.

From a tech perspective, Control supports both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. We did all our testing with DirectX 12 as that's the only mode that optionally supports RTX raytracing. Performance is demanding on both AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards. At the highest setting with RTX disabled, you'll need a Radeon RX 5700, RTX 2060, or GTX 1080 Ti to achieve 60 FPS in 1080p. For 1440p, only the RTX 2080 Super and RTX 2080 Ti can deliver 60 FPS, and even the mighty RTX 2080 Ti can only deliver 36 FPS at 4K. That's why it's good that Remedy has included a ton of settings to improve FPS rates—upscaling is possible, too. This is where NVIDIA's DLSS technology comes in as it enhances traditional upscaling by filling in some missing details using artificial-intelligence. AMD's Radeon Image Sharpening works in Control, too.

NVIDIA is bundling Control with their most recent RTX game bundle, so it's not surprising that Control has an excellent raytracing implementation. Unlike most other games which only use a single raytracing effect, Control uses RTX for lighting, reflections, and shadows. Combined, these add impressive visuals that make the whole game more lifelike and interesting—when have you ever started shooting at your own reflection in a far away glass panel? As expected, RTX does come with a significant performance hit—when all RTX features are enabled, we see performance drop 40% to 50%. Still, even at that cost I'm tempted to say that this is the first game where RTX really makes a difference and raytracing can shine.