Ephemeris of the Mind (Game Review) Control
Time to read: 3 min read
Game Cover
Jahaa, jaa-a, you think there's a dog buried in this? I can tell you are not a yesterday's grouse's son. That's why you'll make a great assistant.
Platform played on: Xbox One (One X Enhanced)
Review
Ever since playing Alan Wake in middle school, I've been a big fan of Remedy's method of story-telling: clean, polished, with stunning visuals. Control is no exception.
Stunning Colours
The game follows Jesse Faden, who has entered the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBI for paranormal activities) in search of her brother. An evil entity has corrupted the building of the headquarters and Jesse must adventure through the different departments (and different dimensions) to restore balance to the FBC and rescue her brother.
While most narrative-driven games tend to dump the story onto the player throughout the game, Control's story progression is more of a slow drip: intentionally abstract at the beginning and slowly pieced together as the game progresses, like a mosaic. One of my favourite aspects of Control is the collectibles, some of which are entertaining and some of which provide crucial context in understanding the main plot. One has to really put in effort to understand Control's story as it's designed to be unclear.
Control is a third-person shooter with some platforming elements; the level design is excellent and the gameplay is very polished. I really liked how the core mechanics (shooting enemies) is very simple, but there are opportunities to make it more complex by using new weapons and abilities unlocked as the game progresses. I also thought the near-complete destructibility of the environment added an extra layer of immersion to the game.
Polished Gameplay
Conclusion
A very polished game with an interesting story.
Overall rating: 8.0
DLC Reviews
The Foundation
This DLC uncovers a whole new area within the Oldest House (headquarters of FBC). This DLC encompasses what DLCs are intended to be (an extension of the base game). The map is very massive and a lot of new content is added. I especially liked one of the side missions involving an appliance. I thought that the DLC level design might even be better than that of the main game. There are many cool area to discover each with various secrets; I had to use guides to uncover most of them.
Overall rating: 8.2
AWE
This DLC also adds a new area within the Oldest House (the Investigations Sector). AWE stands for "Altered World Events" which occurs when paranormal forces intrude upon perceived reality. The AWE in question is the Brightfalls incident from Alan Wake, which I thought was very cool. Much of the Alan Wake story is revisited and it's very interesting to view the story from an outsider's perspective. This DLC felt much smaller than The Foundation but featured some very memorable boss fights. I was a bit disappointed that there were no Taken enemies but overall it's still a decent DLC.