Control Ultimate Edition
Last updated: 2025-12-20
- Dynamic telekinetic combat system enhances gameplay
- Unique and immersive atmosphere captivates players
- Engaging narrative with deep and rich lore
- Repetitive and uninspired gameplay loops
- Frustrating navigation and map design issues
- Inconsistent FPS and poor optimization problems
Emotions
Players frequently cite confusing or poorly designed navigation, including unintuitive maps, excessive backtracking, and unclear objectives, as major sources of frustration. Additionally, repetitive gameplay loops, unbalanced difficulty (especially in boss fights), and persistent technical issues like bugs, crashes, and performance problems exacerbate the frustration.
The game often fails to meet high expectations due to underdeveloped storytelling, shallow characters, and repetitive or uninspired gameplay mechanics. Technical issues, such as unresolved bugs and performance problems, alongside unfulfilled potential in world-building and combat depth, contribute significantly to player disappointment.
Players are excited by the game's dynamic combat mechanics, particularly the telekinetic abilities and environmental destruction, which create a unique and engaging power fantasy. The surreal atmosphere, immersive world design, and connections to Remedy's broader universe (e.g., Alan Wake) also generate significant excitement and anticipation for sequels.
Satisfaction stems from the game's polished and responsive gameplay, particularly the creative use of telekinetic powers and physics-based combat. Players also appreciate the detailed world-building, engaging story, and overall value for money, especially when technical performance is smooth and stable.
Enjoyment is driven by the game's fluid and dynamic combat, engaging exploration, and the satisfaction of mastering unique abilities like levitation and telekinesis. The rich lore, immersive atmosphere, and replayability further enhance the overall positive experience.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 68% · Negative 32%. Score: 32 / 100
Positives:
- Combat is a major highlight, combining third-person shooting with telekinetic abilities like levitation, object manipulation, and environmental destruction. Players enjoy the fluidity, creativity, and satisfying physics interactions during battles.
- The gameâs setting is praised for its surreal, David Lynch-inspired atmosphere, blending brutalist architecture, eerie sound design, and immersive world-building. Players highlight the tension, mystery, and cinematic presentation as standout features.
- The game features a compelling storyline with intricate lore, often compared to SCP and delivered through collectibles, documents, and environmental storytelling. Players appreciate the depth, mystery, and gradual reveals that keep them engaged.
- Side quests and collectibles add significant replay value, offering meaningful exploration, lore expansion, and unique challenges. Players enjoy the variety and depth they bring to the overall experience.
- The gameâs physics system allows for highly interactive and destructible environments, adding depth to combat and exploration. Players appreciate the realism and creativity enabled by throwing objects, breaking structures, and leveraging terrain.
Negatives:
- Gameplay loops are criticized for being monotonous, with repetitive side quests, enemy respawns, and combat encounters. Players highlight a lack of variety in missions, puzzles, and enemy types, making the experience feel tedious over time.
- Players frequently report that combat is repetitive, frustrating, and poorly balanced. Issues include excessive difficulty spikes, unfair boss mechanics, and repetitive enemy encounters that disrupt exploration. The scaling system and lack of meaningful progression exacerbate frustration.
- Navigation is a major pain point due to confusing, multi-layered maps, poor objective tracking, and unclear indicators. Players frequently get lost, leading to unnecessary backtracking and frustration, especially in dark or complex areas.
- Frequent visual issues, such as blurry textures, missing assets, and graphical artifacts, detract from immersion. These problems persist even on high settings and are exacerbated by poor optimization and VRAM usage.
- The gameâs conclusion is widely criticized as anticlimactic, abrupt, or unresolved. Players express disappointment with the lack of a grand finale, unclear plot resolutions, and an underwhelming final boss fight.
Gameplay:
- Lore and storytelling are delivered through collectibles (documents, audio logs, videos) and environmental clues, encouraging non-linear exploration and puzzle-solving to uncover the narrative.
- Gameplay includes ability-gated areas, backtracking, and unlockable upgrades (e.g., weapons, powers), with enemies scaling to player progression to maintain challenge.
- The game blends third-person shooter mechanics with supernatural abilities, creating a fast-paced, skill-based combat system that rewards alternating between guns and powers.
- Players farm resources to upgrade weapons/abilities via randomized loot or crafting systems, though some criticize the system for lacking depth or being overly numerical.
- While levels feature unique designs (e.g., brutalist architecture), some players criticize them as linear, corridor-heavy, or confusing, impacting exploration and backtracking.
Performance:
- FPS stability varies drastically, with drops to 5â30 FPS even on high-end hardware (e.g., RTX 2060, 4070 Ti). Stuttering and freezing occur in demanding areas, though some players achieve stable performance with tweaks.
- The game is poorly optimized for both high-end and lower-end systems, with VRAM-heavy effects (e.g., destruction physics) causing blurry textures and performance drops. Ultrawide monitors and mid-range GPUs also suffer.
- Players report widespread graphical problems in both DirectX 11 and 12 modes, including texture blurring, black squares, micro-stuttering, and resolution drops. These issues persist regardless of settings or hardware, suggesting fundamental optimization flaws.
- DLSS and MSAA implementations introduce flickering, visual artifacts, and performance inconsistencies. While DLAA (DLSS at native resolution) helps, some players report reduced visual quality without FPS gains.
- Textures frequently fail to load or degrade to low resolution, requiring game resets. Slow texture streaming exacerbates the issue, particularly in DX12 mode.
Recommendations:
- The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy deep narratives, supernatural themes, and lore-heavy experiences like SCP, Lovecraftian horror, or Alan Wake. Its atmospheric and immersive storytelling is a recurring highlight.
- The gameâs surreal, uncanny atmosphere and mysticism are divisive. While some praise its uniqueness, others find it off-putting or overly niche.
- Players experiencing performance issues or bugs are advised to avoid the game until patches are released or request refunds if problems remain unresolved.
- Players looking for pure, linear, or fast-paced action may find the game unsuitable. It prioritizes narrative and atmosphere over relentless combat, which can feel slow or repetitive to some.
- While the game is highly recommended, many reviews suggest waiting for a discount (e.g., $25 or ~200 rubles) due to its flaws or performance issues. Full-price purchases are often debated.
Miscellaneous:
- Players report differing completion times, ranging from 12 hours for the main story to 40+ hours for 100% completion. The difficulty is rated as moderate (3/5).
- Reviewers note hints at ties to the *Alan Wake* universe but criticize the lack of clear establishment or payoff. Comparisons to Remedyâs other titles are frequent.
- Some players describe the game as 'boring' despite acknowledging redeeming qualities, while others are inspired to speedrun or praise sections like the *Ashtray Maze*.
- Mentions of upcoming DLCs create hesitation among players, with some delaying purchases until post-launch content is evaluated. *Foundation DLC* is specifically praised for its story and exploration.
- Players draw parallels to *Hitman* (UI/text), *Prototype* (gameplay), and *SCP* (setting/tone), suggesting the game borrows familiar elements from multiple genres.
