Control: Ultimate Edition

 PlayStation 5
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 358 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 268 out of 358
  2. Mixed: 57 out of 358
  3. Negative: 33 out of 358
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  1. SplitMind
    Jul 18, 2021
    4
    Do you like the colour red? How about one-dimensional combat and endless office environments? Well buckle-up, as Control is still not the game for you. I am perplexed at how a shiny crimson gloss has subverted proper scrutiny of this very dated game.

    One of the selling points of Control is graphics. I only played on performance mode and the 60fps did largely hold up, so credit where    Do you like the colour red? How about one-dimensional combat and endless office environments? Well buckle-up, as Control is still not the game for you. I am perplexed at how a shiny crimson gloss has subverted proper scrutiny of this very dated game.

    One of the selling points of Control is graphics. I only played on performance mode and the 60fps did largely hold up, so credit where it's due. However, there's not much else positive about the graphics. The awful level design means you're going to be seeing a lot of repetition. The majority of the game plays like an office simulator with endless clinical corridors. It's a nice touch that the environment is quite destructive, but this is a one-dimensional gimmick that wears off its novelty fairly quickly.

    As I mentioned above, when environments are not bland or dark, they are nauseatingly red. This is to indicate the presence of 'The Hiss' similar to corruption seen in HZD. Used sparingly this could have been great, however in its abundance it becomes irritating as it also makes enemies and traversal more difficult to navigate. Having said that, the PS5 is clearly what Control's graphics were designed for, not the PS4.

    The gameplay of Control grinded my gears quite a bit. The first thing that flabbergasted me was the map and level design. This is bewilderingly awful. The map is an incoherent mess; it's incompletely labelled and despite being messy still isn't detailed enough to tell me where I'm going or how to get there.

    This is where the level design has earned great scorn from me. The levels are simply far too vast, repetitive and empty. This is much more prescient in the early hours, as the game starts going outside the box in the final stages but is too little to late by this point. The game is a cross between an office and a factory, with some supernatural elements thrown in. Prepare for long, meandering levels where you fight the same enemies and complete basically the same tasks for 70% of the game.

    However, the cardinal sin for me is that the layout of the game is so bad that mission instructions that are also vague left me wondering where the hell I was meant to go or how to get there. I resorted to online guides so many times; sometimes my own cluelessness, however mostly due to the bad level design. Some people say they enjoy the blind exploration however I do not enjoy having my time wasted like that when exploration provides scant rewards.

    I will say one bittersweetly positive thing about Control's gameplay, and that is the accessibility options. Without these there is no way I would have completed level 3, never mind the main game. Immortality and one-shot kills were essential for me to get through the bad and repetitive game design to see if there was anything actually rewarding about it.

    The final levels do start thinking outside the box, but as mentioned above there was no likelihood of me getting that far, making me think developers themselves were aware of the game's limitations. Kudos to them for accessibility, but it only highlighted to me the bad game design.

    Another of Control's selling points is the telekinetic powers. Whilst these are very fun at first, the aforementioned repetition really sets in quickly and one-shot kills are far more helpful and faster. People seem to laud the psychic powers but it's not exactly ground-breaking or new.

    When it comes to the story, I think they seriously screwed up here as well. Prioritising atmosphere, mystery and ambience really backfired for me. It led to serious pacing issues, as a good 50% of the game you're hearing random diatribes with little meaning. Then in the final levels everything is thrown at you but by this point I was skipping cut-scenes out of boredom. Had the game been better paced and less obsessed with being an X-Files-Resident Evil Sci-Fi combo I would have enjoyed the story. I think the story pacing could have held up had the rest of the game been enjoyable, but as you can see I didn't enjoy any aspect of the game.

    Overall, the only control necessary here was my controlling my patience with this game. The critical acclaim it has gathered makes me think it just isn't to my tastes or there isn't enough critique or scrutiny in games. One final thing I'd like to highlight is a worrying trend that we're seeing a lot of upgraded PS4 games appearing on PS5 when I would much rather have some fresh innovation appropriate for what we call "next-gen".    … Expand
  2. iCatalinul
    Jul 4, 2021
    4
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Control has an interesting setting, nice visuals (the ray tracing is quite nice), an interesting vibe and the environment is destructible but no depth. I really wanted to like this game, glad I didn’t buy it at launch would have been a waste of money. The story is contrived and mysterious for the sake of being mysterious the writing is lazy and obtuse and the main missions amount to a flurry of fetch quests. The main protagonist is bland and the voice actors phoned it in for the most part, the inner monologue is really uninspired (dialog? - she seems to have a voice in her head that you can’t hear and only are aware of it because of some visual cues, it seems Remedy spent their money on cheesy live action footage and didn’t have enough for one more voice actor, hell they could have used the same actor with some filters on her voice) and the supporting cast is just there, doing nothing and blurting exposition - mind you badly written one.

    The premise is stupid, this girl becomes the Director of a Federal organisation because a gun apparently chose her?? what the actual hell?!

    The combat is probably the worst offender, no scratch that, the level design is probably even worse oh I seem to forget the minimap, worst UI ever. I’m sorry about Remedy, they made Max Payne, but they should have called it a day there and move one, instead we got Alan Wake (which is an highly overrated title) Quantum Break and Control. All in all there are some side quest which have interesting bosses but it seems that they couldn’t even balance the game right since the spikes in difficulty are just obnoxious. For the most part it is a power fantasy, except for like 3 boss fights that are annoyingly hard and seem to be that way for padding.

    The story is badly written, leaving a lot of loose ends that beg for closure but are just left hanging, I have a feeling the writers wrote themselves into a corner and didn’t have the common sense to admit they screwed it up and just left it there, the ending is bad, like really bad.

    I cannot recommend this game and I’m surprised Remedy still exists as a game studio.    … Expand
  3. Yourmumsbills
    Feb 13, 2021
    3
    I won't go into a full review of this game as it's been out for some time, and by now you know what it's all about. What I'm not sure about is what is considered "ultimate" about this updated version of Control. The issues that the original version are still here, primarily some serious texture problems. Many of the surfaces look like they've been painted with metallic glitter paint! thisI won't go into a full review of this game as it's been out for some time, and by now you know what it's all about. What I'm not sure about is what is considered "ultimate" about this updated version of Control. The issues that the original version are still here, primarily some serious texture problems. Many of the surfaces look like they've been painted with metallic glitter paint! this occurs all over the game in large areas and just looks awful, the same can be said for the character models which all look rather disturbing, with wonky eyes and janky facial animations. Graphically it looks like nothing has actually been done to the new version at all. The only difference i could find was that the game does run significantly better in 60fps mode, but aside from that it feels like the same game it was before, with none of the graphical issues fixed. The fact that Remedy expected people to pay again for this so called upgrade, is laughable. Actually lowered my score even further since being reminded of the sh*tty save system, or lack thereof. dying multiple times and having to run halfway across the map to get back to where you were just makes for a complete lack of any fun and is really fu*king annoying.… Expand
  4. EvgenyBychkov8
    Feb 12, 2021
    0
    Игра без сюжета, без геймдизайна, без интересных врагов/персонажей/уровней. Пустое место сделанное за 3 копейки
  5. MaYoungZee
    May 15, 2021
    1
    Sooooo boring game I couldn't wait until the end of the game... Sometimes best games don't make me wait to see its ending...
  6. suleymancakir31
    Feb 4, 2021
    0
    Worst save system ever. Just pressed the wrong button on the abilities menu and lost all of my constructs. You can't even go back because the game saves literally everything you do. No motivation to continue playing.
  7. FeP77
    Apr 20, 2021
    3
    Quite a good game but it miss something. Graphic is not bad, story is quite interesting, the best part is fighting using super power. Most of documents you find are useless and boring.
  8. Denarzi
    Nov 8, 2021
    2
    I cannot believe the amount of positive reviews for this game. (edit: upon reading many of the positive reviews I am actually convinced they were written either by actual AIs, people who didn't even play the game, or just morons.) The writers (both of the reviews and game) should be deeply ashamed. They (the game developers) took a great concept, which they even marketed as based on SCPI cannot believe the amount of positive reviews for this game. (edit: upon reading many of the positive reviews I am actually convinced they were written either by actual AIs, people who didn't even play the game, or just morons.) The writers (both of the reviews and game) should be deeply ashamed. They (the game developers) took a great concept, which they even marketed as based on SCP Foundation, and absolutely ruined it. The main character won't shut the **** up. It's maddening. She constantly narrates everything with the most inane commentary of all time. There is zero immersion because you are not the main character, some moron is. The best parts of the game are totally immolated by this. The gameplay loop is also tragically bad. Run through office space after office space shooting enemies who for some reason take your entire clip to kill, but themselves are armed with SMGs and sometimes even forcefields (that also take your whole clip to bring down). There are no difficulty settings either, except to make yourself invincible or turn on one-hitting. Which of course, ruins any tension in the fights. The dialogue is all poorly written exposition, and then followed by more inane and incredibly annoying narration by the main character. All I could think is "why won't she shut the **** up so I can have my own thoughts about what is happening." The mystery and paranormal intrigue is the only redeeming factor, but they ripped the concepts straight from SCP, which is a much much better use of your time if you enjoy that kind of fiction content, because SCP contains literally thousands of stories, and "objects of power", and this game contains maybe 5 or so. The game's best quality is that it isn't totally linear, and you can explore around and find clues and hints about the mysterious objects and events. But this is not the focus, and there isn't nearly enough of this content to justify the game's existence.

    Do not buy this game. I was lucky that I got it for free from a friend and didn't waste a dime on it    … Expand
  9. frederik1478
    May 24, 2023
    4
    This games biggest problem is repetition and the boring level design

    . I completed this game from some years ago on the PS4 and I had fun so I played it again The characters are not interesting. They're just talking about the lore and there's not really any development and the gameplay gets tedious after a while because you just doing the same thing and because it's all grey blocks the    This games biggest problem is repetition and the boring level design

    . I completed this game from some years ago on the PS4 and I had fun so I played it again The characters are not interesting. They're just talking about the lore and there's not really any development and the gameplay gets tedious after a while because you just doing the same thing and because it's all grey blocks the level the sign it gets boring for eyes.

    After awhile, I just had to ask myself if I even wanted to finish this game and I have to say no because i just get too bored.    … Expand
  10. Karski
    Aug 13, 2022
    1
    PS4 progress won't transfer to PS5.
    UNPLAYABLE
    PS4 progress won't transfer to PS5.
    UNPLAYABLE
  11. Young_Fawn
    Jun 21, 2023
    3
    Not for me personally.

    Now maybe I didn't give the game a chance but I've played nearly Three hours of it and I don't see any real reason to continue. I do believe there is a good game in here, the amount of positive reviews I see for the game tells me that I -must- be missing something or maybe it's just one of those things we can chalk up to a "Yeah, it just wasn't for him, it    Not for me personally.

    Now maybe I didn't give the game a chance but I've played nearly Three hours of it and I don't see any real reason to continue.

    I do believe there is a good game in here, the amount of positive reviews I see for the game tells me that I -must- be missing something or maybe it's just one of those things we can chalk up to a "Yeah, it just wasn't for him, it seems."

    First of all let me say that graphically the game is gorgeous, I'm running on quite a high end PC and the game looks genuinely phenomenal and really establishes a certain aesthetic of that 70s/80s office feel and the set pieces were genuinely good to look at.

    The passive storytelling is another part of the game I'm fond of, the redacted notes and letters you find around the place really help you feel like there's been more going on in the world the developers created rather than just you as a character being inserted in and everything goes from there.

    Combat is okay, it's nothing overly special but it's good enough so that it's not super tedious.

    For me, the protagonist isn't likeable, as the player, I genuinely don't care about anything she has to say or what her actual goal is, the inner monologues as well; for me, seem really frustrating because it takes a while to realise as to why she's having these inner monologues, and perhaps for a lack of a better word, the whole thing seemed a bit pretentious.

    So the game does require a bit of Self-Navigation but the map barely does a good job at helping you out here, you can never tell what floor you're on according to the map, maybe I've missed something like a floor switch button and if I have, then that's my fault; but I found that the self navigation in a giant building in a game like this just wasn't for me.

    For me, the game just wasn't fun and the story wasn't compelling enough to keep me going, I've heard it gets better after the four-five hour mark but I genuinely have next to no desire to hit that "Launch" button. When I turn the game off, I'm not excited to put it back on.

    To reiterate, I do think there is a good game in here, potentially one I might enjoy; but for where I left off and the experience I've had with it already, it's just not for me and I can't recommend it for the above reasons.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

18
#18 Best PlayStation 5 Game of 2021
34
#34 Most Discussed PlayStation 5 Game of 2021

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
85

Generally favorable reviews - based on 27 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 27
  3. Negative: 0 out of 27
  1. PSX Extreme
    Oct 4, 2023
    86
    By combining elements of Neo-Noir, urban fantasy, and conspiracy theory science fiction, Remedy’s Control offers a lot for anyone looking for a piece of medium with a good dollop of old and experimental game mechanics mixed with fun combat and a great story. While the combat could use a little tweaking, there’s no denying how much the folks over at Remedy value and respect the lore and characters they’ve created. Here’s hoping the sequel improves upon this foundation and gives us something truly amazing.
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  2. CD-Action
    Oct 12, 2021
    85
    My first experience with Control was underwhelming due to my base PS4 not being powerful enough to do this great game justice. Now I wish I waited for the next-gen version. The Ultimate Edition finally looks and runs as it should (however, if you want ray tracing, you’ll have to accept 30 FPS) and also offers two expansions that tie the story to Alan Wake. [04/2021, p.34]
  3. Cubed3
    Jun 22, 2021
    80
    Control is an amazing experience that is befitting of the next gen consoles. It has killer Ray Tracing features, unfortunately hampered by their implementation, and a rock solid performance mode which feels amazing. The truly twisted dystopian world of the FBC is one that will persist in player's memories for a long time with its strange otherworldly places, alongside its humanising story. Highly recommended to all PlayStation 5 owners looking for an action-adventure with some real depth and fun combat!
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