Control Resonant review: "Deeply weird with wondrous supernatural vistas but bafflingly dull combat"

Control Resonant is a weird game, and for once with a Remedy Entertainment joint it's not all for reasons I like. Playing through Dylan Faden's open adventure across a Manhattan warped by paranatural forces, bonking angry creatures with an equally paranatural big stick, I'm often left scratching my head. Sure, this isn't a numbered sequel, but it is Control's successor – so why is this a much longer, more spread-out, open world (ahem, open-ended world) adventure? Why has the snappy shooting been replaced with melee? Why is the attack, attack, attack, dodge mashy combat loop I'm doing in hour one feel almost unchanged by hour 24?

There's still a lot to love about Control Resonant. Some of it's carried over from the original Control, a basis of fantastic, supernatural worldbuilding revolving around the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) and their investigations into unusual events. Expect lots of half-redacted notes to gleefully pore over. Some of it's fresh, including new Altered World Events (AWEs) that fit smartly into its wide open world, and the main threat – the Patterning – refracting and warping the world into kaleidoscopically gorgeous shapes, where every boss fight introduction is awe (that's lowercase) inspiring. In the broad view, it might be for the best that Remedy continues to create unexpected games even across its sequels, though I finish this journey wishing it had more of the restraint and tightness of the original game and its DLCs.

Fade-n Manhattan

Each Zone of Manhattan, from the inverted gravity streets of the West Incursion Zone, to the rain-slick rooftops in the Evacuation Zone, and the mold-infested Park, is large, and filled with mobs of roaming enemies – smartly indicated through ominous, eerie projections that cast red shadows on brickwork.

Though Dylan quickly unlocks traversal powers that build on Jesse's from the first game – a sprint, a hovering double-jump, and a chain of air-dashes – points of interest are quite spread out, and I can spend a lot of time simply pressing the run button for bursts of speed as I jog between events and FBC resource caches.

At a distance, these distinct areas have gorgeous vistas, but ultimately the rhythm of exploration remains similar no matter where you are, the biggest switch-ups coming in a large number of bottomless pits later on. Otherwise, these streets, rooftops, and occasional factory or warehouse interiors that house the game's many melee battles could be mistaken for one another. There's always similar cafes, restaurants, and laundromats to nose in, and subways to explore. Both The Patterning and urban design can explain why parts of a city might look similar, but it can get a bit dull to navigate.

I do appreciate how early on you're let off the leash (so-to-speak – you actually have a shock device in your skull that could kill you because you're deemed too paranaturally dangerous by the FBC), with several points to investigate across core zones as you please that'll grant Dylan additional powers to help him on his main quest.

Dimensional Faults he follows in the wake of his missing sister serve up traversal powers, like the ability to walk on inverted gravity walls and ceilings. Resonants – humans twisted by the Patterning, such as the Dancer who has taken over the theater – grant more explosive powers, such as being able to telekinetically launch debris at foes, or summon molded turret allies to spit poison at enemies.

Spread thinly through the city are neat side-puzzles, many of which unmarked until you encounter them, which build on environmental deduction from the first game. Weirdly in this open-ended, self-described action RPG, some of the most fun I have is figuring out a secret washing machine code in a seemingly out-of-business laundromat, or having to find the odd-taxi-cab-out in an interdimensional limbo.

Guns out

Like Jesse's shapeshifting Service Weapon gun in Control, Dylan's Aberrant melee weapon can transform, though can only have two main forms equipped at once along with a combo finisher form. Basically, that means picking from one primary weapon for light attacks, and a secondary for heavy attacks.

Early on, not being allowed to play around with these before committing to a selection frustrates me, as I end up saddled with the drill which I find awkward to use for the opening stretch – forcing me to stay in place as it rotates while approximately one million goons hurl projectiles at me. But, by the end of the game, I had so many resources to spare I could easily afford almost every upgrade. Some forms have wider sweeps, some attack faster, have greater knockback, or, say, might offer large stagger damage to open enemies up for finisher moves if you can stay still long enough to charge them up.

You know how some games with melee combat have those annoying projectile enemies that snipe you mid-combo? Control Resonant is unfortunately a game made almost entirely up of that feeling. Encounters with Heavy enemies – indicated by a bigger red blob on the mini-map – can even respawn smaller enemies endlessly, so there's no way to get rid of them while they all circle you, throwing rocks.

Like in the first Control, most encounters, even regular ones, are made up of multiple waves that can make fights drawn out and tiresome. It could grate in Control, but across an even longer game you really grow a special hatred for the likes of the big flying things that shoot a massive laser at you from the other side of the street. They can be staggered out of this move with, say, the massive hammer, but don't worry – they eventually introduce armored health bars that block stagger until depletion.

Enemy variety isn't that large across Control Resonant's main factions, so you'll be mashing very similar groups of enemies across many hours of play. Rarely is encounter design engaging. Very few fights are interestingly constructed in terms of enemy types or the areas you fight them in. Because combat revolves around being close to foes, even gravity inverted areas don't create many wrinkles – once planted to a surface, combat is fairly static.

There are potential synergies within Control Resonant's power and ability skilltrees that gesture towards the idea of build crafting – not that I needed it playing on default difficulty (granular accessibility options are available). If you prefer using Command abilities to summon your own allies in battle, many skill nodes can boost that. Likewise, if you both mold poison an enemy and then set them on fire they'll explode, which can quickly deplete the hefty health bars coming your way by the endgame. But, pretty much every skill is good to have, and unlock quickly enough you don't have to think too much about what you're grabbing.

Take control?

Control Resonant's biggest problem is, ironically, the lack of a need for you to take control of the action. For all of its flashy powers and stats, what you do in a fight against enemy groups or bosses never really changes across the entire game.

Even if I'm assured there is more happening behind the scenes thanks to my ability upgrades, I still simply move next to an enemy to mash on them, perfect dodge to get a boost on subsequent strikes, and deploy powers as my meter fills up. It doesn't often matter which attacks or powers those are, just that I am next to an enemy continuing to press a button.

Yes, you can alter your combos by switching out your primary, secondary, and combo-ender powers, but only by accessing The Gap – not in the middle of combat itself. There's very little in the way of situational strategy that you'd get in, say, Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden, where you constantly switch up moves to counter what enemies are doing.

Partly, this comes down to Control Resonant taking a similar approach to the first Control but applying it to melee combat instead of shooting, and spreading the action thinly across large spaces you constantly run back and forth through. While Control also didn't have the deepest combat, switching gun forms there felt more reactive to the threat in front of you, and you were constantly using Jesse's powers to reposition and stay on the move through encounters in smaller areas where the environment had more effect. Melee here flattens that action, with the spiciest it gets being knocking enemies off rooftops (which, to be fair, is always a gaming delight).

Telekinetic throws allow for some distanced attacks, but only charge via melee so you always need to be getting stuck in. Some flourish is possible in the limited combos you can have set at any one time, but whenever I try to juice up my playstyle it always feels outmatched by the more whack-happy strategies. When boss battles and beefy foes are simpler to defeat by ignoring fancier powers, it's all too easy to fall into that rhythm. Compared to the first Control where I was constantly supplementing attacks with blasts of debris, I end up just dropping turrets and flame charging my weapon when power fills up and then forgetting about it. There's not much need to experiment, and when I do, it doesn't feel rewarding.

It can lead to an odd situation where many regular gangs of enemies are more dangerous for how they pile onto you than the Resonants themselves. These bosses are visually striking, but limp to actually fight. They all have few moves, and as they are all essentially one-on-one fights, they reveal how one-note the combat loop is. Dancer, for example, has beautiful, drummer-like, interpretative dance style animations. But, I simply attack, attack, attack, dodge, attack, attack, attack, dodge until the fight is over.

Disappointingly, these moments often fall flat narratively. There are glimmers of how sad the fates of these twisted Resonant humans are, but very little time to get involved in their personal stories.

The theater, for instance, is simply a space you enter and immediately jump into the boss fight. These are short, forgettable detours that don't do justice to them being in the game's title. The main narrative fares a smidge better, but can feel trapped in grappling with questions from the last game and offering few answers that actually expand on the wider story. Control Resonant loses itself between both, neither able to deliver satisfying, developed small paranatural narratives, or able to build effectively on what came before.

The shift in perspective from Jesse Faden to Dylan Faden doesn't work for me, either. Where Jesse was enigmatic, Dylan – now freed from his confinement as a test subject of sorts within the FBC's Oldest House – is a bit of a wet blanket. Sean Durrie is doing the best with what he's given, but the story struggles to make inhabiting him as a meek protagonist as interesting as his grayer, more antagonistic, Hiss-possessed appearance in the original.

It doesn't help that most of the FBC agents you're allied with absolutely hate Dylan (despite having kidnapped him as a child to put him through torturous experiments), giving Control Resonant a meaner tone than Remedy games usually have – which are often deeply weird but oddly welcoming. That dissonance does form part of Control Resonant's narrative, but it doesn't go far enough for me in reckoning with the FBC's cruel legacy. Perhaps I'm simply in a different headspace in 2026 than I was in 2019, but I left wanting a lot more from centering Dylan in the story.

Even so, for a Control fan like me, there are moments in Control Resonant I'll never forget. One playful format shift towards the late-game begins as a fun gimmick, but ends up delivering some of the game's most emotionally charged moments (and, unfortunately, makes me wish the rest of the game could keep up). Plumbing the depths of a high-rise makes as little sense as it sounds but is an absolutely stunning sequence that leads to an inversion of Control's famous Ashtray Maze that's understated and more moving as a result. The tailored, more structured moments are stronger than the more open approach elsewhere.

But, like the FBC poring over strange supernatural objects they don't understand, by credits I'm scribbling notes trying to make sense of it. Why is it so overly long? Why all the Action RPG stats when combat is relatively shallow? Why was this the direction of Control 2? I'll seal this one away for now, waiting for a reason to dive back into these records at a later date.

Take control of what to play next by checking out our best Remedy games ranking, our best open world games recommendations, or maybe even our list of the best action RPGs.