Control Resonant: Remedy's Best-Looking Game and Its Most Divisive

Control Resonant: Remedy's Best-Looking Game and Its Most Divisive

Remedy has been walking a tightrope for years now, and Control Resonant feels like the moment they either stick the landing or eat concrete. The original Control was one of the most refreshing third-person action games of its generation. Weird, atmospheric, dripping with style. Resonant picks up that thread and runs with it, delivering what is easily the studio's most visually stunning game to date. The Oldest House has never looked this good, and the environmental destruction paired with Remedy's signature lighting work makes every encounter feel like a physics demo that somehow also has a soul.

Combat is where Resonant earns its keep. The telekinetic abilities from the first game return with expanded options, and chaining them together in the middle of a firefight still feels fantastic. There's a weight and responsiveness to Jesse's powers that a lot of action games fumble. Remedy didn't fumble it. Enemy variety is improved over the original, and the Hiss encounters in the later chapters ramp up in ways that force you to use your full toolkit instead of just spamming Launch at everything that moves. The new resonance mechanic, tying your ability strength to environmental interaction, adds a layer of strategy that rewards aggressive, creative play.

The story is where people are going to split. Remedy leans harder into the connected universe stuff here, pulling threads from Alan Wake 2, the original Control, and their broader lore. If you're invested in that web, Resonant rewards you with some genuinely satisfying payoffs. If you're not, or if you bounced off Alan Wake 2's structure, there are stretches in the middle act that feel like lore dumps dressed up as gameplay. Polygon's review called it a near-total miss, and while I think that's way too harsh, I understand the frustration. The pacing in chapters four through six drags, and some of the narrative choices prioritize mystery-box intrigue over coherent storytelling.

The critical divide is real, but the numbers tell their own story. A 90% positive score on Steam over tens of thousands of reviews doesn't happen by accident. Players are responding to the core experience, which is polished, gorgeous, and mechanically satisfying. There's also a story making the rounds about pirates going back and buying the game after playing it, which says something about the quality of what Remedy built here. In an era where people will find any excuse not to pay for a game, that's noteworthy.

Worth mentioning: Remedy is under real financial pressure right now. This isn't a studio with infinite runway. Control Resonant needed to perform, and the early reception suggests it's doing well enough to keep them afloat. The just-announced post-launch update adding New Game++ (unlimited scaling, not just a second run) and a photo mode shows they're committed to supporting it. That kind of quick follow-up a week after launch signals confidence in the product.

The game isn't perfect. The middle act pacing issues are real, some of the boss encounters rely too heavily on spectacle over mechanical depth, and the PC port, while stable for me, has reports of stuttering on lower-end hardware that Remedy needs to address. But the highs here are high. The final three chapters are some of the best content Remedy has ever produced, and the combat loop kept pulling me back in even after credits rolled.

If you liked the original Control, this is a confident, expanded follow-up that respects your time and your investment in the world. If you're new to Remedy's stuff, Resonant is playable standalone, but you'll get more out of it with context. Either way, it's one of the better action games released this year, and Remedy deserves the support.