If I have been solely allowed to present a single, solitary purpose for making an attempt Control, I’d in all probability decide on this: it has probably the most satisfying “throw desk at face” interplay I’ve skilled in a game. Yes, much more so than Half-Life 2. Maybe it’s the slower flying velocity of the desk, providing you with extra time to anticipate the blow. Maybe it’s the recoil of the face. Or possibly it’s simply how the desk, or whichever piece of workplace fixture you’re telekinetically hurling, impacts in a hilarious explosion of shards and scraps.
You in all probability couldn’t name Control underrated, however I by no means felt its fight particularly obtained the respect it deserves. While you will have a gun, and a button to crouch behind partitions, it’s solely actually a shooter till a floppy disk offers you telekinesis and a TV helps you to fly. From there, the fights – and there are a whole lot of them – turn into totally three-dimensional ballets of breathless mid-air evasives and more and more determined furniture-flinging. It’s dramatic and kinetic and an absolute hoot, in a method that you just’d completely miss out on should you simply suppose “Well it’s a Remedy game so I ought to in all probability use the pistol”. No! Throw issues!
I like the setting too: the brutalist headquarters of a G-man company that’s mainly the SCP Foundation if it was extra laidback about granting its staff superpowers. The bizarre sci-fi facet might arguably have been pushed even more durable, however there are a great deal of mundane-made-odd mini-mysteries to dig into, and the constructing’s rebellious interpretations on the legal guidelines of area and time make for some hanging sights and scenes. Including, thanks additionally to what I understood to be a haunted cassette participant, one totally sensible musical set piece.