Control more of the action in Control

Control more of the action in Control Remedy is adding more accessibility options and quality of life improvements to Control. As a free update coming for everyone when the AWE DLC launches on August 27th, the features include options to make combat less hard like recharging the player’s gun faster, taking less damage, and generally providing a bunch of toggles that will let story fans have an easier time of it. Remedy is also increasing the number of checkpoints so players can have a better way to navigate the mind-bending corridors of the Oldest House. As someone that gladly breezed through the Last of Us Part II, thanks to some great combat options, I applaud Remedy’s plan. Although Control wasn’t particularly hard on the default settings, there were some spikes that caused frustration rather than keeping me in the mood of the game.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2020/08/13/control-more-of-the-action-in-control/

Ooh. That was really my only reservation about Control - the part where people talked about it not having difficulty options or checkpoints as robust as they could be. (Well, and the Epic exclusivity, but that’s about to end.)

Here’s hoping they add checkpoints to the final major battle, which was where I threw in the towel after my 10th or 11th attempt.

I’ve finally gotten around to playing the Foundation dlc in anticipation of the new Awe dlc, and am remembering how much I enjoyed the game. I’ve even been able to go back and finish some missions from the main game now that I’ve been able to beef up my powers a little more. My biggest complaint is the load times. After playing Ghost of Tsushima the load times in Control are agonizingly slow.

Unfortunately, this was coupled with an announcement that they won’t be providing next-gen upgrades to existing owners on consoles, only to those who buy the “ultimate edition” which is slated to be available some time next month. That’s a bummer, considering that the game chugged at times on the older versions of current consoles.

I’m curious how Tom feels about this given how he sometimes disapproves of game developers asking players to do the work of difficulty balancing (I’m thinking of the discussion about Tesla vs. Lovecraft). Maybe it’s different in a linear story game than a score challenge game?

I really like the idea of giving players this kind of control but am a little wary of developers getting to the place where they don’t put too much time into balancing a boss battle because they figure players can always tweak the difficulty for themselves. And it’s hard to know ahead of time whether spending time and effort to overcome a challenge is going to be intrinsically rewarding or a pointless chore that I’ll wish I’d skipped with a difficulty slider. Will I feel like a boss or a chump if I do this thing 10 times before finally succeeding?

It’s gonna be a pointless chore. Trust me.

That’s what I usually thought. Playing platformers in an emulator so I could quicksave before a difficult jump or cheese my way through a stupidly hard mini-game always seemed smart to me. Then I played Dark Souls and would have missed almost everything I loved about that game if I had been able to cheese it that way. Most games aren’t Dark Souls, but I suspect there are some similar pleasures I’ve missed because I had ways of lowering the difficulty.

I think the solution though is not taking away players’ ability to adjust difficulty but games writers or communities who you trust saying “Play Arkham Asylum on Hard. It’s worth it.” Or “This part of Control is a pointless chore, turn the difficulty down.”

But a better solution is when game developers get it right the first time.

I’m fine with missing those pleasures because there is an incredibly low number of them next to the number of blood vessels I would burst trying to deal with the traditional bullshit nearly every other game treats as “fun” difficulty. (And FWIW, I don’t get those pleasures from Dark Souls, either. As much respect as I have for them, as games.)

Love the new assist options. I’m terrible at shooters, and it’s been really helpful playing with the settings when I get frustrated.

It still took me ~20 tries to do the shield shooting gallery with aim assist on.

Hope to see more games offer these kind of options in the future.

Same. As I get older, while I want a challenge, they are becoming increasingly too difficult. I couldn’t even deal with Remnant and finally gave it up because of the difficulty.

So much this.