If you made guns and launch equally powered such that you were switching back and forth between two sets of abilities (and appropriately targeting which mobs you hit with each one) then maybe it would be a more interesting system, though still just two abilities for most of your interactions.
There were certain enemy designs that were specifically “resistant” to launch, if only to make guns not completely redundant (telekinesis floating dudes, I’m looking at you.) Otherwise, the “change you and explode” enemies were so weak that the gun still worked at all on them in the later stages of the game, while all of the shielded up soldiers were bullet sponges that could eat a few clips and not die, but died to a single launch. Of course, you could kill the charging enemies with launch, so you only needed the gun if you were swarmed by both - anything is effective against them. I don’t see that as a choice, as much as understanding that one action you can take (launch objects at floater dudes isn’t going to work once they’ve spotted you) will be entirely ineffective.
The combat wasn’t particularly difficult, it just wasn’t interesting given how much of it there was, and how much the game was desperately trying to pad playtime by asking you to do board activities which were the equivalent of “fetch 10 wolf pelts”. I stopped doing that crap pretty quickly unless I happened to finish one of those goals as a part of doing a story mission.
Granted, I’m coming off of Elden Ring, which really has 0 “good” storytelling in my opinion, but did have a pretty interesting combat system with a ton of options.
You know what would have made gunplay more interesting? Maybe letting you access more than 2 guns at once, so you could pick out the right tool at the right time. It stinks to be stuck without your shotgun for that moment when there’s a monster on top of you.
Yes! The two weapon restriction can work in games where you pick guns up off the ground, as that peppers levels with semi-interesting decisions, but in Control it just reduces your choices. Control also makes you upgrade your guns using shared resources, so it incentivizes you to pick two broadly useful guns and just stick with those.
I think it was also a missed opportunity to restrict mods to incremental improvements of a single system. Instead of “5% faster rate of fire”, a better mod would be “-50% damage but restores telekinesis energy on hit”. They could have made these weapons complement each other mechanically.
There’s one mod that makes the machine gun fire longer while you’re levitating – that’s really fun, all the mods should be like that.
Yeah, that would be pretty great.
Late in the game, it felt better to spend my time inbetween triple launches hiding, as I took less damage than trying to plink away with a gun. Having an incentive to plink away would motivate more of the back and forth style play.
I did triple launches too and just settled on Charge, I think? The gun you have to charge. Get behind cover, charge a shot, let it loose, have my energy restored enough to go back to throwing shit.
I’ve been holding off on replaying this and checking out the DLC because I wanted to wait until I had an RTX card. I might need to just give up on that dream.
Triple Launch + Pierce was my end-game combat preference.
I modded Pierce enough to where I think I didn’t even have to charge it…instant fire solution, and then went for as much damage as possible so it was just a fucking hand cannon.
But yeah Tom is right. The combat tempo was switching between launch, and when that was not available or inconvenient, the service weapon. Some enemies like the floaters were easier with the fucking hand cannon I had created.
I don’t remember ever getting a mod like that for Charge. I do think the mods were mostly really lame, especially compared to the skill upgrades. Your guns would get 10% faster reload or similar while your skill upgrades were 50% or 100% increases to damage. Would have loved for them to go wild with the gun mods.
The DLC added some new mod styles.
Did those only come from doing the DLC content? I played through the game with the DLCs enabled, but barely touched the actual DLC content.
If I remember correctly there were some new “formats” of mods that were available in increasing strength throughout the game if you had the DLC installed, and then some single weapon-specific mods that were probably only found in the actual DLC.
But I might be misremembering most of that!
Okay I had to look it up. It’s a unique mod. Only one exists in the entire game.
Custodial Readiness -100 Shot charge time
Video proof
Each gun type has one unique mod that can be obtained. Looks like it was added with the AWE DLC.
P.S. Opps I meant Pierce which normally has a charge time while Charge is the rocket launcher with no charge time. Silly names.
So I just started playing the game and while you mostly see him silhouetted or otherwise masked by film tricks, I totally thought it might have been Odenkirk. Except I’d have heard about that before now and totally played this game.
Which I’m doing now! Yes, I’m only five or so years late but what are ya gonna do. At least by waiting I am able to play the upgraded version on my Xbox, which adds uh extra frames and polygons and such. And it’s pretty fun! Really moody, and I think the lore bits, the little redacted reports and interviews and Darling videos are my favorites. I’d probably like to watch a show about Control more than play the game. Not that it’s a bad game, but I see from reading some earlier comments that others feel much as I do - wow that’s a lot of combat in this game. And it’s interesting combat for the most part, once you get some powers and weapon options going. But much like I feel about The Witcher 3, I could have done just fine with cutting the amount of combat and enemies by half. Heck, maybe more. And as I think I mentioned in The Witcher 3 thread, I’d love for there to be a little dial where you could set your own combat frequency, game breaking feature be damned.
But that’s just taking the one thing that I’m not 100% satisfied with and mentioning it because it’s the internet. I knew I’d dig the game and I do, so here’s to not-so-hidden treasures.
Not having enemies respawn constantly would have been a good start
I think I agree with you, and I was about to go on a (very mild) rant about enemies respawning in areas you’d already cleared, but then I thought: why not bring in another contentious thread instead and talk about jump scares!
The 1960s CIA/FBI paranoia is a big theme of the game and I think that they do a pretty good job of projecting it onto the player. Specifically, the rate of reveal of the (plot behind the) bad guys dovetails with the disheveled nature of the (enemy occupied) headquarters (uh oh, I’m forgetting the name of it, was it The Building? The Castle?) to feel really creepy, and they play it up with the whispering soundtrack thingy. And that leads to, wait for it, jump scares. I think that the jump scare–or more accurately, the anticipation of jump scares–really ratchets up the tension, in a good way. Now, I don’t remember specifically if all of the jump scares were “good”, or even if any of them were. But I do remember feeling creeped out going around corners and then being startled by bad guys. And not even monsters jumping out of closets in the dark, just the bad guys being there milling around in the office.
Now, could they have done that with less combat? Undoubtedly. Could they have done it without putting bad guys back in areas you’d already cleared? Well, yes, but then the tension would be removed when you’re backtracking. But maybe that would have been better. (Especially as time progresses, because coming across bad guys in that same foyer for the hundredth time is definitely not tension building.)
I never realised these are a real thing :(
Not as big as the ones in Control, which are like large vaults. What is a capacity of that goofy thing?
Well, I wrapped up the main game and its DLC (since it’s all bundled together in the newer package) and I wish I could say it ended with a bang but at least I can say I did get enjoyment out of the whole thing. In fact, I am a little surprised with how little conclusion the game has, it seemed like it was leading somewhere and instead just seems to be pointing the way to Alan Wake 2? Unless I misinterpreted that last bit at the end of the second DLC. But I don’t really get a feel for who the Board are or why they do what they do, nor why the entirety of the Bureau seems to have complete faith and trust in them to be looking out for the benefit of humanity. Especially when it seems that at every turn, the Board seems to have its own motives and will usually put them ahead of what’s good for the Bureau/humanity.
But, the gameplay was quite good and I did enjoy floating around throwing heavy objects and firing explosives at my enemies. So overall a thumbs up from me, as usual Remedy put a solid game out there.
Control is part of the ‘new weird’ wave, amongst things like SCP, Annihilation, etc. I like new weird stuff (well, just weird stuff generally) but a lot of the feeling this genre taps into come from the inexplicableness of whatever phenomena that is portrayed. The catch is, of course, that to maintain weirdness through inexplicableness nothing meaningful as to the origin or why of things is ever really divulged.
That can be frustrating at times, it’s natural for people to want to understand even imaginary worlds around them to their fullest and, sure, we get a few breadcrumbs here and there, but little of real sustenance. This is something I’ve made peace with in order to enjoy the genre more. Seeing weird shit purely for the sake of shit being weird. Mainly because I came to the conclusion that in fitting these things into a reasoned logical framework would dispel a lot of what I find so appealing in the first place.
I was disappointed that I didn’t come across a leaflet in the Oldest House that read:
“The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!”
