| Title | Finnish developer Remedy is finally at home with Control's nightmare power fantasy |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | September 16, 2019 |
I couldn't tell you much about the national character of Finland. Unlike their Scandanavian neighbors, Finns don't often express themselves in my preferred media of movies and videogames. Some of the world's best and boldest filmmakers are from Denmark..
Correction:
“a hungry, vast, ruthless, bureaucratic nightmare [khroucht]ched right next to you.”
Scientists are studying an unexplained phenomenon that began in a town called Ordinary. How’s that for Finnish deadpan irony?
Even better when you shade “Ordinary” with its Australian connotation.
My sense of Control (and I really really enjoy it) is that just goes down smooth. It’s cohesive all around: grabs my attention, lets me live my videogame power fantasy, gives me the skill/reward rush, has interesting environments that I can turn into the bank from The Matrix, has an appealing protagonist and a weird but compelling narrative. It doesn’t “feel” like it’s doing anything particularly novel, but it’s rare for a game to pull all of the “gamey” elements together in such a slick and enjoyable way. This is my favorite game of the year so far.
Also, it’s “harelip” not “hairlip,” although probably best to just call it “cleft palate.”
We all discussed Control in the most recent podcast, and it’s great how much all three of us liked this game. Remedy really made something special here. It’s a shame that it got pressed against Gears 5 and Borderlands 3. I feel it’s going to get passed over by a lot of folks due to that scheduling.
Not that this is a contentious subject or anything, but it doesn’t help Control’s presence on the PC that it’s an Epic Games Store exclusive, whereas Gears and Borderlands are both plugged squarely into the Steam ecosystem. :(
-Tom
Uh… Borderlands 3 is “exclusive” to EGS for six months.
I agree with the timing impacting Control sales but I have confidence that Control will pick up momentum as more positive reviews and word of mouth arrive. It’s also probably worth noting that overall video gaming sales numbers are currently down across the board.
Which is only going to get more interesting in the coming gen as unit sales matter less to publishers and platform holders. Everyone is eager to push into subscription service models with gaming.
Is there any evidence that it’s not doing well saleswise? I think it’s probably more important that Gears isn’t on PS4 than that Control isn’t on Steam. Also, game reviewers need to emphasize that the game is fantastic even without all the fancy raytracing stuff you get on a high-end PC.
Is that all that big a deal? I mean, even if you want nothing to do with Xbox, you can pretty easily play it Gears on a PC unlike PS4 exclusives.
. . . unless you don’t have a PC or don’t have one that can run modern games or would rather play on the console you have hooked to your large TV rather than the PC with its relatively small monitor or prefer your couch to your computer chair.
Ah I see what you’re saying.
The comparison to House of Leaves was enough to get me to pull the trigger on ordering.
@kerzain pointed to me it was the 23rd best selling game of August somewhere else because I had heard it wasn’t doing great, so probably not a stellar performance.
I’ve been meaning to read House of Leaves for seriously, twenty years now.
Control didn’t make the PSN top 20 most sold games in the US list for August, and it didn’t make the NPD top 20 for US mostly-physical sales. The gamstat numbers are 130k players on PS4, and the methodology seems solid in the long term [0]. So it’s hard to make a case for it selling well on consoles.
Epic is a total black box, numbers only come out at random if a publisher actually releases a statement. There is not yet any kind of side channel leaking the stats.
[0] I don’t know how well it works this soon after launch; it might take a couple of months to stabilize. Due to how the system works, the historical data changes retroactively. But right now, to get a comparison going, it looks like Control launched 50% lower than Metro Exodus, 50% higher than Wolfenstein: Youngblood.
It’s more likely that it’s because it’s not a sequel to an established franchise.
Damn, that’s the second time today I’ve defended EGS, I need a shower.
Look at Tom whipping out the stars and slamming them down on the table.
Not that this is a contentious subject or anything, but it doesn’t help Control’s presence on the PC that it’s an Epic Games Store exclusive, whereas Gears and Borderlands are both plugged squarely into the Steam ecosystem. :(
-Tom
Timed exclusive , it will be on Steam in August 2020. By then I should be caught up and finished Quantum Break. It’s like I am anywhere from 1 to 5 years behind on playing developers previous games.
Wait, why is exclusive in quote marks? Do we also do that for Rebel Galaxy Outlaws, Observation, and Outer Wilds?
Has a Gears game ever been on the Playstation? What about a Halo? I honestly don’t know, but I would be surprised if the answer to either was “yes”.
I don’t even know what ray-tracing is, but based on enabling it with my GTX 1080, I surmised it was just a setting to make the game run more slowly.
It’s an intriguing exercise, but I don’t necessarily recommend it. You have to have a high tolerance for lots of indulgent wanking around. To approximate the experience of reading House of Leaves, just play Control and read every last log, letter, note, and flavor text you find, plus all the books in a random Elder Scrolls game of your choice, plus watch all the cutscenes in Borderlands 3.
That’s an excellent point. I think to evaluate it with some sort of context, you’d have to compare it to the initial release of Alan Wake?
Are you enjoying Quantum Break?
So you wouldn’t know the answer to this next question, given that you’re stuck in the year 2015, but can anyone else tell me whether there’s any sign of Control’s unique tone in Quantum Break? Should a Control fan back up and play Quantum Break? Or is it just another forgettable game like Alan Wake?
-Tom
