Beaten: Control (One)

 After being surprised by and subsequently finishing Alan Wake 2 roughly a year and a half ago, I made a note to go back and play the studio's previous shared-universe game, Control. References to the game were scattered in Alan Wake 2, with one of the agents being a Federal Bureau of Control agent sent to investigate all the wackiness in that small town.

It turns out that their shared universe is full of reality bending objects and extradimensional messiness, so the Federal Bureau of Control was created to collect it all and house it in a building that is also some weird reality-bending place. The main character you play is there to find her missing brother, but quickly takes the lead of the agency as the building itself is under siege from extradimensional creatures called The Hiss.

There is a lot of backstory here but it is not presented in a linear fashion; instead, pieces of it fall into place as you fight your way through the building. It's an interesting and sophisticated storytelling technique, but the result for me was to not really care and just work my way through the game and take it in as I go. There's lots of lore to discover, and I didn't devour it ravenously, but took little bites as I went.

The action is third-person shooting with lots of great aspects. Your gun, of course, is itself some extradimensional shape-shifting device that transforms from the usual pistol to variations of shotguns, rifles, and so forth. It was truly cool and unique, but the other power you have, telekinesis, is handled exceptionally well. Grabbing objects and hurtling them at great speed toward enemies was absolutely joyful and never got old.

So the action is good, with the Hiss levelling up alongside you and presenting new enemies and challenges as you go. The building itself is vast, requiring you to capture and cleanse certain points that then become fast travel locations as well as restart points. New challenges pop up too, since you were put in charge after all, giving you side quests, but I ignored them for the most part.

Control is a pretty good game and in another life I would have had time to give it more of my attention and seen more of its world. However, the constant respawn of enemies in areas you had already cleared discouraged me from exploration beyond the main story. I can recommend Control to any Alan Wake fan, but only if they just can't get enough of that world.