It has been seven years since the Federal Bureau of Control was shut down in an attempt to contain the Hiss. It didn’t work. The Hiss has now escaped to New York, transforming and affecting everyone who ends up hearing it… but that’s not the only problem facing the agents trying to contain the situation in New York, as a completely different AWE is emerging. It would be rather convenient if a director were there to neutralize the threat, wouldn’t it?
Well, Jessie Faden from the first game isn’t here, but her brother is, and she passes the baton for Control Resonant. Quite violently, it must be said, pulling Dylan out of his coma and returning him to the real world. And what a real world it turns out to be, as he emerges into the city after carefully navigating the familiar, but even more destroyed, corridors of The Oldest House.
The scale of the situation quickly becomes clear, with the Hiss running rampant and creating monstrous transformations of the people he encounters, and with the environments folding in on themselves like a factorial or recursive work of art. It will inevitably draw some comparisons to the first Doctor Strange film and to the urban scene of Inception, but it really feels like its own thing.
Dylan is particularly capable of navigating this area, with a large bounding jump and quick dodge quickly enhanced by a double jump, a mannequin-like hover that makes him dangle and float in the air, and a fast running ability. Remedy has built an abstract playground out of what’s entirely familiar, so Dylan jumps over roofs and ledges that aren’t the right height when he’s in the open world. But that’s just a taste of the mind-blowing nature of what Remedy has designed elsewhere.
To fight the Hiss, Dylan doesn’t have Jessie’s transforming gun, but rather a length of shape-shifting rebar. He’ll have to get up close and personal with enemies in a way that Jessie didn’t have to, and crush them into submission. It’s a character combat or action RPG, as opposed to a third-person shooter, and while it’s a first for Remedy, it’s enjoyable and satisfying to play, with a great sense of weight and heft to delivering Dylan’s blows, and just the right amount of signaling and assistance in escaping incoming blows – it’s all dodging rather than parrying, which is absolutely my style of melee.
There are several primary and secondary moves to choose from, as well as a finishing combo added at the end of a series of light attacks. There are equal parts personal preference and situational needs in choosing which one to equip, starting with one before unlocking other options later in the game. Personally, I leaned towards a quick knife move for my main, compared to the quick scythe move which felt better for crowd control, but you can mix and match styles between that and the heavy attack, creating a hammer to take down enemies, a drill to dive in, or a sweeping type attack nunchuk.
This is then augmented by the abilities you learn, giving you gunshots, rock shields that allow you to ram and stun enemies by passing through them, ground books and more. Your abilities are boosted by dishing out regular hits, forcing you to mix and match, juggle enemies, and bounce between targets. In a nice way, you can set two ability loadouts and quickly switch between them.
Combat is fast and frenetic, enemies pose varied challenges that need to be managed and prioritized, and it absolutely got the best of me on several occasions. There’s still some balancing to do, but Laser Hiss are still the most urgent enemy to take out, and then the other Heavy Hiss are the key to ending a fight – Fodder enemies will continue to spawn until the bigger ones are defeated.
There’s definitely a more twisted look and feel to the Hiss, compared to the haunted security guards and floating office chairs that remain the first game’s most memorable images. Here, the Hiss took human form and stretched them into a fuzzy tentacle limb to try to slap you in, flattened skin to make them look like flying chipmunks, and beefed them up to have giant balls to roll at you with. And then there’s the haunted New York bus, eternally on fire and crashing, but now flipped to face the ground and spewing more and more fodder until you can crush it into submission.
You might expect the boss fights to be a highlight, and they are. The first of the game takes the giant top half of a human head – one that looks like a frighteningly enlarged Olivia Wilde, if you ask me – that uses telekinetic powers to fight you. It’s a strong and distinctive visual in a game full of them. It’s also a pretty fun fight, still getting used to Dylan’s early attacks and abilities as you chase him around the arena, and building on the idea of facing paranatural events.
But New York’s superficial transformations are really just the beginning. Moving on to a deeper story mission in the game, with a more powerful Dylan under my control, and you’re tasked with heading towards a chasm anomaly to place trackers, beacons, or something. You immediately see the kaleidoscopic way in which this old apartment building has been transformed, and gravity has also been turned upside down. There’s a confusing fight against a nearly invisible hiss, trying to follow it through sets of identical-looking walls and floors and shoot it down, but it turns into a completely disorienting maze of identical apartment rooms, following a song and the flickering blue light of different TVs to find my way back. It’s a special moment, and I can’t wait to see how Remedy brings this affectation to the world in other levels and corners of the game. Add to that the studio’s continued obsession with applying analog videography to its digital worlds, and it’s truly something special.
Control Resonant faces it with its launch date set for September 24, with a whole host of other big hitters expected to arrive around the same time, but it’s shaping up to be a special game that deserves your attention. It’s a big risk for them to branch out into a different genre for the game’s combat, but it’s extremely satisfying and married to such a distinctive world and visual style.
