Recent reviews by Mad Jack

It's schlock produced by a huge company that doesn't really care about anything but money, that's fine, I enjoy it as something mindless and casual that I can play while watching or listening to something more intellectually engaging. I don't need depth, i need it to play and look good and let me cut down monsters by the hundreds. Having paid cosmetics also sucks and isn't at all surprising, but the actual playable content added via seasons seems to be free, so that's a HUGE surprise.

The big issues are, servers are awful and it crashes A LOT.
Loading between areas? Pray it doesn't just disconnect you and kick you to the main menu.
Teleporting somewhere? Hope it doesn't crash during the loading screen.
Just playing it normally? Yup, still a good chance of that happening.
Worst part is you might lose quest progress or have loot evaporate when this happens, which is just terrible.

Quirky, colourful and charming.

Brings back great memories of playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time. And a few from Dragon's Dogma too on account of how many enemies I throw off cliffs.

Lmao they censored it AGAIN!
Thank you ministry of Truth, very cool!

Just doing my part.

Like Mario Kart if it was made in Albania.

Good fun for a few hours if you get a squad of lunatics together.

Discord is now unusable, thank you.

Like a sexy Q*bert, but you're being chased by deep seated regrets in your subconscious.

Control is a study in red of "new weird", anachronistic, burocratic brutalism.
A 3D metroidvania "inspired" by the concepts explored by the SCP Foundation collaborative fiction stories and sprinkled with David Lynch's particular brand of directing that Remedy had already used to great effect in the excellent Alan Wake, we're put in the shoes of Jesse, a woman who, along with her brother, at some point in their childhood came into contact with an otherworldly phenomenon that, among other things, allows Jesse to communicate with an extradimensional entity she names "Polaris" and causes her brother to be taken into the custody of the Federal Bureau of Control, a government agency in charge of dealing, containing and studying reality defying objects and events.

The game opens to Jesse arriving at "The Oldest House", a strange, impossibly vast and always changing building somewhere in New York that serves as the headquarters to the FBC that has gone into lockdown after an entity known as The Hiss starts spreading over it and taking control over a large portion of the personnel. The game keeps sinking into madness and the paranormal as we delve deeper into the Oldest House in search of Jesse's brother and attempt to fight back the Hiss, all the while unlocking new powers and upgrades that allow us to transverse new areas and open up new paths in the large, open map in an excellent adaptation of classic metroidvania gameplay into 3D, complete with Dark Souls bonfire styled checkpoints that allow us to fast travel between them.

The game shines in it's art direction and writing first and foremost. The very governmental brutalist architecture that twists and turns into something out of Escher's mind, the tiny confined offices equipped with 60's futuristic tech that give way to vast, cold and oppressive floating walkways and the violent use of bright red in areas under the influence of the Hiss are quite awe inspiring, and a joy to explore while also giving plenty of reasons to give constant use to the game's Photo Mode. On a technical level the game also looks quite impressive, boasting beautiful graphics, stylish effects and a remarkable destruction engine that has SOME impact in gameplay.

The story and characters are weird enough to keep you invested through the whole campaign, with some interesting optional side missions to complete that have us deal with different Objects of Power and Altered World Events as the Bureau calls them, with some being almost direct adaptations of popular SCPs.

The gameplay... does have some quirks. At a fundamental level it's a pretty generic third person shooter, with an Object of Power gun capable of changing it's form to allow different type of shots and infinitely regenerating ammo at the center of it all. The gunplay works well enough, with shots landing in a satisfying and over the top manner, though accuracy does feel a little off, as the crosshair turns orange when hovering over enemies but then proceeds to simply NOT landing the shots for whatever reason. Backing the gun we have a few abilities: telekinises that allows us to pick up objects and debris (being able to even pull out pieces of concrete from the environment thanks to the destruction engine) and hurl them at the enemy for massive damage; the ability to use debris as a shield to absorb damage; mind controlling weakened enemies to fight alongside us and a short, speedy dodge. We also get the ability to float, but that is generally reserved for transversing the environment rather than for combat. These are... quite generic, really, with the upgrade system not doing much to make them more interesting, with them generally just giving a straight percentage based buff to damage or energy consumption. In fact, the whole upgrade system feels tacked on, with no clear indication of how you level up or when you unlock ability points. You arrive at a control point and notice that you got an extra 3 points to invest somehow. This all works fine, it's just very "by the numbers" and feels at odds with the art direction a little.
Something that does feel quite weak is the health recovery system. You exclusively recover health by picking up health orbs generated from damaging enemies and that's REALLY not ideal. Often you find yourself low on health with several enemies in need of dispatch, but all the health orbs are out in the open, surrounded by those same enemies... so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's a poorly thought out system. Oh yeah, there's also an enemy level system in there for some reason? It doesn't really seem to do anything other than confuse me for it's mere existence.

The game did lose itself near the end a bit. The last couple of missions are padded out with drawn out fights that feel like they were designed to pad out the duration of the game, with wave after wave of enemies coming at you. It's boring, it's annoying and they grate you down if you die and need to go through the whole thing again. It feels unnecessary too. The ending wasn't great either, providing little in the way of closure but allowing for a seamless move into post-game so that you can keep exploring the Oldest House and complete whatever side missions you have left.

All in all, it's a good game. The gameplay is solid enough and works most of the time but what truly carries the game is the writing and design, so I'd say it's definitely worth a play-through, with the main story taking probably around 8 hours to complete, so while not being a big campaign it also doesn't overstay it's welcome.

As a final sidenote, the game does take place in the same universe as Alan Wake, so rest assured that Sam Lake sneaked a short section where you're brutalizing enemies while listening to music by "The Old Gods of Asgard", or Poets of the Fall as they're known in the real world. Oh, and plenty of live action recordings spread through the whole game too.