GoKawiilRemedy Entertainment has proved time and again that its distinctive blend of tone, atmosphere, action and surprise resonates with players — so much so that its best games are remembered for their highs and forgiven for their flaws. It’s easy to forget that 2019’s Control had uneven difficulty and some rote bosses that rubbed some gamers the wrong way when its strong, distinct storytelling captivated them throughout. The same was true of 2023’s Alan Wake II, which blended strangeness and character-driven storytelling so effectively that its difficulty spikes were easy to overlook.
Which is why the follow-up to Control, titled Control Resonant, will probably find its way into gamers’ hearts despite taking some of the wrong lessons from Remedy’s earlier games. Nowhere else will you find an experience quite like Resonant, even if the studio’s magic feels somewhat diluted from lunging after mainstream gameplay elements that, quite frankly, aren’t why people play a Remedy game.
There’s a throughline of strong, novel storytelling that still runs through — and shines in — Resonant. After the new director of the Federal Bureau of Control, Jesse Faden, carved a path through the extradimensional Hiss invasion to save her brother, Dylan, at the end of 2019’s Control, her victories dried up. Seven years into the stalemate, Jesse bids her brother goodbye and plunges a powerful weapon into him. When he wakes, the Hiss have broken out of the FBC’s headquarters to possess all of Manhattan — and, in turn, the world.
That’s where Resonant begins, with a promise that Dylan’s attempt to redeem his past Hiss-possessed sins will lead to a cornucopia of weird adventures that made Control so special — but this time, on a city-wide scale. He grabs a radio off an FBC grunt and links up with Zoe, a field squad leader brigadiered into handling New York City’s messy streets after everyone senior has been eliminated. Learning who Dylan is, she cautiously holds his leash, sending him on missions as she struggles to believe he’s thrown off the yoke of destruction.
For the record, so does Dylan, but it doesn’t make it easier to stomach the abuse hurled at him by FBC agents bringing up their many dead colleagues. In an early story mission deep into a Hiss-controlled skyscraper, Dylan is periodically overwhelmed by memories of possession, even forced to relive the murderous early days when the FBC’s HQ, the Oldest House, was overcome by the malevolent and monstrous Hiss. Fighting through his fears, he saves a prominent FBC chief thought lost, who still treats him with disdain. Dylan’s uncertain redemptive march is, pardon the pun, one of the most resonant themes of the game.
It’s unfortunate that it took me 10 hours of fumbling about in the rest of the open world to reach that point. Shortly after starting the game, players are turned loose in a few connected Manhattan neighborhoods with little indication of what will and won’t be signature Remedy experiences. It’s so easy to get lost in the routine hack-and-slash gameplay that I started worrying that the game lacked the studio’s signature juice.
Resonant’s Manhattan looks much like any generic American city. Remedy Entertainment/Screenshot by CNET
Mucking through a city that doesn’t feel much like Manhattan
When players excitedly fired up 2014’s BioWare fantasy adventure Dragon Age: Inquisition, they quickly got mired in the opening area, lost and baffled that their beloved series might have been subsumed into a mundane open-world adventure. Advice spread through the game’s community like wildfire: Leave the Hinterlands opening area and you’ll reach the real game.
That recommendation regrettably applies to Resonant. Remedy isn’t too keen on holding players’ hands through its games, and at a time when vocal players condemn overprescribed direction (such as the infamous yellow paint), it’s understandable that Resonant’s developers would leave players to their own devices. The game points them toward a list of goals and lets them take the lead.
... continue reading