CONTROL Resonant Feature Scores
Explore all 72 feature scores for CONTROL Resonant, organized into pros and cons.
Scores by Feature
Summary
72 reviewed features-
Very positive 4.5-5.027 (38%)
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Positive 3.5-4.421 (29%)
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Neutral 2.5-3.411 (15%)
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Negative 1.5-2.411 (15%)
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Very negative below 1.52 (3%)
Pros
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The warped Manhattan, Patterning effects, impossible architecture, and surreal set pieces are among the game's clearest triumphs. Its visual identity is repeatedly described as bold, gorgeous, and unlike almost anything else in the genre.
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Traversal is one of the game's most consistently celebrated strengths. Double jumps, air dashes, hovering, grappling, and gravity shifting make moving through Manhattan fast, expressive, and frequently exhilarating.
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The FBC's bureaucracy, Manhattan's altered neighborhoods, scattered documents, and small survivor stories deepen the setting at nearly every turn. World-building remains one of the sequel's most dependable strengths.
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Side quests are a major strength, often delivering the funniest, strangest, and most memorable stories in the game. A smaller layer of repeated tasks and weaker rewards keeps the optional content from being uniformly excellent.
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Even skeptical critics repeatedly call the game singular. Its collision of character-action combat, non-Euclidean Manhattan, paranormal comedy, and art-house spectacle gives it an identity few other open-world games resemble.
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Dylan's guilt, childhood trauma, bond with Jesse, and search for redemption produce some of the game's most affecting scenes. Several critics describe moments that hit harder emotionally than they expected from a Control sequel.
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Level design is a standout, from folding streets and gravity-shifted city blocks to stranger interior spaces that turn perspective itself into a traversal and puzzle mechanic.
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The sequel earns broad credit for refusing to repeat the original: its melee focus, warped open zones, gravity traversal, and structural experimentation feel unusually bold for a major sequel.
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The game is widely praised as a visual showcase, especially for lighting, surreal geometry, and dense effects. Lower-end modes can introduce softness, artifacting, or weaker lighting that undercuts that presentation.
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Assist Mode is a major strength, with granular sliders and presets that can soften damage, dodge timing, resource pressure, and other difficulty spikes. It gives story-focused players unusually fine control over the experience.
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Technical performance is usually strong, particularly on high-end PC hardware and PS5 Pro, with ambitious effects running smoothly in many accounts. Some platforms and heavy scenes still show frame pacing, image-quality, or optimization compromises.
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Exploration is a major draw thanks to vertical movement, hidden routes, bespoke side stories, and dense environmental storytelling. Confusing entrances and map limitations occasionally turn discovery into circling the same blocks.
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Most sources found the game highly enjoyable once its systems open up, especially when traversal, powers, and side quests click together. A few harsher takes found the repetitive combat too intrusive to sustain that fun.
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The sequel keeps Control's uncanny blend of cosmic dread, bureaucratic absurdity, and offbeat humor alive across Manhattan. A minority feel the broader city setting dilutes some of the Oldest House's concentrated unease.
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Inputs are consistently praised for immediacy: attacks, dodges, air movement, and cancels respond quickly enough to support the game's fast, aggressive action.
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Build experimentation, postgame exploration, missed side content, Resonant cycles, and New Game Plus-style interest give enthusiastic players clear reasons to return after the credits.
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Documents, recordings, side stories, and environmental details keep the FBC mythology rich, with the best optional material adding texture to Manhattan and the broader paranatural world.
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Zoe is the standout supporting character, with her radio banter and evolving bond with Dylan giving the journey warmth. Some sources find that relationship rushed or uneven, but the supporting cast is usually viewed positively.
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The writing is strongest when it balances human vulnerability, bureaucratic absurdity, and strange lore. Some dialogue and thematic beats are less elegant, but the overall character and world writing earns substantial praise.
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Dylan's growth from damaged FBC test subject to a more self-directed person lands strongly, and his evolving relationships give the story a clear emotional spine.
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Zone leveling, skill points, powers, and build choices often make exploration feel purposeful and Dylan's growth tangible. Criticism focuses on opaque power-level tracking, restrictive respecs, and progression that can become busywork.
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Despite changing protagonist, setting, and combat style, the sequel usually retains Control's strange humor, paranormal logic, lore, and visual identity. A smaller group feels the open-world structure leaves too much of the original's magic behind.
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The story is broadly praised for Dylan's redemption arc, surreal set pieces, and powerful character moments, but the central plot is less consistently loved. Some critics find the overarching tale, finale, or emotional transitions weaker than its best individual scenes.
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Music and licensed tracks remain strong and often memorable, but some critics miss a single transcendent set piece on the level of Remedy's most iconic musical moments.
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Dylan is deliberately awkward and damaged, and most sources warm to his vulnerability, guilt, and dry personality. A vocal minority strongly dislike his writing, voice, or demeanor and would rather have stayed with Jesse.
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Hits, metal transformations, spatial ambience, and supernatural effects are repeatedly praised for giving combat and exploration weight. The audio mix helps sell both spectacle and unease.
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Physics, destructible scenery, telekinesis, and gravity manipulation make the environment feel like part of the action rather than a static backdrop.
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Positive value comments point to the substantial campaign, side content, replay potential, and localized pricing, making the package feel generous to players already invested in its style.
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Movement and combat animation generally look polished and energetic, with finishers and traversal selling Dylan's speed and force. A few rough character-animation moments keep it from being uniformly pristine.
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Side stories, altered objects, puzzles, bosses, and strange one-off scenarios keep the world varied, though a layer of repeated activities and combat encounters can feel like busywork.
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The zoned Manhattan is admired for feeling hand-crafted, vertical, and distinctly Remedy rather than like a generic checklist map. Still, some critics see bloat, repeated activities, or a loss of the first game's tighter spatial focus.
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The game generally feels polished for its scale, but scattered technical hiccups, stuck enemies, audio cuts, and other small scuffs prevent it from feeling immaculate.
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Documents, recordings, hidden reports, and other collectibles make exploration feel worthwhile by feeding the world's mysteries rather than functioning as empty checklist filler.
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Newcomers get helpful recap material and can follow the core story without exhaustive Remedyverse knowledge, though the early combat and build systems are not always explained as clearly as they could be.
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Reality warping, particles, reflections, shadows, and large combat effects create spectacular scenes, though the sheer visual noise can occasionally hurt clarity or expose platform-specific image issues.
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Combat is responsive, aggressive, and capable of spectacular build-driven highs, but opinion splits sharply on its staying power. The strongest criticism targets repetitive strings, damage-spongy enemies, and a system that can feel shallower over a long campaign.
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The cast is usually praised for grounding the strange material, especially the supporting performances, but Dylan's delivery is unusually divisive and receives a few pointed complaints.
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Loot and world rewards can make exploration satisfying, especially when discoveries feed upgrades, but some reward placement and generic material boxes feel less thoughtfully integrated.
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PS5 Pro receives especially strong praise for ray-traced reflections, shadows, reconstruction quality, and a cleaner presentation, while Steam Deck support is notably less convincing.
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Puzzles can be clever and visually inventive, especially when gravity and perspective are involved, but they also produce some of the game's most confusing or progress-stalling moments.
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The postgame gives completion-minded players room to keep exploring, finish side stories, refine builds, and chase remaining discoveries after the main campaign.
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The strongest mechanical moments come from combining traversal, gravity shifts, powers, combat, and environmental ideas in ways that feel purpose-built for this world.
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The strangest spaces still generate strong cosmic-horror unease, using impossible geometry, isolation, and paranormal imagery to make exploration feel unsettling.
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The best missions keep escalating into strange, memorable scenarios, giving the campaign a strong sense of surprise beyond standard combat objectives.
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DualSense feedback is used effectively to reinforce powers and supernatural moments, adding tactile texture without being treated as a defining feature.
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Performance is generally smooth on stronger hardware and PS5 Pro, while base-console stress scenes and Steam Deck play can show dips or compromises. The overall picture is solid rather than flawless.
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Manhattan is packed with strange signage, abandoned interiors, warped streets, and small physical details that reinforce the setting, though some sewers, warehouses, and city blocks repeat too visibly.
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Dialogue is uneven: the best exchanges give Dylan and Zoe warmth and personality, while snarky banter and some overt thematic writing can feel forced.
Cons
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The camera and targeting can struggle when arenas get crowded or fights move vertically. Mis-targeted attacks and awkward framing around large or airborne enemies are recurring frustrations.
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Pacing is a recurring weakness: the opening can be slow, progression sometimes stalls the story, and several late sections drag. Other sources find the game accelerates impressively once it opens up.
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Technical bugs are not portrayed as constant, but the glitches that do appear can be disruptive, including enemies getting stuck, traversal oddities, and occasional postgame or loading issues.
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Precision platforming becomes frustrating when gravity changes, tight trajectories, or awkward geometry demand more exact movement than the traversal system comfortably provides.
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The roughly 25-to-40-plus-hour scale gives the world room to breathe, but the campaign can outlast the combat system's depth. Late repetition makes the length feel excessive for some players.
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Navigation is one of the most consistent pain points. The flat map, unclear entrances, multi-level spaces, and gravity-bent geometry can leave players lost even when the world itself is visually compelling.
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Enemy behavior draws a sharp complaint for leaning on hectic pressure rather than convincing intelligence, making some fights feel artificially chaotic.
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Upgrade materials are criticized for being overcomplicated and awkwardly distributed, making some desired upgrades harder to complete than the rest of the progression system suggests they should be.
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The default difficulty is one of the most disputed elements, especially in the opening hours and against tanky late bosses. Better builds and extensive Assist Mode settings help, but progression walls can still feel abrupt.
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The combat-exploration loop can be exciting once a build comes together, but repetition is a persistent concern. Several critics felt the same encounter rhythm and combo patterns wore thin well before the campaign ended.
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Facial work is one of the visual weak spots, with some expressions looking stiff or strange compared with the quality of the environments and effects.
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One critical take finds progression too dependent on repeating activities and combat to keep pace with enemy scaling, turning advancement into unwanted grind.
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One critic found repeated combat and progression interruptions strong enough to pull attention away from the world and story, reducing immersion despite the striking setting.
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One source specifically criticizes loadout management for making important changes more cumbersome than they need to be during an action-heavy game.
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Routine world events and chore-like objectives can clash with urgent story beats, making some mission structure feel like open-world padding rather than purposeful adventure.
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Progress and power-level information can be buried too deeply in menus, making it harder than necessary to understand whether upgrades are meaningfully changing Dylan's strength.
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Upgrades provide plenty of specialization on paper, but restrictive respecs, material requirements, and number-focused improvements can make the system feel cumbersome or less transformative than expected.
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The opening can be daunting because movement, builds, enemy pressure, and RPG systems arrive before the combat fully blossoms. Once more tools unlock, the learning curve becomes far more rewarding.
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The roster has memorable supernatural designs and multiple factions, but ordinary encounters can still feel repetitive. Reused archetypes and endless smaller enemies weaken the sense of variety over time.
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Bosses are visually memorable but mechanically divisive. Some fights are inventive spectacles, while many others are criticized for huge health pools, limited move sets, and late-game battles that turn into endurance tests.
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Requiring physical fast-travel points can be inconvenient, but it also nudges players to stay in the world and stumble into side content rather than teleporting past it.
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The Portuguese localization is received positively overall, including the dub, but the reviewed build had enough missing or inconsistent localized lines to keep it from being fully seamless.
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Weapon forms offer different rhythms and build possibilities, but critics disagree on how meaningfully those choices change combat. Some forms feel expressive, while others seem like variations on the same basic loop.
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The skill tree supports multiple builds and can be satisfying to optimize, yet several critics find its apparent depth overstated or its upgrades less transformative than the sprawling layout suggests.