When Remedy Entertainment released Control in 2019, it felt like lightning in a bottle. The game’s blend of paranatural conspiracy, brutalist architecture, and Metroidvania-inspired exploration created something genuinely unique—a game that rewarded curiosity and made the mundane feel malevolent. It was IGN’s Game of the Year, and for good reason: few games have ever crafted such a cohesive, mysterious world.
Control Resonant is not that game. And that’s precisely the point.
Rather than resting on familiar foundations, Remedy has pivoted hard. The sequel trades the cramped, shifting corridors of the Oldest House for an open-world Manhattan that’s been folded in on itself—a city twisted into impossible geometries by interdimensional forces. It swaps Jesse Faden’s measured, exploratory pacing for her brother Dylan’s aggressive, combo-driven combat. It replaces cryptic environmental storytelling with a more direct, character-focused narrative.
It’s a gamble. And while it doesn’t always pay off, Control Resonant stands as one of Remedy’s most fascinating experiments—a game that dares to be different while somehow remaining unmistakably part of the same universe.
Dylan Faden Takes Center Stage
The shift in protagonist is more than cosmetic. Where Jesse was a somewhat enigmatic figure thrust into extraordinary circumstances, Dylan enters Resonant as a broken man carrying the weight of years of abusive experimentation at the hands of the Federal Bureau of Control. His backflip into becoming the FBC’s director—a simplification, but not an inaccurate one—serves as the launching point for a story that’s less about uncovering mysteries and more about confronting trauma.
Dylan is, by his own admission, “a real sad sack who feels sorry for himself.” But that vulnerability makes him compelling. He’s not a complex character in the traditional sense, but he’s an honest one—a good guy trying to salvage whatever remains of his life and find his sister, who vanished seven years ago.
The game uses Dylan’s perspective to fill in blanks left deliberately ambiguous in the original Control. The Hiss outbreak has spilled into New York City, and the Oldest House can no longer contain it. This setup proves remarkably effective, providing immediate stakes while allowing Remedy to explore the psychological toll of altered world events on survivors.
What’s surprising is how Resonant functions as both sequel and prequel, tidying up threads that were previously left to collectible documents or implication. The story isn’t as heavily shrouded in mystery as its predecessor, but what it reveals is often more fascinating—particularly in how it humanizes the paranatural phenomena that define the series.
Combat That Rewards Aggression (Eventually)
Control Resonant‘s combat represents Remedy’s first earnest attempt at stylish action, and the results are genuinely impressive—once you understand what it’s asking of you.
At the center of combat is the Aberrant, a melee weapon that transforms automatically based on your combo inputs. A light combo chain might produce a sword, a heavy attack triggers a hammer, and finishers manifest as scythes or drills. This isn’t gear you equip; it’s an extension of Dylan’s fighting style, customizable through upgrade trees that expand his capabilities.
The action is slick and responsive, drawing comparisons to Devil May Cry or Bayonetta with a dash of Gravity Rush‘s momentum. Combo animations can be canceled into dodges, allowing skilled players to weave between attacks without losing their rhythm. It’s a system that rewards mastery—and punishes carelessness.
The early hours are brutal. Enemies hit hard and swarm relentlessly, and with few tools at your disposal, encounters can feel overwhelming. There’s a chaos management element to consider—knowing when to commit to a combo versus when to retreat. It’s frustrating, but it’s also teaching you the language of the game.
Once Dylan’s power expands, everything clicks. Powers like Ignite—which sets weapons ablaze to inflict burn status—transform combat from defensive survival to aggressive domination. The minion summon ability, which lets you hurl a created ally like a massive bomb, clears mobs while staggering heavier enemies. Status effects matter, and understanding how to exploit them becomes crucial.
Combat is designed around aggression. Every kill drops health. Every melee hit feeds the power meter for special abilities. Encounters primarily focus on killing heavy enemies that continuously spawn minions, meaning you can’t simply whittle down crowds—you need to target the big threats and treat everything else as obstacles or health refills.
It’s a philosophy that mostly works, though it does create a “correct build” problem. Once you find the combination that works—my experience with Ignite and spin-edge combos trivialized most encounters—the need for tactical precision diminishes. The game becomes more hack-and-slash than character action, which is satisfying but somewhat deflating for those seeking sustained challenge.
Where the Action Stumbles
If combat represents the game’s greatest strength, encounter design is where Control Resonant falters most. Roughly half the bosses are what can only be described as “spongy slogs”—encounters less about testing mastery and more about surviving a war of attrition. Once you’ve seen their handful of tricks, you’re left chipping away at health bars in repetitive cycles, hoping not to make a mistake.
The aerial combat sections are particularly questionable. Dylan can glide and hover temporarily, and he has a few air combos at his disposal. But the game’s systems weren’t built for fighting faster moving targets in three dimensions, and combining floating platforms with a targeting system that doesn’t always cooperate with the camera creates moments of genuine frustration.
These aren’t dealbreakers—the foundation is sound, and the game’s best moments demonstrate what Remedy is capable of—but they do chip away at enthusiasm. Control Resonant doesn’t always define challenge in interesting ways, and that’s a shame given how strong the core mechanics are.
A World Worth Getting Lost In
Where the game truly shines is in its world design—a mind-bending, gravity-defying Manhattan that feels like the Oldest House spilled into the streets and kept spreading.
This isn’t the New York you know. There’s no bodega on the Lower East Side, no 4 train to Harlem. Instead, city streets shoot upward at impossible angles. Solid ground hangs above you. Entire blocks exist in states of dimensional flux, waiting to be explored across planes of existence that defy conventional physics.
Deeper into the game, Dylan gains the ability to shift his gravitational center, adding literal dimensions to navigation. The feeling of falling through the sky—not toward the ground, but along walls and across chasms—creates a unique thrill that persists outside of combat. When combat shifts between planes mid-encounter, it can be disorienting, but mostly in the best way.
What’s remarkable is how the environment guides you without waypoints or a detailed map. The design language of the Oldest House has bled into the streets, creating a visual vocabulary that tells you where to go and what matters. As long as you pay attention to your surroundings, you’re rarely lost—a delicate balance that respects player intelligence.
The open-world structure is more restrained than the genre norm. You’re still funneled through specific paths and gated by abilities, maintaining some of the original Control‘s contained feeling. Side content includes the typical checklist activities, but the rewards often provide insight into the psychological toll of altered world events. One standout series of side quests involves mysterious taxi cabs that transport Dylan to alternate realms, where he helps a woman trapped between dimensions through a series of mini-games that are by turns silly, unsettling, and unforgettable.
Even fast travel requires physically visiting points rather than selecting from a menu, encouraging organic discovery. It’s a small decision that makes the world feel more tangible—and ensures you stumble upon moments you might otherwise miss.
Remedy’s Most Conventional Story (Which Isn’t Saying Much)
For all its mechanical ambition, Control Resonant tells a surprisingly straightforward story. The central narrative follows Dylan’s search for Jesse while the FBC attempts to contain the interdimensional crisis. His dynamic with handler Zoe provides a consistent foil, though the shifts in their relationship don’t always feel earned—as if the story needed to accelerate to match the campaign’s pacing.
The main plot relies on a few logical leaps to tidy things up, which means it may not be as moving in the grand scheme as Remedy’s best work. But that doesn’t mean it lacks power. A specific quest arc delving into alternate realities and timelines showcases the studio’s storytelling prowess, gradually revealing both the science and human cost behind its phenomena. Audio tapes and documents complement the inception-like events, providing enough pieces to understand without being overbearing—trusting players to make sense of it all.
Where the story excels is in its quieter moments. Dylan cleaning up a hangout spot and sketching the scene reveals his artistic side. A recording of a survivor pleading for mold to eat captures the tonal contrast that defines Remedy’s work—simultaneously goofy and deeply dark.
And then there are the twists. Without spoiling anything, Control Resonant contains some of Remedy’s best narrative turns, including one of the most memorable moments in any game this year. Part of Dylan and Jesse’s past involves video games as children, and where this thread leads is genuinely affecting—transcending the typical “hey, remember this?” reference to become something meaningful.
Control Resonant is a game of contradictions. It’s a bold departure that remains conceptually consistent with its predecessor. It’s Remedy’s most conventional story told through their most unconventional world. It’s an action game with a solid foundation that occasionally trips over its own ambitions.
The combat is responsive and stylish, even when its sharp edge dulls. The RPG mechanics suggest more depth than they deliver. The open world is genuinely inventive, even when it gets unwieldy. The story is a collection of incredible moments that cohere when strung together but don’t quite land as a unified whole.
What’s undeniable is that Control Resonant dares to be bold where it counts. Remedy could have played it safe, delivering another claustrophobic Metroidvania-style adventure. Instead, they built something new—a game that honors its predecessor while charting its own path.
It doesn’t always work. But when it does—when you’re shifting gravity to navigate impossible architecture, when combat clicks into a satisfying rhythm, when the story reveals something genuinely surprising—it’s hard to escape Control Resonant‘s gravitational pull.
The kid could be going places. And so could this franchise.