Control by Remedy Catch All

beeporama wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

I’m going to have to wait for a patch. Sounds like it’s performing particularly poorly on the standard PS4 :(

beeporama wrote:

although the game looks great, it occasionally struggles to load detailed textures and keep up a high framerate.

I'm playing on a standard PS4. I would not say "poorly" for me, at least. I don't have pop-in. By "struggles to load detailed textures," I mean sometimes there will be a sign or painting on the wall that I want to look at closely (because all the flavor is great), and it will appear blurry unless I stand still for a second or two. But this could probably be improved, and I hope we'll see patches that do so.

Of course, I know some people are more sensitive about framerate than me. It definitely isn't a gameplay problem at all (for me) but the slowdown I barely notice could be more glaring to cinephiles.

There is a day one patch that includes performance improvements, so anybody playing the shipped code might have it worse.

With further play, I need to amend my initial impressions.

The framerate drops on my standard PS4 do get pretty noticeable occasionally. It only tends to be for a few seconds, if there are a lot of foes (and friends) in combat; but it is there.

After early difficulty spiking in the first boss battle, it has gotten significantly easier. I die, but not as often and with little penalty. But unlike many games that want to let you "play your way," Control can be brutal if you don't use the style they encourage. Stay on the move, and use "Lift" as often as possible on normal enemies.

Aristophan wrote:

It looks like there are random missions that can appear to kill Hiss in an area, and when I died on that the mission was aborted.

I've gotten a few of these, and they are invariably very difficult compared to typical fights. I'm getting used to ignoring them unless I feel like a real challenge.

beeporama wrote:
Aristophan wrote:

It looks like there are random missions that can appear to kill Hiss in an area, and when I died on that the mission was aborted.

I've gotten a few of these, and they are invariably very difficult compared to typical fights. I'm getting used to ignoring them unless I feel like a real challenge.

I can further confirm that if you have one of those missions and you die in another area, you will also fail it. I'm not really concerned. I've heard that even when you finish the story, you can still do missions and side quests in the Oldest House. There will be plenty of time for random missions then.

Three words: Guided Imagery Experience

Beat the game. Overall happy with it. My complaints with the combat were improved with better health and more options. That said it still had it moments where it was awful. Story was great and actually subverts the xfiles/lost cliche of never getting answers. Mostly. I would rank Alan Wake and Quantum break above it though.

The forced motion blur is really annoying. Remedy has said they will put an option in to disable it but they are saying it's a mid to late September update. Makes it feel like you are playing on early 2000's LCD tech. I can live with the film grain but it does soften the image greatly.

I thought there was an ini tweak that disabled motion blur. Assuming you’re on PC of course.

Finished. To quote Jesse, "That was awesome".

JC wrote:

I thought there was an ini tweak that disabled motion blur. Assuming you’re on PC of course.

Haven’t seen anything like that. Someone posted a hex editor hack on the DX11 or DX12 DLL that supposedly does that but I’m not really interested in trying that if an official “fix” is in the works. Granted I will probably be done the game by then.

Came across my first Alan Wake reference so clearly now that Remedy owns the AW ip they are linking the two games as a single world. Can we dare to dream we will see a Control DLC that pulls Alan Wake out of the lake?

All I can say is "SCP: The Video Game".

It's so, so good...

I'm a few hours in, playing on PS4 and really enjoying it. The load times haven't been very long to speak of (yes, I've died a few times) and I'm leaning on my telekinesis power wherever possible, as it seems to be more forgiving, aim-wise. Plus it's super fun to use. I want more powers!

Boss fights continue to be the most challenging thing about this game, and is the only time I wish the load times were better on the PS4 Pro. On the latest boss, I also found out that if you die as the same time as the boss, then you get credit! Ties go to the player!

This game rules.

Aristophan wrote:

Boss fights continue to be the most challenging thing about this game, and is the only time I wish the load times were better on the PS4 Pro. On the latest boss, I also found out that if you die as the same time as the boss, then you get credit! Ties go to the player!

They need a little bit better check pointing around the bosses. It seems you respawn just far enough away that it is annoying to run back to the boss fight. Most of the boss fights I felt have been a good challenge, if a little frustrating at times. However, at the boss fight with

Spoiler:

Essej

and it's kicking my ass. The boss I'm referring to is in the back half of the game on a side mission. Anyone else struggle with this and have tips?

This game is giving my a Prey vibe.

Edit: I beat the boss!

I can't think of another game, at least not one I've played or seen that does this... let's call it a "Mr. Robot" narrative thing, where the protagonist directly addresses the player about what's going on in her inner monologue, and if she isn't actually self-aware that she's in a video game she still seems to regard herself and the player as a kind of team.

I've finished it too.

Although the difficulty eased up (when you get the "Throw" ability) it definitely gets brutal in some of the side missions. The optional boss battles are no joke. I wonder it it's easier on PC instead of console? It's nice that I can keep playing after the end credits, but I'm now carefully plotting my way through the easiest side missions so I can level up for the tough bosses.

Anyway, I want to talk about... (Very minor spoiler anyone can read unless crazy spoiler averse and haven't reached chapter 8.)

Spoiler:

The ASHTRAY MAZE. Save yourself some frustration trying: although you can find it early, it's not a puzzle; you can't traverse it until the story requires it.

They did some interesting things with this segment to make it a real "water cooler moment." (Bigger spoilers follow.)

Spoiler:

Obviously, the entire Ashtray Maze is pretty trippy (even by this game's standards) and the "Old Guards of Asgard" soundtrack is meant to really get you amped up. (Remedy fans might recall that "Old Guards of Asgard" is Poets of the Fall going metal, and are from the in-game universe, appearing prominently in Alan Wake.)

But, I noticed two things, and I'm not sure if they are completely obvious to everyone else:

(1) The music is synced to the experience. They will loop instrumental sections of it if you are too slow.

(2) I'm pretty sure it is difficult or impossible to die. I think the enemies start whiffing like crazy if you are injured, and it might secretly top off your health at points.

I think they tailored this section to make you feel like an invincible badass for ten minutes. It worked!

Aristophan wrote:

Three words: Guided Imagery Experience

Many of you might have seen this, but: https://mp1st.com/news/control-hideo...

The link has minor spoilers for this experience (and a major spoiler in the form of a video of it), but the relevant bit is, Hideo Kojima is the Japanese voice. (And Kojima’s Production Manager, Aki Saito, is the translator.)

I found some documents that alluded to Alan Wake and the Bright Falls event.. but then stumbled upon...

Spoiler:

Alan's typewriter locked up with all the other objects and it triggered a video scene with Alan Wake speaking... I gotta think Alan Wake 2 is coming at some point.

It feels a lot like a third person 0451 game. You have to back track through environments and learn the layout of the place, which brings back great memories of the System Shock games and, more recently, Prey. I kind of love that the map isn't super detailed, and there's no glowing path or arrow on the HUD telling you where to go.

Telekinesis feels amazing in this game. It was a very smart decision to make it auto-target enemies.

It plays great on my new laptop (mobile 2060) and the ray tracing stuff is neat, though unnecessary.

Good game. I like it a lot better than Alan Wake, which had pretty weak combat.

Middcore wrote:

I can't think of another game, at least not one I've played or seen that does this... let's call it a "Mr. Robot" narrative thing, where the protagonist directly addresses the player about what's going on in her inner monologue, and if she isn't actually self-aware that she's in a video game she still seems to regard herself and the player as a kind of team.

I don't think that she's addressing the player.

PWAlessi wrote:
Middcore wrote:

I can't think of another game, at least not one I've played or seen that does this... let's call it a "Mr. Robot" narrative thing, where the protagonist directly addresses the player about what's going on in her inner monologue, and if she isn't actually self-aware that she's in a video game she still seems to regard herself and the player as a kind of team.

I don't think that she's addressing the player.

Without discussing spoilers, you're definitely led to believe she is for at least the initial portion of the game. I mean when you get the Service Weapon, she says "You want me to pick up the gun?" the moment the objective dot appears.

The second person narrative style is at least partially explained at one point... But I'm far from done and haven't seen everything yet.

TheGameguru wrote:

I found some documents that alluded to Alan Wake and the Bright Falls event.. but then stumbled upon...

Spoiler:

Alan's typewriter locked up with all the other objects and it triggered a video scene with Alan Wake speaking... I gotta think Alan Wake 2 is coming at some point.

Spoiler:

Did you see the Thermos? The game does a good job with explaining why there were dozens upon dozens of Thermoses in Bright Falls. They're all Altered Items.

For those experiencing stutters or bad 1%/0.1% lows on PC, this fix seems to have made a noticeable improvement for me. Still get an occasional hitch when lots of telekinetic sh*t is flying around in a fight or when entering a new area but it's a lot smoother most of the time.

Middcore wrote:

For those experiencing stutters or bad 1%/0.1% lows on PC, this fix seems to have made a noticeable improvement for me. Still get an occasional hitch when lots of telekinetic sh*t is flying around in a fight or when entering a new area but it's a lot smoother most of the time.

I have a 3ish year old Intel CPU, 16GB RAM, and a 1070 with the above 2 games on a SSD.

I do not have Control but I have tried this fix on Doom and Dying Light and it has made a huge difference. Doom specifically went from around 30 fps average to about 90. Doom would regularly stutter and hitch when enemy counts went up. It's super smooth now.

They ran like dogsh*t compared to my other games and I couldn't figure out why. I have tinkered with GPU settings but nothing seemed to work and I couldn't get the performance I was seeing in other games.

Another fix which seems to have actually resolved 90% of frame drops for me: installing this little application and letting it run in the background set to dump Windows' standby memory any time free memory gets lower than 4GB (out of the 16GB in my system). There is an old Win10 bug where more and more memory gets put in the standby list without being released to free memory which was supposedly fixed many Windows updates ago, but for some bizarre reason seems to be rearing its ugly head again now with this game? I've passed the info on to the devs in the 505 Games Discord so they can look at whether there is something in Control itself that's causing it.

I finished the main story tonight, and it was quite excellent. Top 5 of the year easily for sure. I'm now doing some post-game missions.

There was also a sequence towards the end that is also one of my favorite sequences of the year - it kept me smiling throughout.

If you are on the fence, I encourage you to play this game!

It arrived yesterday and I played the first mission. Met Emily Pope and asked some questions.

Not gonna say much at the moment, but, uh, they certainly had me feeling like I was going crazy and incorrectly remembering the layout of the place.

I actually tried the combat without any aim-assist on, as is my preference when the option is available on console (I know, I'm a CUH-RAZY person!), but something about how this game feels had me turning the magnetized bullets back on. Maybe as I get better with action games I'm getting worse with shooters, I dunno. Regardless, I can see already how people are going to find it frustrating or weak. I can also tell just how many objects in the environment are individual and why that'd contribute to slow-down in time.

We'll see what I think as I get further. Already this feels like a story you're going to want to experience multiple times to really get an appreciation for it, though.

I got frustrated at one of the "Clear even more mold" missions and went wandering around trying to get into new places since I have Levitate now.

Got into the room with the duck and... is there anything to do with the duck? It just keeps teleporting away from me and quacking. I thought it might be leading me somewhere but I'm starting to think I'm just wasting my time.

And Googling "Control duck" is absolutely worthless.

I love the name of the game, but it is really hard to Google.

As for the duck:

Spoiler:

You can catch up with it and cleanse it. It took me a while, and I couldn't see any pattern. I just was able to catch up with it at one point. Sorry I can't be more specific.

I packed up the Platinum trophy today. If you are a completionist, it will be pretty straightforward to get. I sprung for the deluxe version, so I'm looking forward to the two DLC missions.

About the duck:

Spoiler:

I noticed that it shows up back in the panopticon after you catch it. Someone who hacked the game noticed a duck-related reference "SM-09 - Duck" in the game's mission list, so maybe it's part of a planned mission that got canned or something.

Also, I got the duck before I got levitate by piling up boxes in the adjoining room to reach the vent.