News & Commentary

Control Resonant Left the Building, and the Reviews Noticed

Remedy's sequel landed at 84 with critics. The most consistent complaint is about the part it added: an open world that thins out the sense of place Control was built on.

Remedy's Control Resonant launched September 24 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and the critics had already had their say: an 84 average across 81 reviews on OpenCritic, with 85% recommending it. That's a notch above the original Control.

If you care how games get built, not just whether to buy one, skip the number. Look at where the complaints cluster.

Be fair to Remedy first. GameSpot gave it a 9, and the praise for the art direction and the combat feel is real. But read the lower scores and one idea keeps coming back: the game left the Oldest House, and some of the magic stayed behind.

That's the whole story, really. The first Control worked because the building was closed, hostile and legible. You learned it the way you learn a haunted house - room by room, until the wrongness had a floor plan. Going open-world traded that interiority for scale. And scale is the one thing every big studio already has.

Watch the patches. Remedy already shipped a day-one update making enemies easier to kill, which tells you the combat complaint landed. Nobody patches a sense of place.