Control Resonant Review

Published Sep 18, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT Control Resonant suffers some open world fumbles, but it's an incredibly fun and artistic game, and a must play for Remedy fans. Control Resonant Is Another Big Step Towards An Incredible Remedyverse Control is a series that has always managed to make the mundane feel extraordinary. A refrigerator that will kill everyone unless someone is looking at it; a telephone that only a single person can use without dying; a merry-go-round horse that could chase people around at lightning quick speeds. That sort of thing. Opening up the world outside The Oldest House, I was worried that Control Resonant would lose some of its focus on the supernatural in favor of a more traditional, checklisty open world, but thankfully, Remedy just increased the scale. A Hauntingly Beautiful Manhattan Control Resonant has you playing as Dylan Faden, the previously mind-controlled brother of Jesse Faden, who was cleansed of Hiss corruption at the end of the first Control. After being in a coma for seven years, you’ve awoken to a breach in The Oldest House’s lockdown measures, your sister is missing, and a whole chunk of Manhattan is completely disconnected from reality. You’re also introduced to a supernatural force known as The Patterning, which is completely opposed to the Hiss. Right in the middle of a supernatural war, and with an ever-expanding Mold problem acting as a third hostile party, your goal is to fight back while trying to find Jesse. While it’s fittingly a lot to take in from a narrative perspective, this hostile trifecta of enemy factions contributes to making Control Resonant’s world feel more varied. You have the Downtown area, which is overrun with Hiss, full of vibrant reds and tall buildings, with people eerily floating through the streets. Then you have The Park, an area completely covered in blue mold with buildings peaking out from below. There are also areas of the world that have been completely Patterned, with buildings pointing in the wrong direction or upside down, requiring you to adapt how you traverse the world and fight enemies. Control Resonant is set entirely within that chunk of Manhattan, and, while there’s only so much you can do re: skyscrapers and cityscapes, Remedy has managed to make each area feel incredibly distinct from each other, and you’ll even discover open world zones in the last place you’d expect. Remedy has worked wonders with limited space, and it’s resulted in one of my favorite open worlds to explore from a purely aesthetic standpoint. Style With A Sprinkling Of Substance As for what you get to do in the world, you’ve got all the standard open world affairs. There are side quests to find, some of which aren’t marked on your map and can be found naturally by exploring. These side quests are a highlight of Control Resonant’s open world, and are where you’ll get the sorts of showdowns with mundane objects that made the first game so unique, whether it be hunting down stereo speakers or saving people from a possessed karaoke machine. Unfortunately, outside those quests, there’s not much else on offer. You can take part in random world events that have you fighting Hiss or Mold monsters, but there’s not much variety within those. They don’t change all that much depending on the zone you’re in either, so repetition sets in pretty quickly, especially if you’re trying to level up each zone to unlock rewards. The same can be said of general exploration. There are plenty of goodies to be found in the open world for the keen explorers, but most of them are stashed in the same set of areas. The asset reuse is a little bit ridiculous, and I’ve seen enough Italian restaurants, gyms, cafes, and art galleries to satisfy me for a lifetime. And what makes a lot of this even more frustrating is the game’s map. I don’t know why Remedy struggles to make maps, but it’s a weakness that is really felt in Control Resonant. Icons go missing, they’re not placed right, and it’s generally quite difficult to tell if something is either below or above you. In a more linear game, it’s not a problem, but in a very vertical open world like this one, it can be a real pain to navigate. A Devilish New Way To Fight That being said, Control Resonant has a fast-paced and chaotic combat system that you can experiment with to alleviate some of the monotony. Instead of the first game’s mixture of shooting combined with telekinetic powers, Resonant is almost entirely melee-focused, feeling more like a hack and slash akin to Devil May Cry or God of War, albeit less fluid. There are three main weapons you can use, each one varying in strength and speed, sporting their own strengths and weaknesses. Every enemy faction has some kind of element they’re weak to, so switching between them and chaining status effects to suit the enemy type you’re fighting is a good way to make the game feel fresh again. New weapons and powers are also constantly thrown at you as you make your way past story milestones. Combat can feel a little tedious and clumsy towards the start of the game, but once you make more progress and unlock more powers, you can start chaining together abilities to make fighting enemies a lot more satisfying and frantic. You unlock these powers by fighting Resonants, powerful foes in each Zone that test your combat capabilities, and they’re one of the many highlights that the game has to offer. Each one has its own story which builds out the world of Control, something which Remedy has always been exceptional at. When you find out that one of the bosses is a down-on-his-luck scientist who has ignored his family and children in pursuit of his research, only to end up as a writhing ball of jittering limbs, it hits home so much harder. And it’s in these moments that Control Resonant is something truly special. While its open world can be a little tedious at times, the main story expertly guides you between magnificent set pieces that range from somber and quiet settings to auditory and visual spectacles that have you dynamically zipping between walls and manipulating gravity to get around. It’s an incredibly artistic world dripping with style and that classic Remedy aesthetic, and the more linear sections are the studio at its absolute best. While there are some open world fumbles that kind of drag the overall quality down, the rest of Control Resonant is so spectacular that they’re worth putting up with. It’s another great entry in the Remedyverse, and I’m all in on what the studio wants to do next. Released September 24, 2026 ESRB Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence Developer(s) Remedy Entertainment Publisher(s) Remedy Entertainment Genre(s) Action, RPG, Hack and Slash, Open-World Pros & Cons Incredibly varied world dripping with style Chaotic and frantic combat system Visually stunning Remedy-esque moments A slightly tedious open world with busywork Another god awful map