Control
2019
Audio: English, German, French, Spanish · Subtitles: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese, French, Korean, English, Chinese, Polish, Russian, German
- shooter
- adventure
- action
- fantasy
- science fiction
- horror
- thriller
- single player
The story
Control is a third-person action-adventure game set in the Federal Bureau of Control, a secretive U.S. government agency that studies paranormal phenomena. Players control Jesse Faden, who arrives at the Bureau's headquarters, the Oldest House, to find it invaded by a hostile force called the Hiss. Gameplay combines supernatural abilities with a shape-shifting firearm, and the environment is reactive and destructible.
What it’s like
Brutalist concrete and brushed-steel corridors under flickering fluorescent tubes, with the Oldest House's impossible geometry rendered in shifting, uncanny space: rooms that rearrange when you look away, walls of dull institutional beige pierced by saturated red and blue light from the Hiss. Its palette runs cold and grey, broken by bursts of kinetic colour during combat, and the camera sits close behind the shoulder so the world feels solid and oppressive. Soundscape leans on low drones, distant static, and an eerie synth-and-strings score that swells in quiet corridors and goes sparse in the stillness between firefights. Vibe: cerebral unease with bursts of frantic action, the atmosphere of a late-night office where something has gone wrong. Violence is frequent and stylised, with gunfights, supernatural blasts and enemies that dissolve into shards; gore is minimal, and the horror comes from dread, unsettling imagery and body-horror-tinged creatures rather than blood. Pacing alternates between long exploratory wandering through the Bureau and sudden, loud combat, with an arc that tracks a newcomer slowly uncovering the building's secrets and her own place within them. For people who want a moody, mysterious adventure with strange architecture, dark humour, and a gradual reveal, and who can handle regular intense shoot-outs.
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