Control Resonant was easily my most hyped game of 2026 and there really wasn’t anything else that came particularly close. I absolutely adored the original Control and had it right up there as one of my Game of the Year contenders when it released, while Alan Wake 2 went one better and was comfortably my Game of the Year in 2023, so at this point Remedy have got themselves into that very small group of developers where I am going to be ridiculously excited about whatever they decide to do next. Naturally then, the idea of getting back into the world of Control, this time with Dylan at the centre of everything, meant my expectations for Resonant were probably unfairly high before I had even loaded it up.
Which made the first ten hours quite strange because, for a fairly significant chunk of that time, I wasn’t actually sure whether I was enjoying myself anywhere near as much as I expected to.
The combat took me a really long time to properly get into and I think part of that was probably my own fault because I came straight into Resonant after finishing Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which obviously plays completely differently and had left me very used to a particular rhythm in combat. Even taking that into account though, Resonant has a surprisingly steep learning curve at the beginning and I spent A LOT of those opening hours dying again and again and again while I tried to work out exactly what the game wanted from me. There are loads of different systems being introduced, Dylan initially feels far more vulnerable than you would expect him to be and enemies can absolutely batter you if you don’t properly understand how everything is supposed to work together, so rather than immediately feeling like this incredibly powerful character within the Control universe I instead spent a good amount of time getting my shit kicked in.
Then at around the ten hour mark something just clicked and the entire game completely changed for me.
Dylan’s power increases so dramatically once you start properly unlocking everything that Resonant suddenly goes from being this fairly punishing action game into one of the most ridiculous power fantasies I have played in ages. Once I was able to set my weapons on fire in particular, everything stepped up another level and I went from cautiously trying to survive encounters to whipping around fights, executing enemies left and right and absolutely tearing through groups that would have destroyed me a few hours earlier. It is such a dramatic change that I almost felt like I was playing a different game and, while I do think it takes too long to get you to that point, once Resonant lets Dylan off the leash the combat becomes incredibly satisfying.
Unfortunately this also highlighted one of the biggest problems I had with the game, which is that the open world doesn’t always feel built to support just how powerful Dylan eventually becomes. One of the things I loved about Control was that enemies always felt dangerous because even a relatively small encounter could go very badly if you stopped paying attention, whereas Resonant is much more interested in throwing hordes at Dylan and letting you smash through them. That works brilliantly when the combat is firing on all cylinders, but after a while I started feeling like I was killing the same three types of enemies over and over again and the excitement of seeing another group standing between me and my destination started disappearing pretty quickly.
The open world itself is probably the weakest part of Resonant in general and some of the decisions Remedy have made here feel like they have come directly out of a game released in 2007. There is a surprising amount of collectathon stuff scattered around and even the way you open up sections of the map feels suspiciously like Remedy decided Ubisoft towers needed another go around, except instead of climbing a massive tower you are running around finding three satellite dishes before that section opens up. It isn’t offensively bad or anything like that, but it feels incredibly dated when you put it next to how inventive Remedy are with basically every other part of the game and it was probably the biggest source of that feeling I had early on that Resonant wasn’t quite living up to what I wanted it to be.
Thankfully this bothered me less and less as I went on, partly because getting around and fighting became so much more fun once Dylan was properly powered up and partly because I eventually realised that going for the platinum didn’t actually require me to tick off absolutely everything scattered across the map. Once I realised I mostly just had to do the dogs rather than spending hours clearing every single icon I could see, I stopped worrying so much about cleaning everything up and just got on with enjoying the bits of the game I actually wanted to play.
The Resonants themselves are obviously a major part of the game and I did really enjoy fighting them, although I was quite surprised by how short most of those encounters actually were. The first one had me expecting these huge fights that were going to become progressively more elaborate as the game went on, but after that the vast majority of them seemed to be over within five minutes or so. They’re still fun and they give you a chance to really use everything Dylan has available to him, I just expected them to be these enormous centrepiece moments and they never quite reached that level for me.
Story wise though, this is absolutely classic Remedy and that is where Resonant is at its strongest. It is incredibly weird, very Twin Peaks-esque and completely willing to disappear up its own arse for a while in a way that somehow makes me like it more rather than less. There is definitely a heavier lean on action here than there was in Control, but all of the strange little conversations, bizarre situations and moments where you have absolutely no idea what is about to happen next are still here and Remedy’s writing is still absolutely second to none when it comes to this sort of thing.
I really enjoyed almost all of the characters too and there are loads of conversations throughout the game where I was quite happy just standing around listening to everyone talk because they are written so naturally within a world that is anything but natural. Almost everyone grew on me as the game went along.
Except Arish.
Fuck Arish.
One relationship I did have a bit of an issue with was Dylan and Zoe because it often feels like the story and the open world are dealing with two completely different versions of their relationship. During the actual story it is incredibly clear that the two of them care about each other and Zoe even goes as far as getting herself in deep trouble with the FBC to save Dylan, which gives everything happening between them some genuine weight. Then you finish that mission, decide to go off hunting another Resonant and suddenly they are talking to each other like Zoe is a completely detached handler and Dylan is just another asset she has been told to keep an eye on. I know open world games have always struggled with this sort of thing, but it happens enough here that it started feeling strangely fragmented, especially when the main story had done such a good job of making me care about the two of them.
Despite my issues with the open world, there are also sections where Resonant reminded me exactly why I love Remedy so much. When I first arrived at the Underpass my immediate reaction was basically “eugh, another massive area where I’m going to have to run around collecting shit” and I had already mentally prepared myself for another couple of hours of map clearing.
I really should know better than to doubt Remedy at this point.
The Underpass ends up being one of those sections where everything just starts getting progressively stranger until you realise you have absolutely no idea where the game is going next, and once you eventually get back to the Oldest House Resonant takes another massive step into being completely fucking mental. Every time I thought it had probably hit the ceiling for how weird it could possibly get, Remedy found some new way to push things further and those moments are easily the best parts of the entire game because there genuinely isn’t another developer making things quite like this.
At one point I finally got the trophy for reaching Level 5 in every area and had that lovely little moment of thinking, brilliant, I have finally visited everywhere and I know I have because the game has literally just given me a trophy telling me so.
Oh wait, I’m 16-bit now.
Of course I fucking am.
That is Resonant at its best. It constantly has these little moments where it feels like Remedy have asked themselves what the strangest possible thing they could do next would be and then decided that wasn’t strange enough. It is the reason I kept pushing forward even when I wasn’t particularly enjoying some of the open world busywork because I knew that around the corner there was probably going to be something absolutely mental waiting for me.
There was also one particular moment towards the end that I wasn’t quite prepared for.
Oh shit.
Bye Arish.
Maybe I take back some of what I said.
The frustrating thing is that Resonant keeps escalating and escalating and escalating right up until the point where it needs to stick the landing, and then for me it just doesn’t. There is so much build up throughout the game, especially once you get into the later areas and everything starts becoming increasingly ridiculous, that I was expecting an ending that would somehow find another level again. Instead I got to the end and was left with this overwhelming feeling of… was that it?
For a game that spends so much of its runtime constantly surprising you, the ending is incredibly underwhelming and that probably hurt my overall feeling towards Resonant more than almost anything else because I was so invested by that stage. After the slightly shaky opening hours I had completely come around on the combat, I loved the characters, I was fully invested in Remedy throwing increasingly insane shit at me and I genuinely felt like the game was building towards something enormous, only for it to end in a way that felt strangely flat compared to everything that had come before it.
That ultimately sums up my time with Control Resonant pretty well because there is a game in here that I absolutely love, it just isn’t consistently that game. The opening is much more punishing than I expected, the open world feels dated in places, the lack of enemy variety becomes increasingly noticeable once Dylan starts effortlessly tearing through hordes and the ending didn’t come close to matching the build up. On the other side of that though, once Dylan’s abilities properly open up the combat becomes fucking brilliant, Remedy’s writing is as good as ever and there are sections later in the game that are so weird and so completely confident in what they are doing that they reminded me exactly why this was my most anticipated game of the year in the first place.
I wanted to love Control Resonant and there are definitely chunks of it where I absolutely did, but there were just enough frustrations around those moments to stop it reaching the same heights as Control or Alan Wake 2 for me.
Still, even a Remedy game that didn’t quite live up to my ridiculous expectations gave me some of my favourite gaming moments of the year.
<p><div class=”high”>7 / 10</div></p>
