Control Resonant swaps the franchise's signature gunplay for something far more primal: melee combat. After spending two hours with an early build, it's clear that Remedy has found something genuinely compelling in this pivot.
The original Control had its moments. The Ashtray Maze remains one of gaming's most electrifying set pieces, and the pure satisfaction of hurling furniture at enemies never wore thin. But the shooting felt imprecise, enemy variety was thin, and The Oldest House grew tiresome as a space to constantly revisit. Control Resonant arrives with a cleaner promise: keep everything weird and inventive, but rebuild the combat around melee action instead.
The demo opened with Dylan waking from his coma after the first game's events, fighting through The Oldest House to reach a Manhattan now consumed by The Hiss, the paranormal force that should have stayed contained. Later sequences jumped ahead about ten hours to an open-ended zone called the Extraction Zone, where players hunt sidequests and upgrade resources. Linear story missions branch off from this hub, structured like the wings of the original game.
One standout sequence sent Dylan into a sinkhole to plant research drones, using an elevator that kept getting ambushed by The Hiss. The encounter design here reveals a shrewd decision: basic enemies respawn infinitely, so mindlessly mashing them wastes time. Real progress comes only from hunting down the elite enemies marked on your minimap. After clearing them, Dylan had to traverse the sinkhole using a mobility toolkit that felt almost superhuman. Hold jump to glide, double jump mid-air, then dash horizontally. Chaining these moves lets you vault between buildings like something out of an Incredible Hulk game.
The most striking moment came when the elevator crashed. Dylan followed a glowing cord deeper underground until the bland stone shifted into something impossible: a looping apartment complex warped into surreal geometry. A blue TV glow and a song guided your eyes through the maze. Then the view expanded to show hundreds of apartments arranged like an opened dollhouse, stacked above, below, sideways, and upside down, all still anchored by that persistent song. It's quintessentially Remedy, disorienting but unmistakably purposeful.
Combat feels frenetic. Imagine Doom 2016's relentless forward momentum blended with Control's floaty acrobatics and Devil May Cry's air combo chains, then you're in the right neighborhood. Dylan equips three melee weapons simultaneously, each serving a distinct role. The standard weapon handles quick damage, a subweapon deals heavier hits with more technical requirement, and a finisher weapon caps off combos. In practice, this meant dual swords for clearing trash, a massive hammer for charged damage and aerial cancels, and gauntlets for heavy stagger.
That hammer became the star. Charging its aerial attack would normally slam Dylan earthward, but canceling the animation with a jump, dodge, or ability kept him airborne, still locked on target. Not quite as stylish as Devil May Cry's enemy step, but effective and deeply satisfying.
Special abilities add another layer. Dylan can swap between two sets of three abilities at will. The demo showed telekinetic rock throws, ground slams, ranged fire attacks, a powerup that burned through meter for extra burn damage, telekinetic pushes, and a rock shield usable both defensively and offensively. Combined with three weapon types, skill trees, and build-altering artifacts, the system feels genuinely flexible. You could chase pure damage, focus on stagger-and-execute loops, lean into rapid hits for frequent finishers, or build around the whip sword's five-times-damage window if you time your release perfectly.
Enemy variety stands out as a major improvement. The original game's roster felt repetitive, but Control Resonant introduced buses full of Hiss-infected zombies spilling from windows, possessed vending machines, and a cloaked creature hunted through a gravity-flip arena. These encounters felt visually and mechanically distinct in ways the first game rarely achieved.
The real test lies ahead. Remedy needs to sustain this creativity across the full runtime, constantly introducing fresh weapons, abilities, and enemy types that justify the fast-paced melee loop. Early signs suggest they're equipped to do it. Control Resonant feels like exactly what it promises: more Control, reforged as a pure action game instead of a physics-driven shooter. After two hours, that's a winning formula.
Author Emily Chen: "Remedy proved the first Control didn't need guns to succeed, just better reasons to move and fight than backtracking through corridors."
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