Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 2’s first mission aboard the tanker firmly establishes Solid Snake as the ongoing hero of the series, coaxing players into a sense of familiarity. But an hour into the game, things change. There’s a fast-forward of two years and Snake is presumed dead. The rest of the game is played through the lens of Raiden, a newer recruit who, though lacks the expertise and wit of Snake, demonstrates greater agility and a good amount of skill. The biggest gameplay difference between Raiden and Snake is the quick roll between cover that can be pulled off when controlling Raiden. Besides his agility in combat, he lacks the charismatic banter and iconic gravelly voice of Snake, resulting in many frustrated and disappointed players at the time of MGS2’s release. Imagine your favorite character getting sidelined for an entire game with little confidence in his return. In hindsight, we appreciate Raiden for his future, and badass, appearance in MGS Rising Revengeance but in 2001, there was no surefire guarantee Solid Snake would take the spotlight again.

Prey (2017)

Prey’s opening is a masterclass on how to build intrigue while completely immersing the player in the game world. Arkane’s Prey builds off of 2006’s Prey with a similar slice of life intro that gets upended and warped into a sci-fi nightmare, though the two titles aren’t connected. Morgan wakes up to get ready for work in a highrise apartment in what looks like a futuristic San Francisco. The game’s physics engine allows any object to be picked up and thrown, and there’s a slew of emails and notes to read around the apartment, providing some context and lore. Players can’t be blamed for spending some time admiring the highrise views and exploring the interactable elements. After a nice helicopter ride to Morgan’s job site, a horrific Typhon creature attacks one of the scientists and Morgan blacks out. What comes next flips the status quo completely on its head. Morgan wakes up more or less like nothing ever happened, to an alarm in the same apartment building as before, but things aren’t quite right. After some exploration, it’s revealed the entire building is just a simulation aboard a space station. Nothing was as it seemed and the remainder of the game is spent trying to survive onboard the isolated and dangerous Talos I station.

The Last of Us Part 1

The core of The Last of Us’ gameplay doesn’t emerge until an hour into the game. And it’s not due to clumsy tutorials wasting the player’s time. No, the first hour is spent setting up the world state that would characterize the award-winning series. You don’t start the game busting zombies’ heads open as a hardened badass, but instead wake up in the shoes of Joel’s daughter, Sarah. The game lets the player explore Joel’s house, which contains a fair amount of mementos and bits of backstory into who these characters were before the zombie outbreak. An evacuation and car crash later and we’re playing as Joel, carrying Sarah in a desperate attempt to outrun the infected hordes. After one of the more tragic scenes in gaming, there’s a pretty substantial time skip as we finally control the hardened Joel that encapsulates the rest of the game. It’s the perfect intro to a zombie game and it didn’t even need to give the player a weapon to feel the tension and anxiety of the setting.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Rockstar Games typically lets players loose in their game world pretty early on. That’s not at all the case with Red Dead Redemption 2. It takes around an hour or so for the on-rails story missions to ease up. Players who just want to live out their wild west fantasies in an immersive open world have to wait it out and experience the story set-up first. Of course, that isn’t to say the opening hours aren’t action-packed or interesting in their own right. The game introduces the over-the-shoulder shooting mechanics and melee combat with some battles against a rival gang. But it’s true that a majority of the game’s opening hours involve slowly riding horseback along some snowy mountains listening to character banter. RDR2 has even more open-world freedom than the first game, but it takes a bit longer to reach that point this time around.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Speaking of slow burns, there’s perhaps no better example than 2006’s The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The game starts out with a Harvest Moon-esque sequence of Link talking to villagers and doing a series of chores on the farm. Ordon is a peaceful village and all is idyllic during these moments. Sure, you get a slingshot tutorial, but there’s pretty much no need for combat when things are this peaceful. Obviously, Link gets thrust onto the hero’s journey eventually, but it takes a good bit of time to reach. Twilight Princess is one of the darkest games in the series, featuring some horror elements with the villain, Zant, and the eerie ghosts within the Twilight realm. It’s also one of the more fast-paced and action-packed games in the series, but the idyllic opener wouldn’t give that impression. The greatness of Twilight Princess’s opening is just how effective it sets up the stakes at play. It establishes that a peaceful and idyllic village like Ordon can be erased at the hands of evil. In a way, Ordon fulfills a similar role as The Shire from Lord of the Rings.

Death Stranding

While Death Stranding’s opening does a good job giving players a taste of what the game’s about, nothing could prepare people for the craziness that occurs in the middle and end of the game. The game begins like a vague dream, with tons of bizarre terms and lore that still make our head spin today. The exposition-heavy prologue features roughly 40 minutes of cinematics and 20 minutes of gameplay. The precious few moments that you are given some control, you’re tasked with picking up some dropped cargo and transporting it through some mountainous terrain in the rain before getting sidelined by the threat of some BDs. It’s a nice tutorial of what you’ll be doing in the core game but with none of the open-ended freedom. It would be another hour or so until the game’s core features open up. Much of Death Stranding’s charm is in its bizarrely beautiful open-world, touting varied terrain to overcome and breathtaking vistas to admire. Players don’t truly get to experience the core ‘strand-like’ gameplay until the ability to build infrastructure such as bridges and walkways for other real-life players becomes available later. And while there’s plenty of protracted cinematics throughout the rest of the game, there’s usually large swaths of open-ended delivery gameplay to offset it, unlike the exposition-heavy opening.

Kingdom Hearts 2

Kingdom Hearts 2 really threw fans for a loop with the opening’s focus on Roxas rather than Sora. What’s more, the location of this game’s intro wasn’t explored in past games, making the whole sequence feel like some Twilight Zone episode. Roxas’ summer vacation with his friends in Twilight Town functioned more or less as a gameplay tutorial as well, though the magic system and gummi ship stuff doesn’t come into play until Sora finally enters the picture. Millions of players asked the same questions during KH2’s opening hours: “Where is Sora, Donald, and Goofy? And who the heck is Roxas?” Part of the brilliance of KH2 is how those questions get explored throughout the course of the game.

The Stanley Parable

There’s not many games that sell based on intrigue alone, but The Stanley Parable is one of them. It’s very much an experiment on what it means to be a game. As soon as players boot it up from the start menu, a charming narrator describes a typical day at the office for Stanley. This is where player agency comes into question. Should I continue following the narrator’s ques, or do I completely avert expectations? And so, one of thousands of different routes begins. The first hour of The Stanley Parable is much different from the rest of the game because of how branching the choices are. Not to mention how much more of the narrator’s own personality gets exposed the more the player disobeys.

Control

Control is another game on this list that subverts expectations with its bizarre setting and story. The entire game takes place within a fluidly changing skyscraper called ‘The Oldest House’. The interior of this building is labyrinthine, boasting an ever shifting space that is much larger than its exterior would suggest. The first hour of the game is strange enough, with its introduction of the The Oldest House and some of the abilities you’ll be engaging with. But the game doesn’t reveal its true structure until later on after you gain more supernatural abilities and unravel more of the bizarre story.

Firewatch

Firewatch is one of the more fascinating narrative games I’ve played. It follows the daily life of a fire lookout worker over the course of a month. You’d think this would get boring, but it only gets more interesting as the days progress. This is because Firewatch is a slowly unraveling mystery with little bread crumbs hinting that something isn’t quite right. From a gameplay perspective, things don’t really progress too much past the first hour. You’re walking around and doing basic tasks like using a flashlight and walkie-talkie to communicate with your distant partner Delilah from beginning to end. But where the game ends is such a change from where it began that it warrants a place on this list.

The fact that “Nordia Attorneys at Law,” filer for all of Remedy’s trademarks, is listed could be further proof that it’s related to the paranatural action-adventure. But before you think this is Control 2, which entered full production earlier this year, it could be film or TV-related.

These are some of the tags (alongside video game services), and Remedy did announce a strategic agreement with Annapurna last year to bring Alan Wake and Control to “film, TV, and beyond.” However, if this is the video game sequel, it wouldn’t be too strange to have a cinematic trailer announcement, much like CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 4 last year.

The Game Awards take place on December 11th and is confirmed to feature a new trailer for Exodus. Another possible announcement is Death Stranding 2: On the Beach for PC, which the ESRB recently rated.

All this seemed a given, but there are also some new graphics and performance settings to play with. Support for Variable Refresh Rate and 120Hz displays has been added for PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X/S. The frame rate limits on Quality and Performance Modes have also been removed for all consoles (except for Series S, which only saw the same for the latter).

If that wasn’t enough, you can now enable HDR and take advantage of PSSR, improved screen space reflections, updated texture filtering and more on PS5 Pro. Remedy warns that PSSR can “slightly” affect performance, but there’s an option to switch it off if so desired.

Check out the full patch notes below. For more details on Control Ultimate Edition, you can read our review.

October 2025 Console Update (1.30) Release Notes

OUTFITS

The following outfits are now available to all players. The outfits can be accessed and equipped from the Control Point in the Central Executive Sector area.

• Astral Dive Suit (formerly a pre-order exclusive)
• Tactical Response Gear (formerly a pre-order exclusive)
• Urban Response Gear (formerly a pre-order exclusive)

MISSIONS

• All players will receive the mission Dr. Yoshimi Tokui’s Guided Imagery Experience, featuring voiceover by Hideo Kojima. The mission is playable when you pick up the Dr Tokui Tapes collectible in the Extrasensory Lab of the Research Sector. (This mission was previously exclusive to the PlayStation 4 Digital Deluxe version of Control.)

GRAPHICS [PLAYSTATION 5]

• Added a new setting “Unlock Frame Rate”, enjoy!
• Added VRR and 120Hz display output support for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro, and unlocked the frame rate limitations for Quality and Performance Mode setting
• Improved Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) quality
• Added HDR support
• Updated SDR to 10bit (from 8bit), which reduces visible color banding
• [PlayStation 5 Pro] Added PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) support. Using PSSR results in smoother edges, improved hair, and vegetation visual quality. Using PSSR can slightly impact performance, so if you would rather have the original “look” of Control, you can disable PSSR in the settings.
• [PlayStation 5 Pro] Improved Screen Space Reflections in Performance Mode
• [PlayStation 5 Pro] Updated Texture and Shadow resolution filtering (anisotropic)

GENERAL [PLAYSTATION 5]

• Fixed grenade projectiles indicators only updating at 30 fps. Now they update properly everywhere they should.
  Improved the sorting of character and weapon mods

GRAPHICS [XBOX SERIES X|S]

• Added a new setting “Unlock Frame Rate”, enjoy!
• Added VRR and 120Hz display output support for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and unlocked the frame rate limitations for Quality and Performance Mode settings
• [Xbox Series X] Unlocked the frame rate limitations for Quality and Performance Mode
• [Xbox Series S] Unlocked the frame rate limitations for Performance Mode settings
• Improved Temporal Anti Aliasing (TAA) quality
• Added HDR support
• Updated SDR to 10bit (from 8bit), which reduces visible color banding

GENERAL [XBOX SERIES X|S]

• Fixed grenade projectiles indicators only updating at 30 fps. Now they update properly everywhere they should.
• Improved the sorting of character and weapon mods

The update includes Dr Yoshimi Tokui’s Guided Imagery Experience, a mission exclusive to the Digital Deluxe Edition on PS4. This is perhaps best known for Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear and Death Stranding, providing voiceovers.

Of course, it also adds features like HDR and support for ultrawide monitors, but that’s on PC. Whether consoles will receive the SDR update and fixes for texture streaming and ray tracing remains to be seen. Stay tuned for patch notes on Monday.

Released in 2019 for PS4, PC, and Xbox One before launching on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5, Control has sold over five million units. A sequel, Control 2, is currently in development for current-gen platforms, having entered full production earlier this year.

The milestone is all the more significant since it regained the rights to publishing, marketing and distribution earlier this year. “We’ve now been able to drive Control’s sales activities fully by ourselves and have seen positive development through our sales activities.”

Launched in 2019, Control focuses on Jesse Faden, who visits the Federal Bureau of Control to search for her brother and becomes caught up in its invasion by The Hiss. Utilizing psychic powers, she helps the Bureau fight back while learning more about her own powers. Check out our review for the base game and its two expansions – The Foundation and AWE. You can also check out our thoughts on the Ultimate Edition.

Meanwhile, Alan Wake 2 continues to “sell steadily” and “accrue royalty,” while the sales for other titles in the franchise are “in line with our expectations and generate small and steady revenue streams.” The survival horror crossed two million units as of December 31st, 2025 and recouped all marketing and development costs.

The Extradimensional Suit from the AWE DLC, unlocked by finishing the Crowd Control or Deadline challenges from the SHÜM arcade machine, is also available. However, perhaps the biggest addition is Dr. Yoshimi Tokui’s Guided Imagery Experience, with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima providing voiceovers. It was previously exclusive to the Digital Deluxe Edition on PS4.

Other notable features include HDR support, an Ultra preset for ray tracing, support for rendering resolutions above 4K, up to 48:9 ultrawide monitor support, and more. PC players can even look forward to DLAA and DLSS 3.7. Furthermore, the audio in the end credits isn’t related to the issue but the result of “unintended channel mixing,” which the update fixes.

Check out the full patch notes below for more details. You can also check out our review for Control Ultimate Edition here.

March 2025 Update (1.30) Release Notes (PC)

OUTFITS

The following outfits are now available to all players. The outfits can be accessed and equipped from the Control Point in the Central Executive Sector area.

• Astral Dive Suit (formerly a pre-order exclusive)
• Tactical Response Gear (formerly a pre-order exclusive)
• Urban Response Gear (formerly a pre-order exclusive)
• Extradimensional Suit (formerly obtainable in the AWE DLC by finishing SHÜM)

MISSIONS

• All players will receive the mission Dr. Yoshimi Tokui’s Guided Imagery Experience, featuring voiceover by Hideo Kojima. The mission is playable when you pick up the Dr Tokui Tapes collectible in the Extrasensory Lab of the Research Sector. (This mission was previously exclusive to the PlayStation 4 Digital Deluxe version of Control.)

GRAPHICS

• Added HDR support
• Added new Ultra ray tracing preset, which gets you more rays per pixel and higher temporal stability
• Added ultrawide monitor support for up to 48:9 monitors
• Added an FOV scaling setting for the gameplay camera
• Updated SDR to 10bit (from 8bit), which reduces visible color banding
• Improved graphics adapter detection at startup, with automatic selection between DX11 and DX12
• Implemented screen aspect ratio fixes for ultrawide monitors
• Your current monitor resolution can now reliably be selected from the screen resolution and rendering resolution menus
• Added rendering resolution support beyond 4K
• Implemented texture streaming fixes
• Ray tracing bug fixes

DLSS SUPPORT

• Added DLSS support for arbitrary resolutions
• Added DLAA support
• Updated DLSS to DLSS 3.7, with higher temporal stability
• Film grain added back to DLSS SR
• Fixed shadow resolution when DLSS is enabled
• Added resolution dependent mip map bias for DLSS. This enhances texture quality, for example when applying the DLSS Performance setting.

GENERAL

• Updated the audio on cinematics and end credits to remove unintended channel mixing. You will no longer hear anything that isn’t intended to be heard. (It wasn’t the Hiss, it was us. Sorry.)
• Several bug and crash fixes

Returnal

Rogue-like third-person shooter Returnal is relentlessly unforgiving, a game in which time is an agonising loop for astronaut Selene after she crash lands on the hostile alien world Atrophos. Otherworldly creatures stalk cadaverous biomes, hurling bioluminescent bullet hell between Selene’s scavenging for artifacts, resources, and ether. Its challenge can put players off but stick around and the accumulated muscle memory makes subsequent playthroughs a breeze. Returnal’s emotional narrative weighs heavier on successive runs too when the unfolding of events has already been discovered.

When asked about a potential endgame that the Remedy Connected Universe’s overarching story might be building towards, Lake stated that the shared universe is only “just getting started” right now, and that as such, it’s “too early” right now to talk about how things might conclude. 

“I feel we are just getting started, so I feel it’s too early to start talking about an endgame,” he said. “I love tying these things together. I love making it deeper and expanding on the lore. It really feels like this kind of opportunity to take these strands that we have put there, expand, and entertain different ideas. It feels really exciting.”

According to Lake, the goal for Remedy is to ensure that each game feels like it can stand on its own feet, while also having plenty of material and expanded lore for fans of the larger universe to dive into.

“The way we are looking at it, every game needs to be enjoyable on its own and stand on its own feet,” Lake said. “But then, for our fans, for people who have been playing other Remedy games, we want to put in a lot of content for them to discover for the ongoing universe story. And also, we feel hopeful that now there is a universe and a catalog of games that we’ll be expanding as we go, hopefully for somebody playing their first Remedy game, they can continue in the universe and check out the other games as well, and dive deeper into that rabbit hole.”

Currently, Remedy Entertainment is working on Control 2, while a multiplayer spinoff, FBC: Firebreak, is also in the works. The developer is also working on Max Payne 1 and 2 Remake, though that’s unlikely to be part of the Remedy Connected Universe.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Expectation was moderate following Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s announcement, perhaps given the mediocracy of Assassins Creed’s side-scrolling Chronicles games, but The Lost Crown, in fact, will be remembered as a modern platforming masterpiece. Deep combat, enthralling, satisfying platforming, and time manipulation powers to unleash upon a host of enemies render this action-adventure game an exhilarating must play.

]]> 605136 https://gamingbolt.com/control-has-sold-over-4-5-million-units Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:59:33 +0000 https://gamingbolt.com/?p=604472 At its recent Capital Day Markets 2024 presentation, alongside revealing that Control 2 is going to be an action RPG – unlike its predecessor, which was a Metroidvania action-adventure game – developer Remedy Entertainment also announced updated sales figures for the original Control.

Control has now sold over 4.5 million units worldwide, Remedy has announced. That’s up from 4 million units earlier this year. Meanwhile, the game has also surpassed 19 million players across its lifetime on all platforms, so clearly, it continues to attract players in large numbers. Next year, Remedy is going to release a free update for Control that will unlock “previously released content”. Read more on that through here.

Control’s aforementioned sequel is currently in the production readiness stage at Remedy Entertainment, and is set to enter full production sometime next year. The game was seemingly teased at the end of the recently-released Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC. It will be self-published by Remedy.

The studio is currently also working on FBC: Firebreak, a mid-priced standalone co-op spinoff set in the Control universe that’s due out next year.

Remedy has also announced updated sales figures for Alan Wake 2, which has sold over 1.8 million units.