It’s even surpassed Alan Wake 2, which launched in late October 2023 and sold over one million copies by December, becoming the developer’s fastest-selling release yet. Of course, the devil is in the details, as Control Resonant’s budget may have been far greater, especially with Remedy touting it as its “biggest and most ambitious game” yet.

Time will tell if its sales momentum continues, but thus far, it looks promising. Besides becoming the developer’s biggest Steam launch with nearly 43,000 peak concurrent players, it amassed more than two million wishlists across all platforms before launch. Critical reception has also been strong, with an 83 Metascore based on 83 reviews.

Control Resonant is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out our 9 out of 10 review, where we praised its presentation, combat (despite the slow start) and storytelling. Remedy’s last major update added New Game++ while polishing every single aspect of the experience, and another arrives in November to add Photo Mode. Stay tuned for more details when it goes live.

Control Resonant marks Remedy’s first proper attempt at a melee-focused action game. Were there any particular games, combat systems, or other influences that the team studied while developing its combat, especially given your emphasis on movement and fighting groups of enemies rather than one-on-one, parry-focused encounters?

Sergey Mohov – lead gameplay designer: When we started prototyping, the first thing we realized was that Dylan’s movement abilities were already genuinely fun to use. It would have been a real shame not to take full advantage of that mobility in combat. But that led us straight into a fundamental problem: there aren’t many melee games where character movement actually matters. Usually, melee encounters are fairly static—you walk into an arena, lock onto a target, and enemies basically queue up to attack you one at a time. Verticality and positioning rarely play a major role. Because of that lack of reference points, we essentially had to build our core combat loop from scratch.

The other major constraint was the camera. In most games with a highly mobile player character, the camera is either locked or heavily automated. But we needed the player to retain full manual free-aim to target ranged abilities, just like in the first Control.

Since there wasn’t a single clear blueprint, we ended up pulling mechanics apart from a pretty wide variety of games. We looked at Ninja Gaiden and NieR: Automata for overall flow, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 for how it juggles rapid melee strikes with physics powers. Furi was an interesting reference for seamlessly blending ranged pressure with tight melee dodging, and Hades helped with crowd management. But structurally, our biggest influence was probably Doom Eternal—specifically the way it forces you to constantly read the arena and reposition instead of just holding your ground

Alan Wake 2 was Remedy’s previous major Northlight project and pushed the studio in several new directions. What were some of the biggest lessons from its development that carried over into Control Resonant?

Mika Vehkala, Chief Technology Officer: Alan Wake 2 was a major push in world scale for us as a studio, for the engine and for the world building tools around it. We moved gameplay systems to an ECS framework and graphics to GPU-driven rendering. But we also started to hit hard limits in extending our tools, so we chose to fully redefine world editing.

Control Resonant is the first Remedy game built in what we call NWED, our new in-house world editor, running on the high-performance engine base built for Alan Wake 2. NWED replaces the World Editor we first built for Alan Wake around 2005. We built it on three ideas. First, the game is the view: the editor looks just like the game, and developers can jump in and out of play with little delay. Second, composability: NWED builds on OpenUSD, so teams can make the world from small pieces and combine them into huge districts. Third, NWED runs inside extensible tools plugin framework called OmniTool which we have grown since Quantum Break.

With NWED, developers edit whole districts of about half a million entities each, almost three times the entity count of an Alan Wake 2 level. Custom modular building generators and a flexible prefab system on top of OpenUSD made the cityscapes possible. On the runtime side, the engine now loads and unloads districts during gameplay. This took a lot of optimization work, on top of the work to handle more entities per district. The result is a seamless world of about two million entities. Beyond scale, we sped up iteration on gameplay features through scripting and polished workflows across the board.

Gravity Anomalies let Dylan walk and fight on walls and ceilings, so many systems had to change. Because we own our tech stack, we could build custom solutions fast. In the editor, artists and designers can align the camera to a wall or ceiling and edit the world from the right angle. Our animation systems align Dylan’s feet to any surface, from ceilings to lumpy, mouldy walls, and motion matching handles movement on any plane. Combat demands fast response, so we changed how we author motion matching to make Dylan react to input at once and in a way players can see. For AI, we moved from Gameware Navigation to Mercuna and added navigation and combat on any surface.

Sound got the same care. A new audio propagation system places each sound source in the space as the player hears it, and a new acoustics system detects the size of the room around any sound source. Together they keep the acoustics right as levels change and shift. The story is also more dynamic and choice-driven than in any Remedy game before. To support it, we built the Narrative Editor, a graph-based tool where writers and narrative designers craft branching stories and quests.

On rendering, we wanted to push further toward dynamic, natural lighting. Alan Wake 2 already supported high-end path tracing and ReSTIR-based shadows, but it defined each light as an infinitely small point. In Control Resonant, every light has a real area. Because we take the actual shape of each light source into account, you see the natural mix of sharp and soft lighting found in real life.

We also wanted real-time lighting on high-end PCs to match offline lighting bakes. Global illumination is light bouncing off surfaces, so multi-bounce path tracing gives the same result as baked global illumination when both get the same lights and surfaces. Control Resonant now supports real-time path tracing with lights that match offline bakes. For players, this means lighting that reacts to the action, with accuracy that bakes cannot realistically reach.

The first Control confined players largely to the Oldest House, whereas Control Resonant dramatically expands the scale of the setting with its different areas of Manhattan. What was the biggest challenge in making that transition while still ensuring the world retained the dense, handcrafted feel of Control rather than becoming a conventional open world?

Elmeri Raitanen – Art Director: Whether it’s in books, movies of video games, Manhattan has been the backdrop for multiple stories during the past few decades.

We knew that if our story also takes place in this iconic and archetypal city, we’ll need to find ways to make it our own. The biggest challenge was to find techniques and a narrative to make our paranatural Manhattan feel unique, ownable, and instantly recognizable.

“Luckily for us”, when the lockdown of the Oldest House fails at the beginning of the story, all the Altered Items and paranatural threats flood the streets of Manhattan, leaving us ample tools to explore techniques that make our version of the city feel distinct and different.

We also take great pride in our world-building and design. Instead of going bigger and more open for the sake of it, we wanted to retain a hand-crafted and artisanal feel to it. For example, all documents, notes and graffiti are done physically by hand and then digitized. We strongly believe it’s the sum of these small things that end up making the difference in how the world feels, regardless of whether you particularly pay attention to it while playing or not.

We’ve learned that different parts of Manhattan gradually become accessible through Dylan’s abilities, access permissions, and even the trust he earns from other characters. How reactive is the world beyond that? Can player choices or completed World Quests meaningfully change locations, characters, encounters, or the state of individual zones?

Mikael Kasurinen – Game Director: Yes, for instance, when you complete World Feats or Encounters, the same location which was previously dangerous is now being patrolled or investigated by FBC personnel.

Characters who are featured in quests can appear later in a FBC base.

The NPCs in the world react to wider story events, changing what and how they talk about things depending on the latest developments.

Control Resonant places considerably greater emphasis on melee combat while also introducing enemies that can fight from walls, ceilings, and areas affected by altered gravity. How did you approach combat readability when Dylan can potentially be dealing with threats coming from several different directions at once?

Mikael Kasurinen – Game Director: Taking advantage and navigating the environments is a crucial part of the combat sandbox. We wanted encounters to have verticality and depth, and we built the game with that in mind. Altered Gravity just expands that philosophy even further.

We knew from early on that the fast pace and the number of enemies can make the experience chaotic, so we spent a lot of time making sure there is clarity and readability in the environments, UI and enemies’ actions. With that approach, it was easier to widen that experience to Altered Gravity surfaces as well.

Jesse’s Service Weapon was one of the defining elements of the original Control, whereas Dylan now has the Aberrant. With Jesse still playing an important role in the story, is there a possibility that we will see the Service Weapon again in Control Resonant?

Mikael Kasurinen – Game Director: We focus on Dylan in Resonant in the same way as we focused on Jesse in the previous game. So, he’s the only character you get to play here.

Control Resonant is being designed so newcomers can understand its story without having played Control or Alan Wake 2. At the same time, it exists within the larger Remedy Connected Universe. How far does Resonant push that shared universe forward for players who are already familiar with those games?

Mikael Kasurinen – Game Director: It was important to me that we didn’t spread thin when telling an ambitious story of Dylan’s past, and his arc of change; while at the same time providing interesting and relevant World Quests as well. That meant that we minimized the amount of connective tissue to the rest of the Remedy universe, so it would not dilute or distract from the core themes.

Sometimes it also made more sense to create something new that was needed by the story, like Zoe as a character instead of for instance having Ahti again. Just to have the right fit and reflection point for Dylan.

The original Control was one of the earliest major showcases for real-time ray tracing, and Control Resonant has now been confirmed to support path tracing on PC. What aspects of the rendering pipeline are path traced, and how much further were you able to push lighting, reflections, shadows, and global illumination compared to the original game and Alan Wake 2?

Tatu Aalto – Graphics Technology Director: Good question! Path tracing is a bit vague description of the underlying techniques we implement on top of support for shooting rays towards surfaces in the game. With path tracing in Alan Wake 2 and Control Resonant we refer to indirect multibounce diffuse and specular lighting. In original Control, we exposed indirect diffuse and specular lighting as two separate user options, which were combined to single path tracing option on Alan Wake 2. In addition to simply combining the existing options, we switched to better performing heuristics to select if diffuse or specular light is more important for a specific material and added the support for light to bounce off from multiple surfaces.

As global illumination essentially is light bouncing from surfaces, path tracing with multiple bounces ultimately provides the same global illumination as you’d get with baked global illumination lighting if you feed same lights and surfaces into these systems. Unlike previously, with Control Resonant we now support real time path tracing with lights that match offline global illumination bakes. For players this means lighting that reacts to action and has accuracy that cannot be realistically achieved with bakes.

In our setup, shadows are separate from path tracing, and leverage from the same matching lighting setup between bakes and in-game. In contrast to ray traced shadows we had in original Control, our ReSTIR implementation introduced in Alan Wake 2 is superior in cases where you have interaction between many lights. From Alan Wake 2, the biggest upgrade on shadows is the support for lights that have an actual area. By taking account the actual shape of light sources, you observe natural mix of sharp and smooth lighting detail seen everywhere in real life also.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about the Hiss. Or where Dr Caspar Darling has disappeared. And what about The Board, especially since it’s returned after Jesse cut it off at the end of Control’s Foundation DLC? What is its agenda in all of this?

We’re going to dive into major spoilers for the story of Control Resonant, so if you haven’t finished it yet, be warned. Turn back now before it’s too late. Without further ado, let’s start with what we already know.

Containment at the Oldest House has failed. The Hiss and the Mold have been let loose in Manhattan, but they’re small fry compared to a much bigger threat, which materialised days prior. Referred to as the Patterning, it’s caused major changes throughout the city. Folding skyscrapers on top of each other, Inception-style; a massive sinkhole that seemingly goes on forever (spoilers: It doesn’t. Mild shock); and the creation of the Resonants, ordinary people warped by the phenomenon. However, it has been positive in some ways for the FBC since it’s containing the Hiss and stopping them from leaving the city.

Then there’s Jesse, who sensed something cataclysmic was coming and left the Oldest House early to try and stop it. We see her throughout the various Faults, attempting to seal them and prevent whatever it is from completely overwhelming Manhattan. Over time, it’s revealed that remaining within them for too long causes acute memory loss, so at one point, she has a hard time even remembering her brother. Of course, since it draws from memories, we also learn more about the Fadens’ past, including their parents suddenly turning hostile towards them despite living a relatively happy life before.

By the time we reach the last Fault located in the Oldest House, it’s finally revealed that the main cause behind the Patterning is a Hedron. No, not the same Hedron from the previous game, which was in a severely weakened state. This one is very healthy and drawn to their dimension for seemingly one purpose: to destroy the Hiss. It doesn’t even matter if reality itself is rewritten in the process.

While trying to help Jesse seal the Fault, it’s also revealed that the Hiss still exists within Dylan, despite his sister seemingly inoculating him against it. Left with no other choice, Jesse pushes him out.

After briefly losing control – and being brought back to his senses by Zoe – the Hedron begins to invade further into Manhattan, creating its own patterned version in the skies known as the Unknown. Dylan ventures to break its influence, severing its dimensional hooks, though this results in the entity shattering his mind. And since this is a Remedy game, it results in Dylan navigating a retro-style role-playing game of his childhood in Ordinary, from Jesse finding the Slide Projector to them using it and venturing to other dimensions. When the bullies from school get a hold of it, they unleash paranatural horrors that end up overtaking the entire town, which triggers the FBC’s intervention.

Once Dylan has restored his mind, he ventures to fight the Hedron head-on. Despite hearing Jesse’s voice at points, he surmises that she isn’t exactly at the focal point and that it’s simply the entity mimicking her voice. While emerging victorious, he’s brought back to The Gap, and the Hedron attempts to pattern him. And even with Zoe activating the Mobile Containment Device on the back of his head, which should kill him after a point, there’s no escape.

So, instead, Dylan does the next worst thing: Accepts the Hiss. Or at the very least, imbues the Aberrant with its power and then attacks the Hedron once more, finally laying waste to it. Despite dying from the effort, he’s pleased to go out like this…until Jesse suddenly shows up. Not willing to accept this result, she appears to “swap places” with him, reviving Dylan and seemingly falling into a coma.

He brings her back to the FBC, and while the Patterning is dying down, it’s still very much inherent throughout the city. Despite all the trauma that he sustained during his Prime Candidate Training, and not fully forgiving the FBC, Dylan earns the respect of figures like Emily, who’s now the acting director given Jesse’s condition (and after Arish is turned into a Resonant and slain). Working with Zoe, he’s now a contractor for the bureau and even has his own apartment in the Unknown, previously commenting on how nice it would be to live there.

Of course, we’re only left with innumerable questions, especially as it’s revealed that Jesse isn’t necessarily in a coma. A report indicates that her brain waves aren’t similar to those of someone who’s dreaming and that she’s fully cognizant of everything around her. The FBC still needs more data, but her state is not 1:1 to Dylan’s, despite ending up in the exact same place as him during his coma (his old holding cell, which has since been removed).

And what about the Hiss within Dylan? Well, it’s still there, manifesting as a new Talent that grants him a whopping 200 percent damage increase if you slay out fast enough. It seems that he’s controlled it, accepting it as a part of him. For now, that is.

But here’s the kicker – there are new collectibles featuring Dr Darling in New Game Plus. While there’s a running theory that Jesse and Dylan were once the same person, and that the events of Ordinary resulted in them splitting (with the latter apparently being the original), it’s not quite that simple. Based on the new tapes, it seems that neither Jesse nor Dylan has official records outside of the town, and it’s theorized that they may be different individuals who somehow crossed over at the same time. All the times we see them switching back and forth within the Fault seemingly lend credence to this.

So the real question is: How does this set up the future, especially given what we know about the Hedron? In Slidescape-36, which is where the Hiss emerged from, there are multiple pillars, hence giving it the nickname “Hand.” Are there other Hedrons out there, and if so, how likely are they to attack their dimension once more?

If Dylan and Jesse are indeed from other worlds, is it possible that these events will connect to the Many Worlds aspect of the Remedy-verse established in Alan Wake 2? Why else would Wake, who had a hand (no pun intended) in the Hiss invasion of the Oldest House, become the Master of Many Worlds, at least from a storytelling perspective? Will he intervene at some point to provide more context?

Maybe Jesse has ended up in a similar space and could end up astral projecting to different dimensions, much like she did with the Fault. It’s also possible that we venture to their original worlds down the line, as Dylan tries to make sense of their origins. At the very least, it may make sense of what happened to their parents – if not the ones who violently rejected them, then those who actually raised them.

Now, whether all this happens in DLC or a sequel remains to be seen. With all the fresh questions that Remedy has introduced, you would think it wouldn’t wait several more years to follow up on some of them. But such is the nature of its universe – what would seem like an ordinary lake ends up an ocean. And a loop is revealed to be a spiral, endlessly ascending to new heights.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Control Resonant currently holds an 83 Metascore based on 75 reviews. On Steam, it holds a 91 percent “Very Positive” rating based on 5,209 user reviews. Remedy Entertainment has yet to announce sales, however.

As a follow-up to 2019’s Control, the sequel follows Dylan Faden, who wakes from a seven-year coma and embarks on a mission to find his sister, Jesse, and stop the paranatural horrors running havoc through Manhattan. You can check out our review for more details – we scored it a nine out of ten, praising the combat, storytelling, and presentation.

Of course, Remedy hasn’t sat on its laurels since launch. A release hotfix adjusted the health and stun level of most enemies, and two of the Resonants that players will face. However, a larger update brought significant polish to the entire game while adding New Game++ and quality-of-life improvements, including viewing pinned resources at vendors directly from the map.

This Control Resonant lists all Parautilitarian Abilities and the best ones to select for most scenarios.

Traversal Abilities

Double-Jump

Self-explanatory title, this one lets you get even more air out of a jump, if you press it a second time while mid-jump, ideally at the apex of it.

Elevate

Lets you levitate and glide around gracefully by holding jump while mid-air.

Rush

Essentially a sprint or dash, you can attain a short surge of speed and shake off certain status effects.

Shift

When contending with some of the more mind-bending traversal in Manhattan, use this to realign Dylan to a normal plane.

Reach

This amounts to Dylan’s grapple or hookshot ability, allowing him to reach for otherwise inaccessible places.

Combat Abilities

Shield

From The Artist in the Downtown Zone.

A defense mechanism that consumes power while deflecting damage away from you, it can also be used offensively. The recommended choice at this juncture.

Barrage

From The Artist in the Downtown Zone.

A projectile-flinging ability, this has the least utility from the initial three choices with which you are presented.

Volatile Anomaly

From The Artist.

Adds a companion that does the projectile-flinging instead, and can also be detonated. A better choice, but not really recommended over the third option.

Ground Slam

From The Dancer in the West Incursion Zone. 

A classic area-of-effect move, you might as well pick this one for crowd control scenarios. Use elevation to your advantage and dish out major damage.

Push

From The Dancer in the West Incursion Zone. 

Basically Force Push, this one can be used to shove both enemies and props around, potentially over edges or into environmental hazards. Good, but very situational.

Inferno

From The Deserter in the Central Zone. 

This Ability is all raw and direct damage output, offering even better crowd control potential than Ground Slam. Once tweaked further with certain Talents, this may well be your go-to Ability in most combat scenarios.

Ignite

From The Deserter in the Central Zone. 

Essentially an imbue-with-fire Ability, Ignite makes all your other attacks do fire damage and inflict the burn status effect. That includes other offensive Abilities, making for potential synergies with rather explosive effects.

Growth

From The Collective in The Park.

One of two icky Abilities from this Resonant, this one is a pair of summons that fires mold at enemies, infecting them. The preferred choice, just so you have a little company.

Spore Burst

From The Collective in The Park.

The other moldy Ability lets Dylan rapid-fire infectious mold himself.

Spike

From The Physicist in The Underpass.

A summon that can attack and drop enemies on your behalf, as well as inflict status effects. Recommended for some more companionship of sorts, diverting enemy attention away from you.

Astral Rebuke

From The Physicist in The Underpass.

A targeted ground attack that launches enemies, making them easy pickings for followup strikes, but is useless against already airborne enemies.

Command

From The Co-Director in the Unknown Zone.

Basically the counterpart to the Mind Trick or Mind Control, this one is great for co-opting enemies to your side, but does need its very own limited amount of charge in order to use.

Since it does not require a dedicated slot, you will otherwise always have it at your disposal.

Those are all of the Parautilitarian Abilities for Dylan to choose from, as well as the ones most recommended, in Control Resonant.

Aside from collectibles, documents and recordings, there’s a lot to discover in the city. Without further ado, let’s dive into 15 things to do after finishing the story, starting with the most obvious goal…

Defeat all the Resonants

It may only become obvious after defeating the Dancer and the Deserter Resonants, but you can pretty easily skip several of the others (not quite comfortably, given how good their abilities can be, but still). In fact, unless you take the time to explore the Underpass and the final zone, the final two Resonants might not even be all that obvious. So what better way to leverage a more powerful Dylan than to clean them up and unlock their abilities?

The Command Ability

You’ll especially want to take out the Resonant in the Unknown, since this unlocks an ability that – unlike all the others – is always available. Command doesn’t use Power – instead, it relies on charges and can be used to convert an enemy to your side. Did I say “an enemy”? I mean, any enemy, even the larger Hiss and Mold running around and making life miserable. If that wasn’t enough, the remaining 25 percent (probably more) of the Talent tree is built exclusively to take advantage of Command, so you can build into it pretty easily.

Fully Upgrade Aberrant

While you’re at it, look into upgrading all the different Aberrant Forms and Finishers. You can fully master a few Primary and Secondary Forms through the main story and side questing, but unlocking all the Finishers will require going out of your way. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile, especially considering their perks, whether it’s extra Falter dealt by uppercutting fools, igniting enemies with the Split Pivot, and so on.

The “Secret Organization”

The Federal Bureau of Control isn’t the only clandestine organization in the city. In fact, another, referred to as the “secret organization,” is busy keeping tabs on the FBC, at least to the best of its abilities. They have several hideouts throughout, but accessing them requires completing different puzzles, whether it’s activating appliances in a coffee shop from smallest to largest or turning on washing machines based on a number grid. Even if the lore doesn’t intrigue, they’re well worth completing for the Power and Health upgrades.

Dylan’s Sketches

Bet you never guessed that our boy, Dylan, was an artist. His muse? Almost anything, really, but you’ll need to correctly place the props first. From cats enjoying a picnic to properly organizing art gallery exhibits, you’ll know the placements are correct when he affirms them and can sketch peacefully. And lo and behold, the drawings themselves aren’t half-bad.

Complete the Arcade Machine Challenges

While leveling up the zones, you’ll inevitably spot arcade cabinet icons here and there. If the zone’s rank is high enough, interacting will take you to a separate instance with a unique challenge, from surviving a never-ending onslaught of enemies in shrinking zones to playing Domination solo, protecting three points of interest. Besides the high scores and bragging rights, they award Power upgrades and even cosmetics. If nothing else, they’re also a great place to push your build to its limit.

Complete all World Feats

You’ll clear World Feats in different zones to improve your Build Power and even farm the Source required for goods, including materials, whether you’re aware or not. Denoted by small white icons, these range from Apex Hunts, where you’ll battle a challenging Elite enemy, to Air Drops that require some platforming to interact with. Completing them also levels up the zone, which is a great way to unlock more bonuses like increased Source, health drops and even a chest detector.

Complete all FBC Board requests

Another means to farm Source is by helping out the FBC with requests, often found on notice boards in each zone. You’ll probably complete some of them without even knowing it, and while they can be fairly bog-standard – like clearing out hostiles or helping escort some Rangers – they’ll still award a healthy amount of Source.

The Last Taxi

A sentient taxi that takes you to an alternate dimension where you communicate with a lost traveller by payphone? Sounds like a Remedy game, for sure. There’s a taxi for each zone, and as you progress, the conditions for exiting the threshold become more varied, such as shining a floodlight to discern the correct taxi or picking the odd one out based on their flashing lights. Fair warning, though: There’s no reward. It’s just the inherent nature of the puzzles that make them worth investigating.

Contain the Altered Camera

Encountered fairly early on as part of the side quest “Freeze Frame,” the Altered Camera will essentially take your photo, suspending you in place for a short period, and then teleport away. Containing it involves sneaking up behind without getting spotted and interacting with it. Which is easier said than done, since you’ll need different traversal abilities

Complete the Testing Facility Puzzles

Throughout Manhattan are abandoned FBC Testing Facilities that were conducting some paranatural experiments, whether it’s objects that change shape depending on where you’re standing or transferring charge between pylons in hot potato-esque fashion. Besides the rewards, it’s worth taking the time to wrap all of them up – the puzzles themselves serve as an excellent break from the combat and exploration.

Find All Artifacts

As unexciting as they may feel in the opening hours, Artifacts can actually become pretty build-defining as you venture further along. And while you’ll discover a healthy amount by following the story, it’s worth visiting the vendor in each zone, since it’ll likely have an Artifact to sell, and completing the side quests, which provide them as rewards. And while you’re at it…

Finishing All Side Quests

Honestly, you might as well. Besides the taxi and Altered Camera questlines that span the entire game, there are side quests with multiple parts like Carbon Copy, which involves reuniting twin sisters, or the curious case of the Altered Speaker, which involves tracking down an entire set. Several of these award Artifacts and offer interesting lore to boot.

Fully Leveling All Zones

If you’re truly hurting for something to do at this point, then try maxing out a zone’s rank. It may seem daunting at first, but completing requests, side quests, and World Feats will make it fly by. Besides, you’ll also unlock new World Feats, which further help with the process.

New Game Plus

Once everything has been more or less wrapped up, you can enter New Game Plus by going to The Gap and interacting with the mural of Resonant abilities. Your traversal abilities and map progress are reset, but you’ll keep all the Aberrant upgrades, abilities, cosmetics and stat upgrades. Enemies are significantly tougher in NG+, and bosses even have new attacks, but you’ll also have a fourth Artifact slot to help even the odds. And if that’s not enough, the Board may have some interesting remarks to share when unlocking new abilities from the same Resonant.

Other notable changes in Game Update 1.4.0 include Build Power on the Loadout screen, bringing it front and center instead of requiring you to find it on the Stats screen. A new HUD notification will now tell you whether there are new upgrades or purchases in The Gap, and you can now view pinned materials directly from a vendor on the map.

The Unknown Zone has also seen a 10 to 15 percent reduction in combat and its intensity, offering far more room to explore and breathe. You can also use a volume slider for radio dialogue and adjust the audio balance between headphones and the DualSense’s speaker.

PC players can also look forward to performance optimisation, but overall, “all aspects” of the experience have been polished, right down to lighting, animation, and the timing of subtitles. Check out some of the patch notes below and full details here.

Control Resonant is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. You can read our review here, but this is far from the end of support, with even more updates are on the way, including Photo Mode in November.

CONTROL Resonant Game Update 1.4.0

HIGHLIGHTS

• New Game ++
• You can now play an infinite number of runs of CONTROL Resonant in New Game ++
• Added the Build Power number to the Loadout screen on the bottom left so that players can easily see their Power level instead of having to find it buried in the Stats & Effects menu
• It’s worth saying here that if you are below the enemy level, you are going to have a tougher time with combat, so keep doing side quests, explore twisted Manhattan, and level up!
• The HUD will have a little notification icon to indicate that you have new things to buy or upgrade in The Gap
• Added a feature that when you pin materials you need to acquire for upgrades, you can see if these materials are available at the Vendor by looking at the Vendor icon on the Map (instead of having to go to the Vendor to see their wares)
• Unknown Zone – Decreased the overall amount of combat and intensity by 10%-15%
• Added a separate volume slider for radio dialogue. You can now customize the audio balance between speakers/headphones and the DualSense controller speaker
• Added a new option in the Assist Mode – Power Core Charge Duration: Added a 100-300% Power Core Charge duration multiplier
• Many fixes to map markers either sticking around too long or being in the wrong place and not clearing correctly. We are sure we still missed a few of these, though
• Fixed a VFX issue where framerate could drop during the Artist Resonant fight when she does her special attack
• Added “Mute copyrighted music” option to turn off Apocalyptica’s “Upperhand” intro credits song (It’s a great track, so why would you)
• Added a Tutorial about the Rush ability removing status effects
• Fixed over-saturated HDR highlights in AgX (tonemapper)
• Fixed a multitude of subtitle and VO issues across the game
• Several specific performance optimizations, mainly targeting PC minimum and recommended specs
• Polish on all aspects of the game, including audio, dialogue timing, subtitle timing, animation, lighting, code, mission polish, UI, and so on
• Added support for Razer haptics. The game will trigger many gameplay events like using melee, taking damage, etc., and trigger effects on Razer peripherals

Granted, that’s not always the case; in other situations, that gratification may be fairly delayed, not appearing for hours on end. It may simply manifest in another form. That’s why we coddle the instantaneous and immediately rewarding elements so fiercely – they don’t just sustain or distract us. They’re sometimes the main reason we play, and encompass many aspects, including combat.

Which is why Control Resonant is so interesting.

Out now on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, Remedy Entertainment’s action RPG seems to have been received well by players, at least based on Steam. It’s the studio’s biggest launch on the platform ever, with nearly 35,000 peak concurrent players and an 89 percent “Very Positive” rating from 1,411 user reviews. There’s praise for various elements including the combat.

Remedy actually put out a hotfix shortly before launch to address several criticisms from reviews, essentially reducing the health and falter of most enemies. That even applied to two of the initial Resonants, but it also buffed the strength of Aberrant attacks and abilities. I haven’t really tried out the changes, only slightly dipping my toes into New Game Plus, so everything here is pre-hotfix.

But I really can’t emphasise how, as much as I empathised (while not agreeing, mind you) with those who found the combat to be repetitive, it also felt like Remedy knew exactly what it was doing. And before you think this is going to devolve into a ludo narrative dissonance about how “Of course Dylan isn’t one-tapping fools left and right! He’s been in a coma for seven years!” – spoiler, it’s not – hear me out.

In the first hour of Control Resonant, before Dylan leaves the Oldest House, you choose the Aberrant’s first form. Right off the bat, you’re smacking fools with a basic three-hit combo and learning how to dodge. Anyone who’s played a character-driven hack-and-slash title in the past decade will immediately feel some familiarity with these mechanics, especially when triggering a perfect dodge. But it’s incomplete – not just because of the limited tools available, but because there’s a sense of more to discover.

Obtaining a new tool or ability, and immediately working it into your combos, or creating any in general, is a big appeal in these kinds of titles. Within that same hour of Resonant, you discover another form, a combo finisher, and an ability. And yet, even with those, plus a few upgrades from the Talent tree and to your weapons, things don’t really feel like they’re clicking just yet.

Granted, nothing has really changed about the fluidity, and even as new enemy types are introduced – the Hiss bus that’s continuously spawning minions that feel really good to Slam, the flying Hiss with a weak point on its back that you need to destroy, the ever-forsaken Mold – there’s this sense that combat feels incomplete or like it’s missing something. In my review, I said it feels like you’ve been handed a bunch of underdeveloped tools, and while they all feel pretty good to use, your tactics remain roughly the same. By now, you’re probably past the instant gratification of the gameplay carrying you through, and want the payoff. Whatever it may be.

And it’s hard to really put a finger on when exactly that happens. Maybe it’s when you realize just how busted Ignite can be when paired with Flurry, the dual-bladed form. As you unlock further upgrades, it quickly becomes clear that this is a critical damage monster, one that emphasises dodging and not getting hit. Why that last part? Well, the more health you have, the more damage you deal.

Or maybe it’s when you realise that Split Pivot, one of the six available combo finishers, can not only inflict Weakened – causing enemies to take more damage – but also explode and deal fire damage. Now, pair that with the Mold turrets from The Park. When an enemy has the Infected status, you can use fire to make them explode, reducing a huge chunk of their health. It’s worth noting that at one point in a regular playthrough, you’ll have the chance to unlock a second ability from a Resonant which allows for blasting enemies with fire until they crumble – alongside Ignite, you can.

“With what Power reserves?” you might ask. That’s where one of the Artifacts, Lockpick’s Tool, comes in. Execute a perfect dodge, and your next ability doesn’t consume any Power. That one use may be just what you need to stun an enemy, execute them, and gain Dominance, which increases all damage dealt for a short period. Pair that with a Talent which restores more Power when executing bigger enemies to keep the engine rolling.

Keep in mind this is only one build I’ve “put together”, and there’s still room for improvement. After all, Ignite also works with Barrage and the Shield, letting you crash into enemies with a flaming barrier of rocks or throw objects from afar. So if you want to use a completely different set of Forms and finishers while still maintaining that fire + infected detonation combo, you can. If you want to create a build that’s all about Summons – and there are quite a few abilities that fall under that category – you can.

That’s even before considering the final Resonant ability, Command, which pretty much dominates the upper half of the Talent tree. I haven’t even begun fully harnessing its potential, despite finishing the game, much less figuring out which Artifacts and Forms to pair with it. And don’t even get me started on a Talent that unlocks after finishing the story. It buffs your damage to obscene heights, but requires slaying enemies as quickly as possible to activate. It even stacks with Dominance and other buffs.

You might argue that Remedy should have front loaded the game with these options, or even included crazier abilities. I can somewhat sympathise because when you hear the words “action RPGs” and “build-crafting,” your mind may gravitate towards a power fantasy fulfilled by the likes of Diablo or Path of Exile. Balancing that with the combat expression and variety of a hack-and-slash title isn’t easy, especially when you’re trying to keep it in line with the universe’s power-scaling.

Remedy’s first hotfix definitely helps – not just because it eases players in, but because the builds I’ve already created are even better. Even if I came out appreciating the combat far more when it was all said and done, Control Resonant definitely remains an interesting case study. The fact that it does this without falling back into the usual parrying and deflection systems that have defined so many action games over the years is equally fascinating.

I still maintain it isn’t for everyone, but those who like the combat early on and wonder when it kicks things up a notch, it’s well worth sticking with.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Which is why I need to rave about the Underpass in Control Resonant. In my review, I called it one of my favorite video game environments this year, and upon deeper thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if it tops the list.

In layman’s terms, an underpass is a road beneath a road, and it makes sense why the Federal Bureau of Control would name it that. It’s essentially running beneath the Sinkhole – a seemingly bottomless well created by the Patterning. Remember Dylan wandering across a massive space with endless replicas of living rooms, bedrooms and more? That’s only one part of the Sinkhole. The Underpass is what formed deeper underground.

Because the term is a common occurrence in metropolitan areas like Manhattan, my first instinct was to remember creative director Mikael Kasurinen’s thoughts on the art direction in Resonant. About presenting everyday environments alongside strange and unnatural things. Besides having to fight all the paranatural threats trying to kill you, it creates a sense of dysphoria – a panic where you know this isn’t the natural order of things.

The Underpass is fitting of that description, but on more than a spatial level, when all is said and done.

The trip to reach it is certainly claustrophobic and oppressive. You’re required to go to the Sinkhole and venture across the numerous patterned floor layouts, eventually discovering a pattern of stairs that leads to more stairs. Those stairs lead further down and split off into another set that leads to another set. Throughout this, light sources help you along, but they don’t dampen the feeling of disorientation or that something is wrong. You then reach one giant staircase in a large hall. Only one way down, and after crossing the threshold, you see it.

This sprawling, almost megastructure-like environment stretches out as far as the eye can see. Various island-like towers abound, but the most notable is the one in the middle, seemingly reaching upwards, attempting to escape. The bottom seems endless, and even dropping down to the nearest available platform is harrowing. But it unearths an important discovery – a neatly arranged series of office chairs and desks.

So what is Dylan doing here? Well, after certain events you should really experience first-hand in the story (no spoilers), the FBC sent a team to investigate the Sinkhole’s further expansion. Led by Agent Schultz, they’re the first ones to really discover the Underpass. It’s as surprising a discovery to them as it is oppressive.

“Feels like we’re venturing into a blank space on the map,” she writes in the many written accounts scattered throughout. “’Here be dragons,’ right?” Little did Schulz know she was using the term correctly. “Hic sunt dracones” – Latin for “dangerous or unexplored territories,” represented on maps as sea dragons.

Of course, nothing rises from the depths to breathe fire on Dylan or swallow him whole. Compared to the hubbub of the streets above, bereft of humanity as they are, the Underpass has an almost eerie quiet. Like this massive library you’re seemingly trespassing in, but which is too grandiose in its random Brutalist arrangements to ignore.

While it may seem impossible to navigate at first, you’ll soon find some climbing rope and glow sticks. In this day and age, where there’s constant debate about hand-holding in video games and how designs should guide the player, this made perfect sense. Besides the fact that a member of Schulz’s team was into spelunking, the glow sticks were for more than those who came after (à la the Climbing Expedition from Clair Obscur). The Underpass’s sheer scale is too much for the researchers, but they had still hoped to eventually leave, and those lights were their only guide. Barely illuminating the darkness, yet still some reassurance.

The Underpass is a gorgeous, ultimately unsettling labyrinth at the end of the day, though it requires Shift to reorient yourself on the walls and ceilings to progress, and Reach to traverse the massive distances. Where the Hiss have appeared for some unknown reason. Where you’ll discover a completely different space that is brilliant on its own (and which I don’t want to spoil). Familiarity would surely breed contempt for Schulz’s team, but nothing could surprise them, right?

Then you start to discover the notes about the team meeting Dylan, and how he comes and goes. How they’re missing equipment. How they’ve spent a long, long time in this place. As it turns out, the Patterning isn’t just morphing the Underpass in front of you, but affecting time itself. It’s creating multiple parallel timelines that run together, intersect, and collide. You’ll encounter three members of the research team at one moment, and their corpses the very next. You’ll spend time talking to Schulz about how she’s determined to find out exactly what’s going on, and in the next, trying to talk another version off a ledge before she surrenders to despair.

The combination of perspective-altering traversal and constantly shifting timelines also means encountering similar-looking research sites with different objectives. You may come across a hole in the ceiling, use Shift to climb onto it, and then jump down…after which the world reorients itself, and it’s all you can do to avoid falling into the abyss and continue forward. It’s an incredible mix of platforming and exploration that leverages the massive scope of the environment, while also relying on the intangible – i.e. a potentially infinite number of timelines – to make the space feel bigger than it is.

And that’s before eventually traversing to the Island of Tubes and investigating its terrors, or saying hi to the Mold again, or venturing to the Deepest Underpass to see things through as they were. You may even find a route into the depths of the Oldest House for a side quest that’s certainly unlike anything else in the game. Plenty of combat helps add variety, and make no mistake – there’s a particularly tricky Resonant somewhere in this zone if you decide to go after it. But for me, the Underpass is unique because it takes a concept – multiple layered timelines with different circumstances and outcomes, however infinitesimal – and uses it masterfully. It’s simple at first but slowly ramps up before going all in.

Perhaps no other point illustrates this better than when Dylan tries to progress and happens upon an obscene number of Hiss…only to be helped by other versions of himself across the timelines, flitting in and out to take down their mortal enemy. It’s messy, chaotic, and yet another beautiful result of this concept. Which leaves me wondering afterwards whether the rest of them made it out, or if they’re still wandering through the corridors of time.

I can’t say whether you’ll appreciate the Underpass as much as I have, but it’s the perfect combination of Remedy weirdness, traversal and mystery, tied together by a compelling story. And even if the core cast, be it Zoe, Emily or even Jesse, are part of the biggest moments, Schulz and her team are probably the few minor characters that deserve to be remembered alongside them. Not because their antics dissolved into some Event Horizon-style debauchery, but because they faced the Patterning head-on and didn’t give up looking for an answer, all in the name of science.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

“From the very beginning of development, we wanted to evolve the game to be more player-driven in terms of exploration, progression, and narrative. It definitely helps to have a powerful system because even though people loved the relatively confined spaces of Control, we wanted to open it up.

“We wanted bigger draw distances, more physics objects, and more enemies on screen. It’s definitely Remedy’s biggest game – I think one zone in Resonance is larger than any of the other zones in our previous games.”

Sergey went on to discuss how the team was able to make use of the PS5’s unique features, like the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback on its DualSense controller, to give players a more immersive experience. Doing so, he said, allowed the team to design the game around players being able to feel their way through intense combat encounters rather than having to look at the in-game interface.

“Getting that feeling of resistance and an extra click contributes a great deal to making the abilities feel more powerful. And that’s important in things like combat, so you don’t have to look at Dylan’s interface; you can just feel your way through instead.”

Control Resonant is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, and even before its release, was garnering quite the fan base. Developer Remedy Entertainment revealed earlier this month that it had surpassed 2 million wishlists across all platforms before release. This served as a major jump over the previous month, when the company had announced that it had been wishlisted 1.5 million times.

Remedy doesn’t have any plans to walk away from Control Resonant following its release. Just last week, the studio confirmed that it is working on a New Game++ mode for the title, which is slated to arrive in October. The feature is set to be an evolution of the typical New Game+ experience, allowing players to play through the game any number of times. “Do 665 runs if you want,” said the studio.

November will see another update for Control Resonant, this time around bringing in a Photo Mode that the studio said it has been “cooking for a while”. Interestingly, the team “consulted some talented virtual photographers from the community to help us make it the best it can be.” More updates are planned for the future as well, bringing more cosmetics for protagonist Dylan Faden.

For more details about Control Resonant, take a look at our review, where we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to incredible art direction, fun traversal, responsive combat, and exceptional storytelling. Our only complaints were that the combat system took some time to open up, and there is some iffy dialogue throughout the story.