Master resonant control
When the world violently reshapes itself into something impossible, you need a protagonist who can handle the chaos. That is the premise of Control Resonant, a game that throws a protagonist—Dylan Faden, a man wrestling with profound regret—into a metaphysical war against interdimensional forces violently tearing apart Manhattan.
The journey begins abruptly when Dylan is jolted awake from a seven-year coma, not by a medical awakening, but by a magical intervention from his sister Jesse. This act plunges the Federal Bureau of Control into immediate peril, forcing the directorless organization to rely on the very man who once dealt out lethal force to confront a cataclysm that is violently reshaping the city into a sprawling, otherworldly labyrinth of impossible physics.
Remedy Entertainment doesn’t just present a setting; they build a dreamlike nightmare. The environment itself is a masterpiece of brutalist surrealism. Streets that once offered pavement are now cliff faces, buses are bent skyward at impossible angles, and entire downtown districts are fractured into chasms where chunks of the cityscape have simply vanished. These warped blocks of brownstone and shopping districts spiral upward and inward, caught in the alien logic of a new, stranger force known as the Patterning.
Yet, amidst this impossible landscape, pockets of eerily untouched reality persist—abandoned cafes and bespoke art galleries nestled among the mutated streets. This juxtaposition heightens the sense of dread, making the world simultaneously breathtakingly incomprehensible and achingly familiar. It’s a visual feast that begs for a photo mode update, offering a stunning texture of concrete and light that feels deeply intentional and considered.
The mechanics of combat, however, are where the game tests its boundaries. Dylan wields an item called the Aberrant, a shapeshifting weapon that allows him to transform his melee attacks into whatever he needs—a hatchet, a scythe, a drill, or a levitating sawblade. While the spectacle of these executions is certainly captivating, the actual act of fighting requires a strategic, almost agonizing attention to detail. Success hinges less on flashy combos and more on stacking temporary damage bonuses through clever staggering and execution, turning combat into a calculated performance.
This approach means that the game rewards player mastery in navigating the world and timing their actions, rather than relying on simple reflex. The difficulty lies in maintaining that flow while managing the world’s endless layers of exploration and enemy culling. It is a challenge that demands patience, rewarding the player with sparks of satisfaction when they successfully orchestrate a sequence of powerful strikes.
Beyond the action, the true depth of Control Resonant lies in its human resource story. Watching the beleaguered Federal Bureau of Control struggle to maintain its functionalist footholds amidst an interdimensional apocalypse provides a deeply moving backdrop. The performances from the voice cast are particularly effective, lending an authentic, exhausted cadence to characters overwhelmed by the scale of the crisis and the metaphysical implications of their existence.
At the heart of the narrative is Dylan Faden, a figure burdened by trauma and guilt. As the story delves into his past under the purview of the Federal Bureau of Control, he emerges as an excellent lens through which to examine the fallout of an organization that knows just enough about reality to be dangerously omnipotent. It is a sprawling, dense experience that doesn’t just offer spectacle; it offers a world so richly imagined that simply existing within it becomes the ultimate prize.
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