Post by SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman on Oct 31, 2023 10:49:04 GMT -5
... does anyone else find that game immensely frustrating?
Because yeah, with Alan Wake 2 being released recently, it made me want to give Control another shot. I'd played a bit of it years ago and eventually kind of forgot about it. I remembered being rather disappointed with it, but I wanted to give it a second chance, and... yeah, I still find it largely underwhelming. Owing largely to how tedious the battles often are, fighting wave after wave after wave of enemies who tend to be bullet sponges for no good reason, and when the game does try to add variety, it tends to only make things worse as it seems that every new enemy only brings in new tedium.
It was a bad omen when the fight against Tommasi, the first proper boss battle, occured and not only was it absurdly difficult for such an early battle (made worse by the fact that, again, he's a bullet sponge), but for some reason it is resistant to an ability you just gained. So that's half your fighting abilities by that point unusable against the actual boss and you don't get to really get used to it until afterwards as a result.
And really, I don't get why this games is so focused on combat anyway. I remember people making a big deal of how great its atmosphere is and how weird it is, so I was kind of expecting an adventure game with occasional combat, something along the liens of something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, and that you'd have to find clever uses for the Objects of Power you find. But no, instead most of the gameplay is pretty standard third-person shooter fare with the addition of honestly rather uninspired powers (except Launch. It is a fact that smashing enemies with random objects is ALWAYS fun in video games). To make things worse, not only are all of the enemies of the "corrupted Human" type which is already not that interesting to me, but most of them are just soldiers who don't have their own supernatural abilities, essentially turning this into not only a generic shooter, but a generic military shooter, the one way it could be even more bland.
This game has all this weird and potentially interesting lore and does nothing with it. I feel like I'm decently far into the game now and none of the lore is relevant to the gameplay in any meaningful sense. The Objects Of Power are just MacGuffins to give you generic powers and don't come into play in any other way and whatever happens in the story, your objectives forever remain "go to place, shoot/throw things at bad guys until they die". The supernatural aspects are completely superficial.
Not helping the matter is that I was shocked by how many obnoxious elements that feel right out of an early 2010's game and that I thought we'd all moved on from are present. Autosave-only system with, of course, only one file? Check. Attacks that drain your entire life bar? Check. A "last chance" system but whatever put you in that state to beginw ith will typically also stun you, so you can't avoid the killing blow, making you wonder why they bothered giving it to you at all? Check. A crafting system that adds nothing and seems to only exist because Minecraft was all the rage in the early 2010s so if we put any amount of crafting in our game, it means kids'll love it? Check. The game technically being a sandbox but that aspect not really adding anything beyond filler missions? Check. A skill tree for the sake of having a skill tree? Check. Random "mergency" side missions that only serve to make the game more repetitive and tedious? Check. I'm surprised it doesn't have instant-death QTEs or a tacked-on deathmatch mode.
But what really makes the entire game so frustrating to me is that it feels like they had a strong game at its core, but then made every wrong decision possible to make it less enjoyable than it could be. Enjoying the combat in the early parts of the game? You won't so much when you have to fight endless waves of enemies that go on for ages. Think the lore behind the OoPs is interesting? Shame that it's just flavour text and none of it will become relevant in the story or gameplay. Wanna explore this strange building the game is set in? Enjoy fighting the same aforementioned waves of enemies respawning in the same spot every time you come by! Actually enjoying the fast-paced combat with the tons of destructible environment? Let's throw in some enemies that force you to slow down and make the fights even more procedural and tedious. They're not more of a threat or anything, they just take longer to kill for no good reason. It's like someone came in and told them to tack on all this stuff because market research said that's how all games should be now, but as far as I'm aware, that was never the case (and considering 505 Games seems to specialize in publishing weird games with a strong vision, I don't see them doing that either).
And last but not least, I've mentioned it before but yeah, it's such a shame that the lore isn't utilized more, because what IS there is genuinely intriguing. I love all the video bits, be it the Trench Hotline monologues, the Doctor Darling bits, the Threshold Kids, etc... all that stuff is great, and frankly it's probably the one thing that's pushing me to keep playing in order to try and find them all. Well, that and the Launch ability which, I cannot stress enough, is always fun. So I guess that's two things keeping me interested.
So yeah, "frustrating" is the word that I think really defines this game. Frustrating gameplay, frustrating underuse of the lore, frustrating decisions.
Because yeah, with Alan Wake 2 being released recently, it made me want to give Control another shot. I'd played a bit of it years ago and eventually kind of forgot about it. I remembered being rather disappointed with it, but I wanted to give it a second chance, and... yeah, I still find it largely underwhelming. Owing largely to how tedious the battles often are, fighting wave after wave after wave of enemies who tend to be bullet sponges for no good reason, and when the game does try to add variety, it tends to only make things worse as it seems that every new enemy only brings in new tedium.
It was a bad omen when the fight against Tommasi, the first proper boss battle, occured and not only was it absurdly difficult for such an early battle (made worse by the fact that, again, he's a bullet sponge), but for some reason it is resistant to an ability you just gained. So that's half your fighting abilities by that point unusable against the actual boss and you don't get to really get used to it until afterwards as a result.
And really, I don't get why this games is so focused on combat anyway. I remember people making a big deal of how great its atmosphere is and how weird it is, so I was kind of expecting an adventure game with occasional combat, something along the liens of something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, and that you'd have to find clever uses for the Objects of Power you find. But no, instead most of the gameplay is pretty standard third-person shooter fare with the addition of honestly rather uninspired powers (except Launch. It is a fact that smashing enemies with random objects is ALWAYS fun in video games). To make things worse, not only are all of the enemies of the "corrupted Human" type which is already not that interesting to me, but most of them are just soldiers who don't have their own supernatural abilities, essentially turning this into not only a generic shooter, but a generic military shooter, the one way it could be even more bland.
This game has all this weird and potentially interesting lore and does nothing with it. I feel like I'm decently far into the game now and none of the lore is relevant to the gameplay in any meaningful sense. The Objects Of Power are just MacGuffins to give you generic powers and don't come into play in any other way and whatever happens in the story, your objectives forever remain "go to place, shoot/throw things at bad guys until they die". The supernatural aspects are completely superficial.
Not helping the matter is that I was shocked by how many obnoxious elements that feel right out of an early 2010's game and that I thought we'd all moved on from are present. Autosave-only system with, of course, only one file? Check. Attacks that drain your entire life bar? Check. A "last chance" system but whatever put you in that state to beginw ith will typically also stun you, so you can't avoid the killing blow, making you wonder why they bothered giving it to you at all? Check. A crafting system that adds nothing and seems to only exist because Minecraft was all the rage in the early 2010s so if we put any amount of crafting in our game, it means kids'll love it? Check. The game technically being a sandbox but that aspect not really adding anything beyond filler missions? Check. A skill tree for the sake of having a skill tree? Check. Random "mergency" side missions that only serve to make the game more repetitive and tedious? Check. I'm surprised it doesn't have instant-death QTEs or a tacked-on deathmatch mode.
But what really makes the entire game so frustrating to me is that it feels like they had a strong game at its core, but then made every wrong decision possible to make it less enjoyable than it could be. Enjoying the combat in the early parts of the game? You won't so much when you have to fight endless waves of enemies that go on for ages. Think the lore behind the OoPs is interesting? Shame that it's just flavour text and none of it will become relevant in the story or gameplay. Wanna explore this strange building the game is set in? Enjoy fighting the same aforementioned waves of enemies respawning in the same spot every time you come by! Actually enjoying the fast-paced combat with the tons of destructible environment? Let's throw in some enemies that force you to slow down and make the fights even more procedural and tedious. They're not more of a threat or anything, they just take longer to kill for no good reason. It's like someone came in and told them to tack on all this stuff because market research said that's how all games should be now, but as far as I'm aware, that was never the case (and considering 505 Games seems to specialize in publishing weird games with a strong vision, I don't see them doing that either).
And last but not least, I've mentioned it before but yeah, it's such a shame that the lore isn't utilized more, because what IS there is genuinely intriguing. I love all the video bits, be it the Trench Hotline monologues, the Doctor Darling bits, the Threshold Kids, etc... all that stuff is great, and frankly it's probably the one thing that's pushing me to keep playing in order to try and find them all. Well, that and the Launch ability which, I cannot stress enough, is always fun. So I guess that's two things keeping me interested.
So yeah, "frustrating" is the word that I think really defines this game. Frustrating gameplay, frustrating underuse of the lore, frustrating decisions.
