I didn’t like Control, so this one in particular doesn’t hurt, but there are so many games that come to GOG months later, and it’s hard to predict which ones are going to make the jump. At this point, I have purged my Steam wishlist, and there are only certain types of games I’m classifying as “must play” and “definitely not coming to GOG”.
I’m playing through it now, on and off, for the first time. I love the lore, the plot, and the environments. I also like the slow but continuous progression and variation of enemies and powers. But the combat feels like a bag full of chocolate: it looks wonderful at first, but after a while I’ve started to get sick of it. I could use fewer (or even no) random encounters, if only they weren’t necessary to allow for grinding.
One thing that takes some of the shine off the whole thing for me is the way that lore pickups are handled. When other “timely” things occur, one of your menu buttons is temporarily repurposed as a “do exactly that right now” button, so why not lore pickups? Especially because the lore is often best consumed in the time and place where you find it. But because actually reviewing it requires me to go through mutiple levels of menus every time, I usually put it off until I have several waiting for me.
Almost as annoying is the fact that for things you can experience within the game world (movies, videos, and tapes), the item will still be marked as “unread” in the lore menu system until you review it there, even if you stood still in the game and waited for the whole thing to finish. Since they’re already in a separate lore category, I think it’s safe to risk using a simple algorithm (for example, the player stayed within X distance for 95% of the total runtime, without an enemy encounter) to mark an item as “read” in the lore list.
I was really enjoying Control, but stopped during one of the boss battles. It was so obviously a “game-y” boss battle (do this, dodge now, wait for the vulnerable part to be exposed, repeat this pattern ad nauseam). When I’m playing a story-driven immersive game, these videogamey elements shatter the immersion for me.
For me, that something was identifiably a frustrating telekinesis power that seemed to always get my projectile stuck on a wall or some other object in front of me when I most needed it to dispatch an enemy. If I wasn’t so close to the end of the game by the time I decided I disliked it, I wouldn’t have finished it. At least Poets of the Fall doing their fake metal band is always a good time.
The throwing having the object sit offset to your player model always messed with me, too. It was the most effective attack in the game, but so often because you’re in backroom-like offices, you hit something in front of you hella times before actually hitting a target.
The second game still does that shit, but you have much more room most of the time and it’s also not the best attack you have (i rarely even use it over the melee powers I have). Resonant also actually has builds over getting every power at once and using RNG drops to further modify your playstyle, so you’re not really locked into one method of fighting.
I didn’t like Control, so this one in particular doesn’t hurt, but there are so many games that come to GOG months later, and it’s hard to predict which ones are going to make the jump. At this point, I have purged my Steam wishlist, and there are only certain types of games I’m classifying as “must play” and “definitely not coming to GOG”.
I really wanted to like Control, the setting and atmosphere is really compelling but something about it just didn’t hold my attention.
I’m playing through it now, on and off, for the first time. I love the lore, the plot, and the environments. I also like the slow but continuous progression and variation of enemies and powers. But the combat feels like a bag full of chocolate: it looks wonderful at first, but after a while I’ve started to get sick of it. I could use fewer (or even no) random encounters, if only they weren’t necessary to allow for grinding.
One thing that takes some of the shine off the whole thing for me is the way that lore pickups are handled. When other “timely” things occur, one of your menu buttons is temporarily repurposed as a “do exactly that right now” button, so why not lore pickups? Especially because the lore is often best consumed in the time and place where you find it. But because actually reviewing it requires me to go through mutiple levels of menus every time, I usually put it off until I have several waiting for me.
Almost as annoying is the fact that for things you can experience within the game world (movies, videos, and tapes), the item will still be marked as “unread” in the lore menu system until you review it there, even if you stood still in the game and waited for the whole thing to finish. Since they’re already in a separate lore category, I think it’s safe to risk using a simple algorithm (for example, the player stayed within X distance for 95% of the total runtime, without an enemy encounter) to mark an item as “read” in the lore list.
Adhd?
I was really enjoying Control, but stopped during one of the boss battles. It was so obviously a “game-y” boss battle (do this, dodge now, wait for the vulnerable part to be exposed, repeat this pattern ad nauseam). When I’m playing a story-driven immersive game, these videogamey elements shatter the immersion for me.
I absolutely love Control to bits, but the boss design is terrible. Fortunately they have cheats built into the settings to make them easy.
For me, that something was identifiably a frustrating telekinesis power that seemed to always get my projectile stuck on a wall or some other object in front of me when I most needed it to dispatch an enemy. If I wasn’t so close to the end of the game by the time I decided I disliked it, I wouldn’t have finished it. At least Poets of the Fall doing their fake metal band is always a good time.
The throwing having the object sit offset to your player model always messed with me, too. It was the most effective attack in the game, but so often because you’re in backroom-like offices, you hit something in front of you hella times before actually hitting a target.
The second game still does that shit, but you have much more room most of the time and it’s also not the best attack you have (i rarely even use it over the melee powers I have). Resonant also actually has builds over getting every power at once and using RNG drops to further modify your playstyle, so you’re not really locked into one method of fighting.