# Control Resonant Review Roundup: Gorgeous, Repetitive, Impossible to Ignore

By Rafiqul Islam Rabbi · Gaming · Published Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:51:43 GMT
Source: The Current Tribune — https://currenttribune.com/article/control-resonant-review-remedy-entertainment-2026

Remedy Entertainment just released the sequel to one of the most beloved cult games of the last decade, and the early verdict is exactly the kind of messy, complicated praise that makes a game worth arguing about.

## The Basics

Control Resonant launched September 24 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X for $59.99, following up 2019’s Control, a game that built a devoted following on the strength of its bizarre bureaucratic horror setting and telekinetic combat. The sequel swaps protagonists, shifting the story from Jesse Faden — the character players controlled throughout the original — to Dylan Faden, who spent the first game confined as a test subject inside the Federal Bureau of Control.

That’s not a small change. Jesse was the audience’s entry point into the Federal Bureau of Control’s world for an entire game, and handing the sequel to a different character, one previously defined mostly by captivity and mystery, is a real gamble on whether players will connect with someone new carrying the story forward.

## What the Game Is Actually About

Dylan’s story sends him across a version of Manhattan warped by paranatural forces, searching for his missing sister while investigating what the game calls “Dimensional Faults” and “Resonants” — humans who’ve been twisted by something called the Patterning. If that sounds dense and mythology-heavy, that’s consistent with the original Control, which built its horror around bureaucratic dread and reality-bending phenomena rather than jump scares.

The world itself has opened up considerably. Where the original Control was largely confined to the labyrinthine Oldest House, Resonant lets players explore multiple zones across an open-world version of Manhattan, giving the sequel a scale the first game never attempted.

### How Combat and Traversal Changed

The biggest mechanical shift is the weapon. Jesse’s transforming sidearm is gone, replaced by something called the Aberrant — a melee-focused weapon that pushes combat toward close-quarters fighting rather than the ranged, telekinetic-object-throwing style that defined the original. Traversal got a matching upgrade: players now have a hovering double-jump, sprinting, and air-dashes to move through the expanded Manhattan setting, along with a skill tree system that lets different power combinations build on each other.

Remedy also built in genuinely granular accessibility options, including adjustable damage settings and a one-hit kill toggle — the kind of options that matter enormously to a specific slice of players even if they never come up in a typical review summary.

## Where the Reviews Are Landing

Early reviews are circling around a familiar shape for a Remedy game: stunning to look at, uneven to actually play. One widely cited review called the game “deeply weird with wondrous supernatural vistas, but bafflingly repetitive combat leaves me cold” — a summary that captures the split reaction running through most early coverage.

On the positive side, critics are consistently praising the visual design, describing “gorgeous” environments and “stunning sequences” built around kaleidoscopic visuals tied to the game’s antagonist force. The early hours of exploration reportedly feel “pleasingly open,” and reviewers point to specific late-game moments that land with real emotional weight, backed by environmental setpieces that show off what Remedy’s design team is capable of when the game is working.

The criticism is just as consistent. Across a roughly 25-hour campaign, the combat encounter design is described as repetitive and “almost unchanged” from start to finish, lacking the strategic depth players might expect from a character action game in 2026. The open world, for as much scale as it adds, reportedly spreads the experience thin, with traversal between points of interest described as tedious rather than exciting. Boss fights fare especially poorly in early reviews — visually striking but, in the words of one reviewer, they “limp to actually fight.” Dylan himself is also getting mixed marks as a protagonist, without the compelling presence critics remember from Jesse in the original.

## The Verdict Reviewers Keep Landing On

One review summed up the overall experience as “a muddled investigation” — a description that works on two levels, since it applies both to the game’s mystery-driven plot and to the reviewer’s own mixed feelings about the final product. The throughline across early coverage is consistent: Remedy nailed the atmosphere and visual ambition, and the game’s narrative has moments that land emotionally, but the combat and world design didn’t get the same level of polish as everything wrapped around them.

## What This Means

Control Resonant isn’t the slam-dunk sequel some fans of the original were hoping for, but it’s also far from a disaster — the split reaction landing in reviews is the kind that tends to produce a game people still talk about years later, arguing over whether the atmosphere and story carry it past the combat’s shortcomings. For players who fell in love with the first Control’s weird bureaucratic horror and are willing to tolerate repetitive fights to get more of that world, Resonant delivers. For anyone hoping Remedy solved the gameplay half of the equation this time around, the early reviews suggest that wait continues.