izigame.me

There's a lot to like about Control, and I'm glad I played it. It's unfortunate how often I found myself thinking, "they shouldn't have bothered". The environments and level design are quite good, and I liked poking around and finding lore. I can't avoid mentioning the destruction physics and graphics, which were beautiful, impressive, and made me feel like I was actually destroying the world around me. The story and characterization are decent, with par for the course voice acting for a video game. The game is a fine length with plenty of levels and missions. Overall, Control is a solid game that's worth trying.
The gunplay is another story. While levitating, dashing, launching, seizing, shielding, and the other combat powers you have at your disposal felt effective and even enjoyable at times (especially launch), the guns never felt right in any of their incarnations. The visual effects of the service weapons as they shapeshift are a nice touch, though many of them feel either inaccurate or unable to rise to the task, damage-wise. For magic guns they felt very much like something was missing, and could have used some more work. For a game with so much of its duration devoted to combat, it doesn't feel like gunplay got its fair share.
With such anemic gunplay, I was surprised to see a skill tree, crafting, and randomized mods complete with a rarity system. This is where "they shouldn't have bothered" comes in. The skill tree is utterly boring, being mostly +X% to a stat with the occasional ability upgrade that could have been a quest reward. With an expensive reset cost and the fact that you'll be able to nearly max out everything, the skill tree doesn't exactly play into buildcrafting. Then again, neither do the mods.
When I say "randomized mods", I mean in the style of an MMO. Each mod has a random stat and then a random buff to that stat within a range, depending on its rarity. These things are everywhere, trip over a box and you'll find three. I feel that this system makes little sense for this game. Especially with the DLC mods, there are so many different effects that you'll find it difficult to create a specific "build" and will probably stick to the core stats like damage, hp, energy, etc. It's a thin veneer of progression that wouldn't be out of place in a multiplayer game, RPG, or MMO.
So say you want to engage with the mod system and flesh out a "build". Well, the jukebox has you covered. After you've farmed up or crafted some coins (tickets), you can pay to enter a repeatable mission and earn some random mods. This is the exact same mission every time you play it. It's not even changed procedurally or set in different areas of the game. It's the exact same level, the same objectives, the same enemies, the same boss, etc., every single time you play it. This mission is designed to be farmed. It's not the only farming you're encouraged to do, either. What's worse, as you play, your tiny inventory quickly fills up and you'll find yourself stopping after each mission (or in the middle of a mission) to do inventory management. Compare mods, equip mods, delete mods, farm mods, fill up your inventory... it's not an engaging system. They simply shouldn't have bothered.
Control is at its best when it's being a single player game, with environments and worldbuilding that suck you in, with exploration and lore, and with the missions and duties of being the director. Control is at its worst when it thinks it's a multiplayer game, with boring skill trees, mods, crafting, and inventory management. It's so needless and mars what would otherwise be a perfectly serviceable game (save the service weapons).