It’s been on my ‘one of those days’ list for years now, and with Resonance out, they ran a $6 Steam sale for the original which put it in the impulse buy category. Fast forward a week and I’m out of town for work with some hotel time to kill so hooked my Steamdeck up to the TV and gave it a go and wow… I see what the hype is about.

Any non spoiler tips, tricks, or things I should be on the lookout for?

I loved it, it’s a pretty unique experience. But to be totally honest, I hated it until I messed with the assist mode settings. So my personal tip, which is definitely not for everyone, is to completely customize those settings as much as you want. Some of the default combat and QOL features are way off in my opinion, and once I got over the shame of changing some fundamental settings, the game opened way up for me and I was able to get completely into the story.

The devs added the settings a year or two after the game’s release, so they must have been getting a lot of feedback.

Enjoy! You’re in for a wild ride.

I never got tired of the basic powers, breaking and throwing stuff always satisfying.

Also, /c/patientgamers

I’m still playing through this on my phone!

What did you change? I played with mouse+kb and found it to be pretty easy tbh. Only some occasional Board Countermeasures seemed to be a bit unbalanced at the beginning.

One of my favorite games! The abilities are so cool and they nailed story and atmosphere.

You're not late, you are a Patient gamer :D

Still in my pile of shame xD

I feel like I'm the only person who didn't like it? I hated not being able to figure out where to go

One of the best games of all time. You don't need any tips. Just explore and play. Try different guns. Try different abilities. Look around environments to appreciate how amazing the areas look.

For me I loved it for several hours then suddenly got bored, I thought it ended being too repetitive for me (the monochrome decors get old)

Control is fantastic! I'm really excited to pick up Resonance soon, and I've been trying not to spoil myself too much on it.

As for tips, a lot of things can be done in any order, so if you find yourself dying over and over to a certain encounter, go look for some side-objectives to do and level up a bit, then come back and take down that thing that was kicking your ass.

I've had it on Steam forever, but never played it when I had a PC. It runs okay on my Mac, but kinda looks like ass. I'm hoping for a good sale on Xbox so I can play it in 4K. (If not, the TV will upscale it and my old ass won't care if I can tell the difference.)

The game is awesome, and you can customise the heck out of the difficulty settings. Can make it so you straight up don't take damage if you just want the story. That's wild to me, with so many games punishing people who work full-time... or perhaps they'd say it rewards the time and effort they take to learn the intricate parry/dodge systems... Not a fan of souls-likes. I love accessible gaming. Let people make it as easy or as hard as they want. Bethesda ties it to XP in Starfield — if you want it easy, you're working for less XP. So I pick up all the guns and spacesuits and I buy the cool upgrades for my ship. I got up to level 183 on my first game, I don't need all that.

So yeah... figure out the difficulty/accessibility settings and make the experience yours... then go own it.

Nah you're not alone, one of the few games that I refunded. I think it can really push some people away pretty strongly.

I didn't make it very far at all because of not knowing what I was supposed to do. My ADHD requires some kind of direction at the beginning of a game because I cannot retain enough information to make choices from failing a bunch of things and not knowing why.

Same reason I bounced off Elden Ring. I just don't notice the things the designers expect me to the first 50 times I try something. It is like trying to find a thing without knowing what it is.

The game really rewards being aggressive. There's a reason enemies drop health pickups where they die - keep moving and take advantage of that.

This is one of the few games I’ve played where I’m constantly hoping to find new random scraps of paper. One of the most interesting places to explore.

Every paper I’ve found so far had such a cool little story snipped, I love it

I think now that I have TK Throw I’ll try this more, seems like I can knock out a few mooks at a time with a filing cabinet

Oh nice, I’ll dig into those, thanks!

Read/watch everything.
Maybe after dealing with an object of power, there'll be a slightly redacted memo about it. There's inner office politics in other memos.

The world building is absolutely amazing if you choose to be patient and read everything you can.

I found the game got more and more fun the further into the game I got, since more abilities started being unlocked that added much more variety to the gameplay.

I really ended up loving it by the time I finished it.

Reload times, damage multipliers, you name it. I played it years ago so I don’t remember the exact specifics, but I came up with a sweet spot that worked for how I wanted to play.

Fuuuuck I need to finish this. Fell off the wagon HARD.

This was my experience with Shadow of Mordor.

This bears repeating for those playing Control Resonant as well.

This is another one I keep meaning to play

I am definitely hyped to get home and check it out on my full PC, it looks decent on the ‘deck but can easily see it’s scoped way down

Oh wow. Didn’t realize it had a phone port and it shooks shockingly good

Yeah, I'm with you on this, and wish I had done so in hindsight. The gameplay was interesting for about a couple of hours, but ultimately I think the game's more about the graphics in the quieter moments--although as a raytracing showcase, it's less impressive now than it was in 2019--and the wacky stuff it comes up with than anything.

If you haven’t played Alan Wake, it takes place in the same universe.

How creepy/scary are the AW games? I’m digging Control a lot but it’s definitely stressing me out at times!

Hey, better late than never! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Resonant is just as good if not better.

Yeah I'm usually not a lore guy in games but man, this game did it amazingly well.

It's in my top 5 games of all time. One of very few games I've played through multiple times. I love the universe, lore, design, characters, feel and everything else. And it's still one of the best looking hames ever made IMO, and one of the few games who used RTX almost perfectly.

I heard it's a spooky game, but is it spooky in Silent Hill way or Prey 2017 way?

Much closer to Prey.

Looks like that is on my next to play list. I've been slowly getting through my backlog and finished Mad Max after years of having it on my backlog.

It can be creepy at times, but mostly it feels like an 80s-90s triller/mystery. Spooky, absurd, and weirdly comfy.

Damn, I've had this game sitting at 0 hours played in my library for a while now. Worth giving it a shot it sounds like?

Loved Control. Currently playing through the sequel.

That's better, thanks

Absolutely. Even if the story (which IMO is fantastic) isn't up your alley the gameplay alone is worth an experience.

I miss the Service Weapon honestly but I am still very much enjoying the more melee focused gameplay.

Fire extinguishers are your friend.

Take! Control!
(it will take a while to get there and understand)

Yeah, I’m often on the road doing photography, so my phone has become my main gaming console. I’m not hurting for choice.

Huge recommend to bump that 0 up, yeah. I’m having a blast!

Oh nice okay, I can roll with that, thanks!