Control Resonant changed almost everything I liked about Control, and I’m glad it did

The first boss in Control Resonant took me around 10 attempts to beat. I suspect that says more about the way I play games than it does about the boss.

Dodging has never ranked particularly high on my list of combat priorities. I would much rather stay aggressive, deal as much damage as possible, and worry about getting out of the way when something dangerous is already flying toward my face. Control let me get away with that more often than it probably should have. Jesse Faden’s Service Weapon kept enemies at range, while telekinesis gave me the wonderfully simple option of grabbing whatever happened to be nearby and throwing it at someone.

Resonant quickly informed me that my old habits were no longer welcome.

Jesse is no longer the protagonist. Her Service Weapon is gone from my hands. Combat puts far more emphasis on getting close to enemies, and the Oldest House has been traded for a much larger Manhattan. Even the rhythm of moving around and fighting feels noticeably different.

Those are some enormous changes considering the combat, protagonist, and setting were among my favorite parts of the original. Oddly enough, most of them are now becoming reasons I want to keep playing. I’m not even halfway through Control Resonant yet, so there is still plenty waiting for me. My experience so far already has me convinced of one thing, though. Remedy wasn’t interested in simply making Control again.

Dylan needed his own way to fight

I missed Jesse’s Service Weapon at first, but I can’t say I have spent much time wishing Jesse herself was still the protagonist.

Dylan was already central to the story of Control, so handing the sequel to him doesn’t feel like introducing some stranger and asking me to care. More importantly, Remedy hasn’t dressed him up in Jesse’s combat system and sent him on his way. Dylan moves faster, fights differently, and has an arsenal that increasingly makes him feel like his own character.

The Aberrant weapon has done most of the convincing for me.

My favorites so far are its scythe-like glaive form and the stone gloves. Swinging the glaive around already looks cool, but ending a combo by smashing someone with giant stone fists adds exactly the over-the-top supernatural flair I want from a Control game. Finishers, different forms, and status effects also give me plenty of room to experiment rather than settle into one routine.

Telekinesis hasn’t disappeared either. I still throw plenty of objects around, but it now feels like one part of Dylan’s arsenal rather than the answer to almost every problem. My first instinct in Control was often to look for the nearest chair, fire extinguisher, or chunk of concrete and introduce it to an enemy at high speed.

Movement helps sell the change. Sprinting feels quicker, levitation remains satisfying, and Dylan can rush forward while leaving afterimages behind him. Combat has a faster and more aggressive flow that suits the move toward melee.

Then there was that first boss.

Ten attempts were enough to force me to finally respect the dodge button. A game getting me to abandon one of my stubborn habits is already an achievement in itself. More importantly, the fight helped me understand why simply recreating Jesse’s combat would have been a missed opportunity. Dylan doesn’t need to be Jesse 2.0. So far, he feels much better when Resonant lets him be Dylan.

Manhattan still knows how to get weird

Combat wasn’t actually my biggest concern going into Resonant. Leaving the Oldest House worried me more. Exploration was one of my favorite parts of Control. The Oldest House was technically a building, but navigating it rarely felt as straightforward as walking through one. Miss a doorway or corridor, and suddenly I could spend several minutes wondering where I had taken a wrong turn. Getting somewhere became a little puzzle of its own, and I loved it.

Manhattan somehow preserves a lot of that feeling while blowing the scale wide open. I regularly start heading toward a quest objective, notice an unexplored area, and promptly forget what I was supposed to be doing. Getting distracted is usually a good sign in an open-world game. So far, I’m wandering because something looks interesting rather than because a map icon is demanding my attention. Side quests and treasures are present, but the city hasn’t started feeling like a giant checklist.

Dylan’s abilities also give exploration its own flavor. Manipulating gravity to reach new pathways fits naturally into a world where architecture has never been interested in obeying common sense. Manhattan may be more recognizable than the Oldest House, but Remedy still finds plenty of ways to make it behave strangely.

Strange architecture, altered objects, reality shifts, and bizarre conversations are all still here. Some NPC exchanges continue the proud Control tradition of making me stop for a second and wonder what on Earth everyone is talking about. Boss areas have been especially good at throwing several of those ideas together and creating some genuinely spectacular spaces.

I just wish the music would stick around longer

The music in Control Resonant is top-notch, and it has become one of the parts of the game I’ve enjoyed the most so far. Resonant knows when to let a track loose. The soundtrack can move from eerie and tense to much more energetic depending on what is happening, and several sequences have been elevated simply because the music arrives at exactly the right moment.

My only complaint is that I want more of it.

I would happily spend time free roaming across Manhattan, jumping and leaping around the city while replaying some of the tracks I’ve already heard. An option to listen to those songs again outside the sections where they originally appear would be great.

Remedy’s decision to hold the music back also makes sense to me. Keeping certain tracks attached to specific sequences gives those moments a quick burst of energy and makes them much easier to remember. Hearing the same songs constantly while exploring could take away some of their impact.

A few rough edges remain

Not everything has landed quite as well. Performance is my biggest complaint so far. I’m playing on a gaming laptop with an RTX 5070 Ti 12GB, Ryzen 9 8550HX, and 32GB of DDR5 memory, but I’m still only seeing around 50 to 60 fps at 2K resolution with High settings and Low ray tracing. Some optimization updates would be very welcome. Character faces have also occasionally looked unnatural to me, particularly compared with how I remember the facial expressions in the first game.

Neither issue has done much to weaken my urge to keep going.

Whenever I stop playing, I mostly find myself wondering what weapon form or ability I’m going to unlock next. I’m still not even halfway through the game, and Control taught me long ago that Remedy usually has another strange idea waiting around the corner.

A final judgment will have to wait until I see where all of it leads. For now, I’m enjoying a sequel that seems perfectly happy to mess with the things I thought I wanted from it.