Watch Out for Fireballs! 364: Control (Premium)
Added 2022-07-21 21:17:32 +0000 UTCJesse Faden has walked a rough road, one that leads up to the door of a secret government agency headquartered in a building that not everyone can see. It's the Federal Bureau of Control, they may have her brother held captive, and they are definitely overrun by a malignant interdimensional force.
This feels like a culmination of a lot of what Remedy has been working toward, and they achieved it by working against their strengths. Instead of a cinematic, on-rails narrative, Control lives in the details of its world and the SCP-like phenomena that fill it. And the combat isn't half bad... but it does wear out its welcome pretty fast.
Big thanks to Noel for executive producing this episode!
Also, check out this week's highlighted creation, An Ode to the End a podcast series of short transmissions from a number of possible apocalypses.
Comments
Wow hates the ashtray maze lol typical Gary
Funk Phunkerton
2023-12-15 20:38:01 +0000 UTCFor the record Billy bass terrified me to no end when I was a toddler. I had to visibly watch my parents put it in the trash outside to calm down
Zaylin
2022-07-28 01:06:18 +0000 UTCthe threshold kids shit scared the FUCK out of me lmao
Colleen Nerney
2022-07-26 16:59:51 +0000 UTCYeah, SCP did not invent weird fiction. Also, Candle Cove is a creepypasta that, as far as I know, has nothing to do with SCP.
Joe Kafchinski
2022-07-23 19:11:32 +0000 UTCfelt extremely validating to hear yall talk about being disappointed in the ashtray maze after being hyped on it, i had the exact same experience. maybe im just overexposed to interesting psychedelic game design from actually playing indie games where developers can afford to take massive risks, but when i saw it after all the hype and it was just a shooting gallery with moving level geometry i was really bummed out. personally i wasnt tired of the gameplay or even hated the song, but from a game design perspective it felt like a really cheap magic trick. like the video game equivalent of bad "drug trip" scene in a TV show made by people who have never done any drugs so they just add 100 random after-effects filters on everything
unluckychloe
2022-07-23 15:14:04 +0000 UTCThis game gave me vibes of an old Sci Fi show called The Lost Room. A show about objects of power. Im unfamiliar with SCP so I don't know if that show is related to SCP or not but worth checking out.
Andrew Hunley
2022-07-23 06:51:32 +0000 UTCThe quest you skipped to pick up the altered objects was extremely cool but I can understand why you skipped it
Sherman McGrew Jr
2022-07-22 17:20:43 +0000 UTCThis was a clarifying episode for me. Lots of game writers and podcasters loved Control, and I was more lukewarm on it. Couldn’t quite explain why. The combat is good. The vibes are great. But Gary and Kole nailed where some of the dissatisfaction comes from: Launch is great, but it’s the answer to literally every combat question. The game economy makes side quests feel like a waste of time (at least in terms of extrinsic rewards). And the biggest one (for me): map/level design is surprisingly opaque. I was hoping to imprint the layout of Oldest House in my mind, over time, the same way I did with Central Yharnam or Undead Burg. Instead, I still couldn’t understand where I was or how to get anywhere, even after 25 hours. (Not a fatal flaw, because the game is actually somewhat linear, but it spoiled the metroidvania promise I initially got excited about.)
Ben Taylor
2022-07-22 14:23:48 +0000 UTCGary bringing up SCP as the big sign post for Control struck me as a bit odd. I heard similar discourse when the game came out, and as someone who wasn’t an SCP fan, my sign posts were The X-Files or Men in Black. I get that there probably are direct shoutouts to SCP, but I certainly did not feel like “comedy-horror government bureaucracy” as something that’s completely rare in pop culture.
Naveen Sivakumar
2022-07-22 11:50:31 +0000 UTCEncountering that flamingo 🦩 was like delighted horror for me.
Billiam
2022-07-21 22:39:21 +0000 UTCWelcome back Captain Butterfield, glad you’re feeling better.
BlindRiot
2022-07-21 21:31:31 +0000 UTCHeck yeah! I literally JUST finished this game two days ago.
Inter-Party Conflict
2022-07-21 21:27:24 +0000 UTCYESSSSSS
Sven Giampapa
2022-07-21 21:22:02 +0000 UTC
