Control Resonant review: stunning world design let down by weak melee combat

Control Resonant, Remedy's open-world ARPG sequel to 2019's Control, launched on September 24, 2026 at $60/£50 on PC via Steam. PC Gamer's review gives the game a mixed but considered verdict — the environmental artistry is exceptional, but the melee combat system drags it down.

Dylan Faden takes the lead this time around, waking from a seven-year coma to find the Hiss have broken out of the Oldest House and are tearing through Manhattan. A second interdimensional force called the Patterning is also reshaping the city — bending roads skyward, spiraling entire neighborhoods inward, and warping residents into monstrous boss enemies called Resonants. Dylan's weapon is the Aberrant, a shape-shifting melee tool implanted in his chest by his sister Jesse, which can cycle through different weapon forms on demand. He also accumulates mobility powers over the course of the game — floating, air-dashing, double-jumping, and eventually full gravity reorientation — which feed into some genuinely impressive traversal design across the open world.

The boss encounters are one of the game's highlights. Resonants are twisted versions of real people — one was a dancer performing in Manhattan when the Patterning struck, and Remedy worked with actual dancers to capture her movements. Composer Petri Alanko built her fight's score around Fibonacci number rhythms, and Dylan's own audio identity starts from pure sine waves and grows more complex as he develops. The open-world structure means players aren't forced to fight every Resonant — the game requires a certain number of boss defeats but offers more than that minimum, so players can choose their path. One playtester reportedly didn't unlock the gravity-shifting ability until far later than developers expected, which hints at real sequence-breaking potential. Remedy drew visual inspiration from M.C. Escher, the film A Field in England, and Satoshi Kon's Paprika rather than other games — art director Elmeri Raitanen noted that games tend to copy each other too much, and Remedy wanted to take genuine risks.

The review lands on a clear tension: Remedy's environmental and lighting teams are at the peak of their craft, delivering a sequel that's been called "breathtakingly incomprehensible" in the best possible way. But the melee combat — the system the entire open world is built around — isn't up to the same standard. Control Resonant is currently listed as Steam Deck Unverified, and the review was run on a GeForce RTX 4070 Super with an Intel i7-14700K and 32GB DDR5.