Control Resonant's giant hammer gets built in real life — and it's too heavy to lift

The blacksmiths at Man at Arms built a real-life replica of the Aberrant hammer from Control Resonant ahead of the game's launch next week — and it turned out to be completely unswingable.

The Aberrant is Control Resonant's melee weapon, shapeshifting into various forms including a comically oversized hammer. To recreate it, the Man at Arms team used hollow steel panels and advanced welding techniques rather than solid metal — because a solid chunk of steel that size would be roughly armchair-sized and weigh an absurd amount. Even with those weight-saving measures, the finished replica was still too heavy for any of the blacksmiths to pick up or swing. The build was sponsored by Remedy Entertainment, the developer behind the game. The full episode is up on the Man at Arms YouTube channel.

Control Resonant launches September 24, with PS5 Deluxe Edition owners getting in two days early on September 22. The game sits at a Metacritic score of 84 across 48 PS5 reviews, putting it among the better-reviewed games of 2026. GameSpot's Mark Delaney praised it for blending Remedy's signature interconnected universe weirdness with a gameplay loop he called "more mainstream than anything this team has made since Max Payne" — alongside strong art direction and a story he described as surprisingly touching.

The hammer replica may be the world's most impressive paperweight for now, but the buzz around the game itself is very real. If the critical reception holds, Control Resonant looks set to be one of Remedy's biggest commercial and creative wins in years.