Control Resonant Launch Puts Dylan Faden in a Broken Manhattan

Control Resonant launch day has arrived. Remedy's sequel to the cult action game Control, seven years after the twenty nineteen original, is out today, September twenty-fourth, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store. The studio is self-publishing the game, and it has put its strangest lead character to date at the center.

You play Dylan Faden, the brother of Control's hero Jesse. After years confined inside the Federal Bureau of Control's headquarters, Dylan steps out into a Manhattan that no longer behaves. The Hiss and the Mold, the two paranatural forces that haunted the first game, have escaped the Oldest House and consumed the city. Gravity, streets, and buildings are all wrong, and Dylan's mission is to stop the crisis and find his sister, who now leads the Bureau as its Director. Actor Sean Durrie plays Dylan, and his partner and handler is FBC agent Zoe, while returning faces Pope and Langston back him up. The Board, the Bureau's eerie governing entity, still talks like a hostile HR department, according to TruGamer's launch roundup.

How it plays now

The biggest change is in your hands. Control Resonant is a melee action RPG rather than the gun-first shooter the series began as. Dylan's weapon is the Aberrant, a shapeshifting object that Jesse and the Board forced into his chest, and it takes the shape of a hammer, dual blades, a whip, or a club. Fights run on a primary attack, a secondary attack, and a finisher, and boss fights hand out new powers: fire coating for your strikes, a spectral shooter, gravity that turns a wall into the floor, and a magnet grapple. The setting is an open, interconnected warped New York City instead of another labyrinth like the Oldest House. Remedy says the campaign runs more than thirty hours.

What reviewers are saying

The critical reception is strong. Metacritic lists the game's Metascore at eighty-four, "Generally Favorable," with ninety-one percent of critics positive across sixty-three reviews. Radio Times gave it full marks, and Tom's Guide called it "the finest Remedy game yet," according to TruGamer's roundup. PC Gamer praised the game's magnificent hellscapes but warned there are too many hours of middling combat. There is at least one loud dissent: ComicBook argued the melee feels hollow and the story never finds a second gear, a reminder that the combat overhaul is the game's biggest gamble.

Drilling into the scores shows where critics agree and where they split. RPG Site gave the game a ninety, praising a bizarre paranormal world that it says is on full display. GamePro Germany landed at eighty and said the team had a lot of fun once it mastered the game's quirks. The Daily Star matched that score and noted that newcomers can start here without having played the original, and MeuPlayStation described it as the natural, welcome sequel to the experience that captivated players years ago: more artistic, bolder, and more complete. TruGamer summed up the split across the early reviews as a simple question: the world is genius, and the melee is the open question.

The price sits in the usual range for a big release. The standard edition costs just under sixty dollars, and the Digital Deluxe edition runs ten dollars more, with forty-eight-hour early access plus extras like a digital artbook and the soundtrack. Xbox Play Anywhere is supported, and a Mac version arrives later this year.

The timing is bold. Control Resonant shares its launch week with Silent Hill: Townfall, and it lands about six weeks before GTA VI, the biggest release left on the calendar. Remedy has said plainly that GTA VI did not move its date. As a self-published swing from a studio famous for weird, confident games, the Control Resonant launch is the kind of release that could define the fall season, joining the same conversation as the GTA VI album rollout. It is out now on console and PC, and the early verdict is that the weirdness was worth the wait.