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jp's Control (PS5)
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| [August 15, 2024 11:10:32 PM]
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This is weird. I was sure I had written about this game before!
As I wrote the last entry I remembered things I though I had written about? Or maybe I just told someone?
ANYWAYS, here goes (again?).
There's a janitor who speaks in a very distinctive accent. I recognized it as Finnish and I got a real kick out of that. The game's by Remedy - a Finnish company - so it's not really a surprise...but still, a cultural detail I appreciated. Also, this guy says the weirdest things that I'm SURE are literal translations of Finnish sayings. And they come across as super eccentric and weird. But, it added a neat touch of humor. Like the whole point of the saying is lost in the translation and it just sounds weird. So, for example in Chile people will call something "marca chancho" which translates literally as "pig brand". The phrase is used to refer to a product being some generic brand with no quality. Not necesarilly fake or off-brand, but just like a brand that has no value or meaning. Almost throway. But if I said in english, "oh, that television is pig brand" people would think it was weird. So, the janitor guy is like that.
Oh, the game's ending felt a bit of a let down - you figure out what happened to the agency's director (which is what kicks off the game in a way), then you kind of rescue your brother (oh, he's in a coma) which was the whole motivation - but then the aftergame is doing more missions to clean up the agency. It seemed like a bit of a let down?
Like I said, I didn't play it - though there was a cool mission that's quite meta - your sort of stuck inside your own mindtrap/hallucination you need to break out of - and it kind of involves not doing what the game tells you to do. Sort of.
Anyways, super cool game!
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| [August 15, 2024 11:01:59 PM]
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Oops. I should have written about this one before because...well, I've been playing it for about a month and there's lots going on.
I guess at this point I should start with the "bad". I decided to move on from the game (while being pretty close to the end, as I later verified by watching a video playthrough) mostly because I tipped over into the frustration side of things in different combat scenarios. There are attacks that kill you quite quickly and it's a bit of a pain to restart (which happens "automatically"), make your way back to were you were and (sometimes, not always) have to replay a bunch of stuff before getting killed again. Sigh.
I guess there's other "bad" things as well - I never really got the hang of navigating the different game spaces and the map was useful, mostly. So, hard to get to exact locations - but good for figuring out which zone I had to be in.
Overall the interface is pretty slick - and there's so many "lore" items to find and read and so on that the game's premise and setting is really cool and interesting.
Part of the reason for it being hard to move around (find my way) is that there are lots of dead ends/wasted space. Here the wasted is only in the videogame context. For example, there are lots of restrooms around - which are placed in places that make sense for an office building - but there was never anything interesting gameplay wise in them. They just take up space - and make the overall videogame navigation harder to do.
The game really lathers up the "what is going on?". The entire time. I don't know what's going on (not even after the game ends, tbh) and that's by design - it's supposed to be a weird interdimensional creepy scary mystery...and it's quite effective!
BUT, I did start to tire of the combat - and while the powers felt cool and fun to use I often died because I had pressed the button to bring up the shield, it didn't come up, and then I got hit and died. I'm sure that's my fault - but the timing on the buttons felt a bit off at times, I often died from stuff I felt I couldn't see (the 3rd person camera didn't help here), and it's likely I was trying to use to powers at once and didn't have enough energy?
But, the powers are cool. They're doled out slowly and interesting ways - like, I could swear I got one of them from doing a side mission? Which sounds bizarre...but still?
OH! There's an mission that was super cool - even if I had to redo it numerous times and almost bailed from the game here - you go into a weird self-changing maze BUT you're wearing a Finnish janitor's walkman and it's blasting this rock song - so, high intensity cool action. When you finish it your character goes "that was awesome!", and it was. Even if I felt more relief than elation just because of how many times I had to redo a section...
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jp's Control (PS5)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Got frustrated
GameLog started on: Saturday 15 June, 2024
GameLog closed on: Thursday 15 August, 2024 |
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This is the only GameLog for Control. |
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