Control 2

What an odd comparison. Even speaking as someone who thinks MP3 is underrated. 

Edit: sorry, reading the whole thread more carefully, I can see you didn't start the oranges / apples shenanigans. 

I don't think I've ever wanted to like a game more than I wanted to like Control. But while the aesthetics were often cool, the gameplay got samey and boring. The Ashtray Maze was fairly crap for all the hype it got. And it just wasn't weird enough.

Still, I'll probably be interested in a sequel. There's definitely potential for really weird and cool stuff with shifting architecture and such.

All this love for Control has me thinking I’ll see how the PS5 version checks out. I didn’t actually finish it on PS4, sort of ran out of time and just read story spoilers after a certain point.

I'd be up for more Ashtray Maze if it was weird and interesting and... like... an actual maze. Instead of a fancy-looking corridor with shit music.

(I was disappointed in the Ashtray Maze, in case you can't tell)

Ouch.

That little known niche of third person action games

I think part of my problem was with the hype. Like, the game director name-dropped House of Leaves as a big influence on Control, and that's one of my favourite books!

But the actual game was 90%

1. Walk into room
2. Dudes spawn in
3. You shoot them, then use telekinesis while you reload, then shoot them again until dead
4. Repeat

And it's not as if the combat was bad! It was pretty good! But I got completely sick of it, long before the end. Sick of the combat, the stupid upgrade and skill system, the pointless crafting, the radiant side quests, everything. And when people told me "oooh just you wait until you get to the Ashtray Maze" and I found out it was just another corridor, it felt even worse.

They had this amazing premise, and all they did with it was create cool-looking rooms for waves of uninteresting bad guys to spawn into. It's just maddening, because for me they created an expectation of something more.

(ok, I'll shut up now)

Style over substance, innit

I didn't enjoy Control as much as I hoped I would either, but that may have to do with my expectations I burdened it with. I very much want a game with a truly creepy surreal atmosphere, and Control looked like it would be that. But again and again, instead of being thoroughly creepy it was surreal action game with superhero powers. It's good for what it is and I enjoyed it enough, but in the end it's not what I hoped for.

I wasn't amazed by the ashtray maze either, it did feel like a condensed version of what the game was about, but I just didn't feel it and never quite got what's so exciting about it. To me it just felt like more of the same with shit music. Actually more action focussed and less creepy, which is probably again just not what I hoped it would be.

Yeah, it was developed by Rockstar, hence why I said I hope Remedy get a chance to make a real Max Payne 3. It doesn't particularly feel like a Max Payne game, besides featuring a depressed guy diving in slow-mo.

Kind of surprised to see so many here love it so much; I thought I liked it more than most and found it to be just ok to good, if I tried not to think about it as a Max Payne game.

Edit: oh, and best bit in Control:

It was shit music. Shit metal from the developer's vanity band. Shit shit shit. You know it's shit, stop lying.

(seriously though, it's shit)