Control Ultimate Edition – Cloud Version

Genre: Third-Person Shooter

Players: 1 (Online)

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Review:

Control is a Third-Person Shooter released to multiple platforms in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020 in an Ultimate Edition that contains all of the game’s DLC content, though “ported” may not be entirely the right word to use here. Many were surprised when the game was announced for the Nintendo Switch, not only because the game was previously assumed to be far too powerful to work on the Nintendo Switch’s underpowered hardware, but also because of the way developer Remedy Entertainment and publisher 505 Games managed to work around the Nintendo Switch’s limitations, by having Nintendo’s handheld stream the game rather than run it natively.

This technically isn’t the first time this has been done on the Nintendo Switch – Japanese players have been able to use streaming to play games like Resident Evil 7 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for some time now. However, this is the first time this has been attempted in the United States. Be aware that what I say about this game’s visuals and performance in this review is undoubtedly dependent on your internet connection – if you have a weak or unstable connection, you may have difficulty getting this game to run well or at all. To test the performance, it is highly recommended that you download the free launcher for the game and try out the game’s opening sections to get a feel for its performance before you purchase the full game.

Control offers players two ways to play the game, an Enhanced Graphics mode and an Enhanced Performance mode. This is the first option you select before even starting the game proper, and apparently you must exit out of the game and restart to change this option, which is annoying. I found the improvements in Enhanced Graphics mode such as raytracing to be negligible in their effect, but the downside was occasionally terrible framerates, a blurring effect whenever the camera moved that was extremely disorienting, and occasional stuttering. In Enhanced Performance mode, on the other hand, I encountered none of these issues, and the framerate jumps from 30FPS to 60FPS as well, so this mode gets my vote for the best way to play Control… on the Nintendo Switch, at least.

When using Enhanced Performance mode, I will say that it was easy to forget during gameplay that I was technically streaming the game – I didn’t detect any input lag, no severe graphical artifacing… while I am personally wary of a future where games are streamed from the cloud rather than owned and contained on one’s own devices, I have to admit that this does seem to be an effective way to get the Nintendo Switch to play a game that would otherwise probably never be playable on the device, not to mention a step that may become necessary to address the increasingly bloated file sizes of games outpacing the storage capacity of our devices. However, I worry a bit that this could lead to companies taking a lazy route and streaming future games rather than porting them, even when a port could work just fine. Of course, all of this concern about the potential frustrations of this technology could just amount to me being a Luddite doing the “old man yells at cloud” thing, I dunno. It’s something to think about, I suppose.

Anyway, now that all of that is said and done, how are the actual graphics in this game? Well, they’re good, but not as good as you might expect from a game so graphically powerful it needs to be streamed to play on the Nintendo Switch. Partly, this is thanks to a somewhat low resolution that makes it a bit difficult to see all the details this game wants to throw at you. In handheld mode, this seems like less of an issue, but there, you’re constrained by the small screen size. However, when you’re actually looking for those nice details, there’s plenty of quality to find – nice reflections, good lighting, detailed characters (though they look bizarre when they speak), and large environments that shift around in interesting ways. While playing this game doesn’t leave me floored by its presentation, it definitely does look nice.

This game’s story is a bit jarring, especially at the beginning, starting us off in medias res and largely forcing the player to play catch-up with events already in motion. Players take the role of Jesse, a woman who has spent her life searching for the mysterious United States Bureau of Control, a government agency that handles paranormal activity and Jesse claims kidnapped her brother. However, her search for answers coincides with an internal attack on the agency by a strange brainwashing phenomenon called The Hiss. Yeah, so… this game’s plot reminded me heavily of the film Men in Black International, with a little X-Files thrown in for good measure. There’s some weird surreal reality-warping stuff going on in the manner in which this story is told, and the tone and atmosphere of this game is far more tense and serious, but once Jesse finds herself immediately inducted into the agency (as its director, no less!), it became difficult for me to take the plot all that seriously.

As for the gameplay, Control is a good Third-Person Shooter that adds a few interesting things into the mix of the gameplay, such as Jesse’s increasing array of supernatural powers and ability to use pickups to upgrade her abilities. However, I found that the inherent weirdness of the game is used to paper over some really frustrating elements. The enemies are really weird and reality-warping! Which… feels like a way to get you to ignore the way they often spawn out of nowhere. The gun is really weird and reality-warping! Which… feels like a way to get you to ignore how little damage it does and how long it takes to reload recharge. The building is weird and reality-warping! Which… feels like a way to distract from how indistinct and repetitive the environments are.

In the end, Control Ultimate Edition – Cloud Version seems like an interesting and largely successful experiment in trying to find a new way to bring games to the Nintendo Switch, and the game itself is a solid Third-Person Shooter with an impressive presentation, but this game isn’t without its major flaws, and the Nintendo Switch is not the ideal way to play the game. It’s still an impressive manipulation of technology, even if it’s one that comes with some troubling questions about what it portends for the future. If you’re looking for a solid big-budget action game, don’t have another modern gaming platform, and have a good internet connection, you may want to give this game a try.

tl;dr – Control on the Nintendo Switch is a fascinating experiment with streaming that largely succeeds at what it attempts to do, though your mileage may vary depending on your internet connection and your feelings about game streaming. As for the game itself, this is solid Third-Person Shooter with a lot of strange reality-warping elements that seem intended to distract from some of the game’s frustrations. If you can play this game on another platform, that may be preferable, but if the Nintendo Switch is your primary gaming platform you may find this to be an enjoyable action game.

Grade: B-

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