Like so many of my favourite games, I've played this on multiple platforms so I'm thoroughly hooked and really looking forward to the sequel.

Control has you guiding Jessie on a search for her missing brother, but quickly becomes something else... a quest to expell the Hiss from a mysterious building known only as the Bureau.

I love a game with a good story, fun gameplay, and a healthy seasoning of something that makes it special - in this case, the supernatural. It is quite unlike other games in that the gunplay blends so well with supernatural powers such as levitating and hurling fridges and forklifts around with your mind. As an added bonus, the game doesn't force you into a set difficulty as you can go into the menu and tweak things like how much damage you take without affecting achievements. On the flip side, I'm sure you could impose your own restrictions too, if you're into that sort of thing...

The Bureau is divided into departments broken up by an elevator, so there are very few load screens. Enemies typically appear after you enter certain rooms or caverns, but after the initial story appearance, you might have trouble looking for enemies by backtracking. There is a decent variety of enemies to keep you entertained, and different enemies drop different items required for gun upgrades. You only have the one gun for the whole game, but it can be modified into different forms so it isn't much different from having seven or so different weapons.

For instance, the first form is your basic pistol type of gun, but you can sort of give it a flick and it can change shape and suddenly you can pump out rockets or grenades. It's groovy. I especially enjoy the sniper form but once I get the right items I usually end up spending most of the game throwing furniture around. It's just too irresistible.

As you play you get experience towards points you can put into stats such as adding to your health, or how long you can levitate before you start to fall. In addition to crafting new weapon forms and using weapon modifiers, there are also personal modifiers for things like your skills, or certain combat situations. The only trouble I had with these was by the time you start with the DLCs, there are too many VERY specific situational modifiers that kept popping up in the loot that I just felt were utterly useless, and were stopping the better ones from dropping.

I should also mention there are unique mods scattered around, but you might need to consult the internet for some of these as some can be a bit hard to find, especially considering the whole levitating thing to get to higher nooks and crannies.

Getting back to the DLCs, if you like Alan Wake then you're in for a treat as it's all about fighting the darkness. I liked how the darkness combat worked better in this game than the original Alan Wake game, but the final boss fight can be a bit unfair if you haven't researched it. The Foundation DLC added some interesting gameplay too, but some of the story scenes made for some great funny dialogue.



Don't be discouraged by the 'Difficult' tag, as you can just change the game balance in the menu. Do get the game, so you can levitate and throw chairs and pretend you're a god. Relax to the soothing lyrics of Hiss gibberish and purge them from existence.

It is a LOT of fun.