The original Control was a masterpiece of atmosphere and storytelling. But here’s the counterintuitive truth: its combat was always the weakest link. Jesse Faden’s telekinetic launch ability could carry you through the entire game if you found a good piece of cover and spammed it. The gunplay with the Service Weapon, while creative, often devolved into hiding behind desks and hurling filing cabinets at the Hiss. Control Resonant does something almost unheard of for a sequel — it strips away the guns, removes the crutch of ranged combat, and forces you into close-quarters melee. And the game is better for it. Dylan Faden doesn’t inherit his sister’s service weapon or her telekinetic power. He gets a transforming blade called the Aberrant, and he has to get his hands dirty. That fundamental shift redefines everything that follows.
Here are six reasons why Control Resonant isn’t just a worthy sequel — it’s the better game.
It's a bet that not every sequel needs to expand — sometimes the braver move is to cut what held the original back and build something leaner, meaner, and more urgent.
1. Melee Combat That Rewards Aggression, Not Cover-Camping
The original Control had an awkward tension at its core. The game wanted you to feel powerful and fluid, but the safest way to play was to find a bottleneck, launch a forklift, and wait for your energy to recharge. Resonant eliminates that entirely. There is no block button. There is no parry. Remedy tested parrying during development and cut it because it made players sit back and wait. Instead, every enemy encounter demands that you move forward, chain attacks, and stay in their face.
The result is a combat loop that feels closer to Devil May Cry than anything from 2019’s Control. Light attacks, heavy attacks, and combo finishers each use different weapon forms. You weave between primary and secondary weapons mid-combo. A perfect dodge slows time and lets you counter. Fill an enemy’s falter meter and you execute them, activating Dominance — a buff that doubles your primary damage for eight seconds and guarantees health drops from kills. The game practically dares you to stop attacking.
2. Build Customization That Actually Changes How You Play
The original Control had skill trees, but most upgrades were incremental — more health, more energy, slightly stronger launch. Resonant offers genuine build variety that alters your moment-to-moment playstyle.
Your Aberrant weapon has three primary forms (Strike, Glaive, Cleave), three secondary forms (Crush, Drill, Extend), and six combo finishers, each with its own damage type. Blunt damage breaks armor. Sharp damage shreds shields. Fire melts mold enemies. You can combine them into synergies that actually feel distinct. A Strike primary paired with Drill secondary and Uppercut Surge finisher lets you lift enemies and drill them mid-air for backstab damage. A Glaive with Extend and Spin Edge turns you into a crowd-control tornado.
And that’s before artifacts and combat abilities. You can craft passive bonuses that boost power recovery at the cost of taking more damage, or gain immunity to status effects. The game gives you enough reset items to experiment freely — you aren’t locked into bad choices.
3. The World Respires Around You
One of the smartest additions is the resonant cycle system. In Resonant, Manhattan isn’t a static open world. Every time you defeat a major boss called a Resonant, the entire map resets. Enemies respawn stronger. New enemy types appear. World feats refresh. You get more zone XP to level up each district, unlocking talent points and bonuses like marking large resource crates on the map or expanding vendor inventories.
This creates a natural rhythm: explore a zone, complete its activities, level it up, then push the cycle forward by fighting a boss. It rewards thoroughness without punishing players who want to push the main story. The original Control had an interconnected map that occasionally opened shortcuts, but it never evolved the way Resonant does. Here, your decisions about when to fight a Resonant affect the difficulty curve of the entire game.
4. Traversal That Changes How You See the Map
Jesse’s levitation in the original Control was fun, but it mostly let you float over threats and reach higher ledges. Resonant gives Dylan two traversal abilities that fundamentally rewire your relationship with the environment.
The Shift ability, unlocked from a dimensional fault in the West Incursion Zone, lets Dylan cling to walls and ceilings by realigning his gravity. The Reach ability, found in the Evacuation Zone, lets him grapple to translucent spatial orbs scattered across the city. Together, they turn Manhattan into a vertical playground. You don’t just walk from point A to point B — you chain jumps, dashes, wall runs, and grapples to cross gaps that would have been impassable in the original. Remedy’s artists created environments that twist and fold on themselves, and these traversal tools make exploring them feel like solving a physics puzzle.
5. The Assist Mode Is a Masterclass in Respectful Difficulty
The original Control had no difficulty options. You got one experience, and if you hit a wall, your only recourse was grinding for upgrades or reading a guide. Resonant introduces assist mode sliders that let you adjust outgoing damage, incoming damage, and power regeneration separately. You can make the game harder or easier depending on what you want from a session.
What makes this brilliant is that it isn’t binary. You don’t just pick Easy, Normal, or Hard. You can set outgoing damage to 150% while leaving enemy damage at default — making combat faster and snappier without removing the threat. Or you can reduce incoming damage while keeping enemies aggressive, so you survive longer but still have to engage with the mechanics. The game even gently warns you that the intended experience is challenging, then lets you decide anyway. That’s respect for player choice, not gatekeeping.
6. Dylan Faden Is a More Interesting Protagonist
Jesse Faden was a compelling character — a woman searching for her brother in a building that hated her. But Resonant‘s protagonist starts from a darker place. Dylan awakens from a seven-year coma after being possessed by the Hiss. He killed FBC agents under its influence. Now he’s free, but no one trusts him. The Bureau sees him as a liability. Security Chief Simon Arish openly resents him. Even the Board’s motives are unclear.
Dylan’s journey isn’t just about saving Manhattan. It’s about confronting what he did, earning a measure of redemption, and deciding whether he owes the institution that experimented on him anything at all. The game’s side quests let those choices carry real narrative weight — you decide the fate of scientists, civilians, and even a dog across seven zones. The original Control was about understanding power. Resonant is about understanding responsibility.
The one caveat: Resonant‘s melee focus will polarize players who loved the original’s telekinetic chaos. There is no Launch equivalent here. You cannot throw a truck at a Hiss cluster from safety. If you prefer ranged combat and crowd control through physics objects, the game will feel restrictive. But that restriction is the point. Resonant asks you to commit, to get comfortable in the pocket, and to trust that the game’s systems will reward you for staying aggressive. It’s a bet that not every sequel needs to expand — sometimes the braver move is to cut what held the original back and build something leaner, meaner, and more urgent.
