Control Resonant Lands September 24 With Full Marks

Remedy Let the Reviews Out Six Days Early

There is an old rule of thumb in games coverage: the earlier a publisher lifts the review embargo, the better they think the game is. Remedy lifted the embargo on Control Resonant on September 18, a full six days ahead of the September 24 worldwide launch. That is a confident move, and on the evidence of the first wave of reviews, a justified one.

• Release: September 24, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store
• Also coming: Mac versions through Steam and the App Store later in 2026, with GeForce NOW support at launch
• Length: roughly 12 to 15 hours for the main story, up to 30 for completionists, per Video Games Chronicle
• The big change: the service weapon is gone, replaced by melee combat with a weapon called The Aberrant

What Is Control Resonant About?

You play Dylan Faden, brother of the first game's Jesse, and the setting has moved out of the Oldest House and into Manhattan. Remedy's description is that a new form of resonance, alongside the Hiss and the Mold, is warping the city as a cosmic force reshapes reality. Jesse is missing. Remedy calls it their most expansive game to date, which given the studio's history of tightly bounded weird architecture is a notable claim.

The structural gamble is the genre shift. The original Control was a third-person shooter built around a transforming service weapon and telekinetic object-throwing. Resonant drops the gun. Combat is now melee-first, centred on The Aberrant, and it comes with dialogue choices that affect relationships — a Remedy game that asks you to talk to people as well as fling filing cabinets at them.

Do the Reviews Say the Gamble Paid Off?

Broadly yes, with the usual caveat that first-wave reviews are first-wave reviews. Video Games Chronicle gave it a full five out of five, calling the genre change a success and singling out combat that feels responsive and weighty, art direction and boss design that surpass the original, performances from Sean Durrie and Courtney Hope, a strong soundtrack, and side missions that actually enrich the world rather than padding it.

It is not unanimous praise. The same review notes that some open-world activities grow repetitive toward the end and that enemy spawn rates can make fights feel overwhelming. PC Gamer's take is more mixed, describing a welcome return to Remedy's hellscapes alongside too many hours of middling combat. Two reviewers disagreeing about whether melee combat sustains fifteen hours is exactly the kind of thing you should expect a genre pivot to produce, and it is worth knowing before you pre-order rather than after.

Who Is This For?

If you played Control and mostly loved it for the atmosphere — the impossible architecture, the redacted memos, the sense that the building is thinking about you — the reviews suggest that is intact and larger. If you loved it specifically for the service weapon and the physics sandbox, the pivot is real and you should read a review or two first.

Either way, a studio confident enough to publish reviews six days early is a good sign in a year of games shipped straight into an embargo wall. Remedy's run of ambitious mid-size single-player games continues, alongside the other big releases we have tracked lately like Wo Long 2's March 2027 date and Valheim 1.0 on PS5 and Switch 2. More in our gaming coverage.

Sources: Remedy Entertainment — accessed September 18, 2026; Video Games Chronicle — September 18, 2026.