Control it left it as if it was pushing the latest generation of consoles to their breaking points, with many performance issues on older machines. Despite these problems it was a great game, my favorite of 2019. Now, with the next generation version of Control, many of these problems are gone and an already fantastic game is improved with better performance and new features.
Control, developed by Remedy, the people behind it Max Payne i Alan Wake, was released in August 2019 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The PC version, after a few patches, was a great way to play this creepy third-person shooter full of supernatural enemies. The console ports did not work as well. On PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, the most powerful and up-to-date state-of-the-art machines, Control he would still struggle to keep his 30 fps goal. During large fights with many objects flying around and particle effects appearing, you could fall far below that target. And on older base consoles, they were more likely to stick or become extremely slow to play. Add long charging times and you have a bit of a mess.
Control Ultimate Edition, now available for PS5 and Xbox Series X / S, is a true next-generation gaming port. It features beam-drawn reflections, improved frame rates, faster loading times, and higher resolution. But there are some caveats. First, if you do not own it Control Ultimate Edition will be needed repurchase the game as an original version of Control it will not be upgraded to the next generation port. It’s a very annoying thing this bothers many and remains a shitty situation.
Another catch: the desos of the latest versions of the game are not transferred. Remedy says this is because the engine is so different that it would have taken a lot of extra work to get the savings transferred properly. One last problem is that on Xbox Series S the game has no ray tracing and will run at an internal resolution of 900p, which will then be surpassed at an output resolution of 1080p. Oh, I haven’t played the Xbox Series X port on Final edition, although Remedy says it should be visually identical to the PS5 game, and I hope that’s true.
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So, with these things out of the way, how do you do it? Control to the PS5 game? In a word: heavenly.
You can choose from PS5 and Xbox Series X: performance mode and graphics mode. In performance mode, the game aims at 60 fps and most importantly, it gets it. I saw some minor drops during some larger areas full of enemies, but these were barely noticed and compared to how the game works on PS4, it is still a big improvement.
The other option, graphic mode, is locked at 30 fps but supports beam-drawn reflections. The ray tracing appears in Control Ultimate Edition they are not as impressive as in some high-end PC games, such as Metro: Exodus. But they still add an extra level of detail to the world. The glossy walls, glass windows and reflective marble floors feature realistic and precise reflections that add to the visual appeal of the game.
However, in the middle of the fight, I rarely came across reflexes and missed the soft 60 fps feel. Outside of the reflections drawn by rays, both modes seem almost identical. For example, shadows do not look better in graphics mode or worse in performance. So it seems like the big decision you will have to make is whether you want 60 fps or 30 fps actions with ray-drawn reflections. I think Control, on all platforms, already looks fantastic, so the ray tracing features don’t seem like a significant improvement, especially at the expense of halving performance. Still, it’s a good choice to include. Both modes, by the way, render at an internal resolution of 1440p and are produced at 4k upload, creating a clean, crisp image.
Charging times are also much shorter on PS5, with most charging screens ending in less than 12 seconds. While this is fast, especially compared to the charging times of older machines that could exceed 30 or even 40 seconds, the PS5’s charging times aren’t as fast as I expected. However, this is mainly because I have become accustomed to other PS5 games, such as thousands Morales, which have fast charging times of a few seconds or less. Regardless, you’ll spend much less time looking at a loading screen Control Ultimate Edition, which is great.
Control Ultimate Edition it also comes with all the DLC released earlier, which is wonderful for me because I’ve never played Control DLC, instead choose to wait for a new generation port. Lucky for me!
If you can overcome the obligation to repurchase the game and not be able to transfer over the old saves, Final edition on next generation consoles is the best way to play Control out of a powerful PC. If you don’t like it Control when it first came out, because it was too hard or you didn’t find the world attractive, this new port won’t change your mind. But if you bounced off the old game due to long load times or performance issues, it might be the best time to re-enter.