CONTROL Ultimate Edition
analyzed 2026-10-06 · sample of 545 English reviews across the whole review history
Across 545 sampled reviews, story is the most-discussed aspect, at 38.0%, and it draws far more praise than criticism. Players describe it as "just the right kind of weird for me" and call the writing "the best part". Combat appears in 27.9% of reviews, gameplay in 21.3%, and graphics in 18.2%, where the destructible environments and effects earn particular notice. Atmosphere, lore, and world each sit near or below 10.6%, and all three skew heavily positive. Opinion splits elsewhere. Writing draws 13 positive and 13 negative mentions, and difficulty divides evenly at 12 and 12. Level design is the clearest fault line: 26 of 41 mentions are negative, with complaints about navigation and "the worst map design I've ever seen". The UI fares worse still, negative in 21 of 23 mentions, and balance in 20 of 26. Performance, bugs, and stability also lean negative, including reports that the game "did crash on me a few times". Smaller positives recur: physics, sound design, art style, and build variety are almost uniformly praised, and price value is favorable when discounted. Players also raise the DLC, developer conduct, and platform access, though these remain less common threads.
numbers checked against this report's stored data · quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 40% · ± is the sampling uncertainty around each share
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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story
152 positive · 33 negative · 18 mixed · 4 neutral
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Amazing storytelling and graphics.
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I also really enjoyed the story, just the right kind of weird for me.
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Gameplay feels nice, visually gorgeous and, of course, the story and writing are the best part.
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combat
98 positive · 35 negative · 18 mixed · 1 neutral
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Gameplay itself was enjoyable, the battles were fast paced and had me thinking on my feet.
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An entertaining 3rd person shooter with a Mystery (TM) at its heart, plenty of puzzles to solve and lore to collect along the way.
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Excellent, captivating storytelling, immersive atmosphere, and enjoyable, fast-paced combat mechanics.
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gameplay
87 positive · 18 negative · 11 mixed · 0 neutral
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Gameplay itself was enjoyable, the battles were fast paced and had me thinking on my feet.
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Gameplay feels nice, visually gorgeous and, of course, the story and writing are the best part.
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Mechanics are good, but the guns aren't well balanced.
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graphics
83 positive · 12 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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Amazing storytelling and graphics.
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RTX looks great, the effects and destructible environments were just wow.
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Gameplay feels nice, visually gorgeous and, of course, the story and writing are the best part.
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atmosphere
52 positive · 4 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Atmosphere, aesthetics and characters are very well done.
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If you get the X-File / Paranormal vibe of the game and like brutalist architecture, this game is for you.
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Excellent, captivating storytelling, immersive atmosphere, and enjoyable, fast-paced combat mechanics.
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lore
46 positive · 8 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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One of the few games, in which I actually read all of the collectible notes and stuff. So much stuff going on.
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An entertaining 3rd person shooter with a Mystery (TM) at its heart, plenty of puzzles to solve and lore to collect along the way.
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Control didn’t immediately grasp me, but the more insight I gained into the workings of the Federal Bureau of Control, the more the game impressed me with its character.
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world
49 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The game design is amazing, the Old House really comes to life here.
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not the usual game for me but I love the story and get completely taken away to another world.
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fun characters, intriguing plot, good gameplay loop, beautiful environments and a killer soundtrack.
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characters
33 positive · 13 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Atmosphere, aesthetics and characters are very well done.
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Jesse plunged down a rabbit hole into a weird and wonderful adventure, and I hope that's not the last I see of her.
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fun characters, intriguing plot, good gameplay loop, beautiful environments and a killer soundtrack.
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dlc
24 positive · 11 negative · 7 mixed · 2 neutral
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The DLCs are great as well.
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The DLC are worth it.
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For any of the Alan Wake fans out there, there's a DLC that indulged into the story , how it's connected with the Control-universe. I played it entirely, was really fun.
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price value
28 positive · 3 negative · 10 mixed · 2 neutral
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Given the current discount, it is well worth the price, but you should tame your expectation a bit.
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Definitely don't pass this up if it's on sale.
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[td]Buy - Control Ultimate Edition is the current version and it goes on sale often enough to justify picking it up then, but even at full price for someone interested in this sort of paranormal action shooter, you won't be disappointed.
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see more
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level design
14 positive · 26 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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The level design, not to mention navigational tools, are hell.
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Apart from the bugs its got the worst map design I've ever seen.
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Even worse, the map is deliberately confusing and it is difficult to figure out where to go next to advance the story.
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art style
34 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Atmosphere, aesthetics and characters are very well done.
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If you get the X-File / Paranormal vibe of the game and like brutalist architecture, this game is for you.
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With amazing cinematographic style, so beautiful!
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progression
23 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Combat was fast-paced and thrilling, the use of Jesse’s powers satisfying after unlocking them.
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Has a very well put together upgrade system, and the way the weapons system is I have not seen in any other game that I have played but enjoyed it.
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Admittedly the gun play became a bit repetitive at times, but the accumulation of perks and paranatural abilities that tie into the story provided a nice sense of progress toward the overall goal.
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performance
14 positive · 15 negative · 0 mixed · 2 neutral
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It is so pleasant to see how light from small objects bouncing off the surrounding, however, it comes with a penalty of unstable frame rate even with 3060ti at 1080p, which is why it is also the few early adopters of DLSS.
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It does still have some performance issues and some of the levels can be glitched (speedruns exist for it), while some of the AI can also be rough and catch you off guard, leading to your death.
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Didn't run well or engage me.
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difficulty
12 positive · 12 negative · 3 mixed · 2 neutral
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The riddles were not too hard, and there was not a lot of needless walking around, which is great.
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✅ Easy
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Some will find a challenge in some of the bosses.
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exploration
23 positive · 4 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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[td]+ Some interesting ideas and mechanics are presented, gradually opening up the area you explore[/td]
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I plan on searching all area of this game.
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Searching for secrets is rewarding and enjoyable, the fighting feels great and the story is overall still pretty good.
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quest design
16 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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An entertaining 3rd person shooter with a Mystery (TM) at its heart, plenty of puzzles to solve and lore to collect along the way.
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While the main storyline was decent, I always looked forward to the next side quest, especially the boss encounters.
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Hunting them down and solving their puzzles is fun and a good diversion from fighting "The Hiss" (enemies) over and over.
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writing
13 positive · 13 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Gameplay feels nice, visually gorgeous and, of course, the story and writing are the best part.
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[b] Story [/b] is great, I really enjoyed it, I loved the characters, the dialogues, the mysteries, it just makes you want more.
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The story is very well written and acted out.
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balance
4 positive · 20 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Mechanics are good, but the guns aren't well balanced. You'll end up using only 2 or 3 of them.
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[*]Weapon design is unbalanced because most fire modes are useless.
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[td]- Adaptable arsenal is underpowered while abilities are overpowered[/td]
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music
21 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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✅ Good
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Perhaps open a bottle of Chateau Cthulu to breath & stick the sound track form Twin Peaks on in the background.
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fun characters, intriguing plot, good gameplay loop, beautiful environments and a killer soundtrack.
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pacing
7 positive · 16 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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I find the storytelling delivery oversaturated by indirect, pace-killing contextual loot, which is a chore to read.
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It does slow down a little mid game.
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[td]- Casual enemy encounters can be too frequent and occasionally deadly, breaking up the flow of the game and exploration[/td]
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ui
1 positive · 21 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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The level design, not to mention navigational tools, are hell.
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[*]The game only allows to equip two fire modes at once, causing the combat to lose lots of momentum because you have to go to the menu to switch to others.
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The user interface of the game looks like it was designed by a child playing with MS Paint.
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physics
21 positive · 0 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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The environment is also fully destructible with amazing physical effects, which keeps me staring at after each combat.
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this entire game had a lot of attention put into the details, and that's before even talking about the door physics.
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Great stories and great DESTRUCTION.
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controls
11 positive · 8 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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The controls are easy to pick up on.
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- I liked the character movement, it felt very responsive, then you add all the powers and it didn't feel like a slog even when backtracking.
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Excellent story, unique combat system, fluid controls.
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game length
8 positive · 5 negative · 1 mixed · 6 neutral
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Stick the best parts of Half-Life, Half-life 2, Secret World Legends & <any game where you play a Jedi> into a blender, add a heaped table spoon of the X-Files for flavour and then pour into a decent length single player campaign.
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Plenty of game time.
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30+hr in based game and another 20+hr in both DLCs, collectables and all achievements.
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voice acting
13 positive · 4 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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The story is very well written and acted out.
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Story is bland at best, beautiful crafted environments, and decent voice acting/script didn't deter me from completing it in a sub 10 hour play through.
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Good voice acting.
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bugs
1 positive · 15 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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100% took me 23h and one achievement is kinda bugged but has workarounds which is annoying.
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It does still have some performance issues and some of the levels can be glitched (speedruns exist for it), while some of the AI can also be rough and catch you off guard, leading to your death.
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Apart from the bugs its got the worst map design I've ever seen.
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learning curve
4 positive · 5 negative · 2 mixed · 4 neutral
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Need to google how to complete missions or what weapons to use against which bosses as it obscure or hidden in random documents that also have irrelevant information.
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I understand that the game is a mystery, but the game gives you VERY little to go on before letting you play, so the first bit of playtime can be very confusing.
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Control took the spot at the top from Desperados III for the best game during this year even though the starting few hours felt bit jarring and confusing, but then the story and it's world started to open up and gameplay get better and better.
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replayability
10 positive · 2 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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✅ Definitely
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Overall well done game, I can see myself replaying and there is so much stuff to find and explore.
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Completed this game once already, but this is one of those very few games I'd like to repeat.
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developer conduct
3 positive · 10 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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If remedy (missing capital intended) is too lazy to fix their known bugs (but were much eager to cash grab releasing extra DLC content) they also deserve a gigantic thumbs down.
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The promo material is rather misleading.
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I don't know what Remedy try to do recently but they will going under at this rate.
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animation
4 positive · 6 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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- The mouths of characters look kinda weird when they're talking, the teeth look plastic but otherwise the game looks good
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Which actually corresponds well with stiff facial animation.
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The mechanics are kind of weird but you get used really fast, it all feels natural and makes you feel in control (hah), the only thing you miss is a bit more fluidity in the movement, maybe some more animations for like, dodging and jumping.
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content amount
9 positive · 0 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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There are random limited time events to fight enemies post game, with randomly generated challenges that can keep you going until you max out the abilities and mods.
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Verygood Game content and story But my eyes will be blind because of the red colorful.
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It has: beautiful and realistic graphics, fascinating, scary storyline, very good animations, different: locations, sectors, superpowers, monsters (kinds of hiss), hidden locations, weapons, upgrades, missions, side-missions, bosses, clothes, (collectibles: documents, recordings, videos).
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build variety
9 positive · 0 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Different playstyles available.
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Great sound track, a lot of secrets, good diversity in weapon choices and playstyle.
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There are always creative new ways to use your abilities, and many potential playstyles.
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sound design
10 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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[b] Game play [/b] is really good & simple, Jesse's telekinetic abilities were really fun, you get access to the service weapon with different forms & mods, it's great, firing sound design is top notch.
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This game is an experience, a visual and audio experience.
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Looks brilliant and the sound design is amazing.
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stability
1 positive · 7 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Additionally, the game did crash on me a few times; these were after several hour sessions jumping between multiple areas however, so I wouldn't necessarily consider that normal.
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The Foundation crashes instantly on rtx3090/12700k
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Nice game but you literally can't get past "Press Enter to start" until you restart your PC.
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addictiveness
6 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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When I'm playing it, I can't stop playing it. Enough said.
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An imaginative, stylish, and deeply satisfying supernatural adventure that keeps you hooked from start to finish.
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I cant get this game out of my head and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys 3rd person shooters, rpgs or just the creatively weird or just wants a good game to play.
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customization
5 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Great gameplay, atmosphere, and characters in general, lots of fun and memorable moments, got unlockable nice skins, loved the scp lore
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Lets start with the combat it begins with a simple gun (unlimited ammo) the gun is later able to be customised to the player in 2 ways.
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The story line is awesome and the amount of customization with your weapon and abilities is also fantastic.
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ai behavior
1 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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It does still have some performance issues and some of the levels can be glitched (speedruns exist for it), while some of the AI can also be rough and catch you off guard, leading to your death.
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I did get a bit frustrated early on with enemies reappearing in cleared areas, but for the most part you get used to some skirmishes along the way.
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Shooting gameplay is no fun, telekinesis is a gimmick that wears out after three times and the slightly more advanced ennemies dodge it, very unsatisfying.
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platform access
2 positive · 3 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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This game should NOT be "Steam deck verified" since this doesn't work out of the box (Black Screen during launch).
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However the PC port is so terribly optimised that after 20-30 minutes of playing textures will struggle to load in along with other graphical issues like lag spikes.
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This game have a mandatory connexion to play it and they don't disclose it on the Requirement
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Review timeline
monthly peak 3,096 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2020 | 1,565 | 1,416 | 149 | 90% | |
| Sep 2020 | 3,096 | 2,784 | 312 | 90% | |
| Oct 2020 | 804 | 730 | 74 | 91% | |
| Nov 2020 | 2,436 | 2,321 | 115 | 95% | |
| Dec 2020 | 2,022 | 1,828 | 194 | 90% | |
| Jan 2021 | 1,540 | 1,381 | 159 | 90% | |
| Feb 2021 | 784 | 702 | 82 | 90% | |
| Mar 2021 | 546 | 495 | 51 | 91% | |
| Apr 2021 | 1,681 | 1,467 | 214 | 87% | |
| May 2021 | 908 | 787 | 121 | 87% | |
| Jun 2021 | 1,308 | 1,156 | 152 | 88% | |
| Jul 2021 | 958 | 843 | 115 | 88% | |
| Aug 2021 | 638 | 570 | 68 | 89% | |
| Sep 2021 | 802 | 691 | 111 | 86% | |
| Oct 2021 | 658 | 570 | 88 | 87% | |
| Nov 2021 | 566 | 491 | 75 | 87% | |
| Dec 2021 | 701 | 620 | 81 | 88% | |
| Jan 2022 | 648 | 555 | 93 | 86% | |
| Feb 2022 | 451 | 382 | 69 | 85% | |
| Mar 2022 | 325 | 279 | 46 | 86% | |
| Apr 2022 | 407 | 338 | 69 | 83% | |
| May 2022 | 286 | 256 | 30 | 90% | |
| Jun 2022 | 283 | 248 | 35 | 88% | |
| Jul 2022 | 720 | 618 | 102 | 86% | |
| Aug 2022 | 317 | 274 | 43 | 86% | |
| Sep 2022 | 469 | 397 | 72 | 85% | |
| Oct 2022 | 464 | 409 | 55 | 88% | |
| Nov 2022 | 549 | 481 | 68 | 88% | |
| Dec 2022 | 631 | 542 | 89 | 86% | |
| Jan 2023 | 622 | 539 | 83 | 87% | |
| Feb 2023 | 345 | 293 | 52 | 85% | |
| Mar 2023 | 366 | 320 | 46 | 87% | |
| Apr 2023 | 478 | 402 | 76 | 84% | |
| May 2023 | 369 | 315 | 54 | 85% | |
| Jun 2023 | 425 | 359 | 66 | 84% | |
| Jul 2023 | 539 | 452 | 87 | 84% | |
| Aug 2023 | 325 | 280 | 45 | 86% | |
| Sep 2023 | 417 | 360 | 57 | 86% | |
| Oct 2023 | 428 | 359 | 69 | 84% | |
| Nov 2023 | 864 | 740 | 124 | 86% | |
| Dec 2023 | 784 | 668 | 116 | 85% | |
| Jan 2024 | 592 | 519 | 73 | 88% | |
| Feb 2024 | 491 | 429 | 62 | 87% | |
| Mar 2024 | 480 | 401 | 79 | 84% | |
| Apr 2024 | 409 | 338 | 71 | 83% | |
| May 2024 | 527 | 428 | 99 | 81% | |
| Jun 2024 | 428 | 349 | 79 | 82% | |
| Jul 2024 | 466 | 408 | 58 | 88% | |
| Aug 2024 | 383 | 321 | 62 | 84% | |
| Sep 2024 | 394 | 342 | 52 | 87% | |
| Oct 2024 | 518 | 450 | 68 | 87% | |
| Nov 2024 | 530 | 462 | 68 | 87% | |
| Dec 2024 | 548 | 475 | 73 | 87% | |
| Jan 2025 | 463 | 392 | 71 | 85% | |
| Feb 2025 | 290 | 257 | 33 | 89% | |
| Mar 2025 | 410 | 342 | 68 | 83% | |
| Apr 2025 | 291 | 241 | 50 | 83% | |
| May 2025 | 292 | 226 | 66 | 77% | |
| Jun 2025 | 670 | 520 | 150 | 78% | |
| Jul 2025 | 660 | 521 | 139 | 79% | |
| Aug 2025 | 751 | 577 | 174 | 77% | |
| Sep 2025 | 841 | 635 | 206 | 76% | |
| Oct 2025 | 1,012 | 793 | 219 | 78% | |
| Nov 2025 | 724 | 594 | 130 | 82% | |
| Dec 2025 | 994 | 810 | 184 | 81% | |
| Jan 2026 | 1,086 | 877 | 209 | 81% | |
| Feb 2026 | 667 | 550 | 117 | 82% | |
| Mar 2026 | 708 | 572 | 136 | 81% | |
| Apr 2026 | 662 | 534 | 128 | 81% | |
| May 2026 | 572 | 467 | 105 | 82% | |
| Jun 2026 | 1,130 | 892 | 238 | 79% | |
| Jul 2026 | 725 | 612 | 113 | 84% | |
| Aug 2026 | 692 | 571 | 121 | 83% | |
| Sep 2026 | 1,744 | 1,468 | 276 | 84% | |
| Oct 2026 | 378 | 324 | 54 | 86% |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- 545 English reviews, time-proportional draw over 75 windows (newest-first within each), taken from an all-language walk and kept English-only — where English is a minority the sample runs smaller than the draw, and every margin of error is computed at 545
- Aspect yield
- 369 of 545 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (67.7%); every share on this page divides by all 545
- Interval regime
- calm: standard margins of error for a share of a sample (Wilson interval), no widening needed
- Fetch paths
- 75 time windows fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,000 fetched: english 548 · russian 130 · schinese 108 · 19 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20261006T213718Z-79e15d10 · code 798e06c
full methodology in the milestone write-ups