Remedy Entertainment鈥檚 Control Resonant includes a generous assist mode that lets players adjust difficulty at any time, according to impressions of the game published by The Verge. The sequel to Control is described as a challenging experience in which players exploring vast open areas can be surrounded by swarms of otherworldly enemies that take a long time to defeat. The Verge鈥檚 Jay Peters wrote that he died often while playing.
The assist mode is accessible from the game鈥檚 pause menu. Players can adjust how much damage they deal and receive, change the window for pulling off dodges, or enable immortality and one-hit kills. Presets resembling traditional difficulty options are also available for players who do not want to adjust individual sliders. The game encourages players to try it with assist mode disabled, but there is no penalty for turning it on, and no need to reload a save.
Peters wrote that he began using assist mode early, when the player character has few combat abilities or passive skills. Small adjustments made him slightly more powerful without removing the challenge entirely, he said, and after a few hours of leveling up he turned assist mode off to raise the difficulty again. He continued toggling the settings in different ways as he played.
The feature also helped him move through content he found less engaging. Peters described the combat as sometimes boring, and said he used assist mode to clear enemies blocking access to the story beats and locations he values in Remedy games. For bosses, which he called awe-inspiring spectacles with large health bars, he typically started with assist mode disabled and adjusted settings incrementally after each death.
Assist mode also let Peters move more efficiently through the game鈥檚 sprawling maps, which are filled with secrets and quests. In one area, he searched for chunks of mold that protagonist Dylan felt compelled to eat. He enabled immortality and one-hit kills to get through fights and reach the mold and subsequent narrative reveals, then disabled those abilities for the boss at the end of the quest.
Peters wrote that Control Resonant has too much bloat, with too many enemies on the maps and too many open-world activities. He said the combat is not interesting enough to make suffering feel worthwhile, unlike FromSoftware titles or Capcom鈥檚 recent Onimusha: Way of the Sword, and that the game suffers from difficulty spikes like the original Control. Remedy patched an assist mode into Control after launch, and included one in Resonant from the start.
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