A new hands-on with Control Resonant has revealed more about Remedy Entertainment’s expanded Manhattan setting, melee-focused combat, mission structure and unusual boss encounters ahead of its September 24 launch. PlayStation Blog played the full game and detailed how Dylan Faden’s adventure moves beyond the Oldest House into a distorted version of New York City. Remedy describes Resonant as its most expansive game to date, but the sequel stops short of becoming a traditional open-world game.
Manhattan is instead divided into focused sandbox-like areas containing main missions, side stories and optional activities. Objectives range from clearing Hiss-controlled locations and investigating missing people to repairing machinery, while players can manually prioritize which missions they want to pursue. Each area also contains arcade cabinets with timed challenges that can reward Dylan’s skills, while the wider city includes warped streets, rooftops and sections where gravity has folded architecture over itself.
Dylan has considerably more traversal freedom than Jesse Faden had in the original Control. He can double jump, levitate high enough to reach shorter rooftops, air dash and perform a faster double-tap dash that leaves an afterimage. Additional movement abilities are unlocked through “Jesse Quests,” including a grappling ability called Reach that further expands how Dylan navigates Manhattan.
Combat makes an equally significant departure from the first game by centering on Dylan’s shapeshifting melee weapon, the Aberrant. Its primary and secondary forms can be modified with effects such as burn and infect, improved cooldowns and bonuses to combo finishers. Dylan can also equip Combat Abilities including a shield, projectile barrage or an ally created from surrounding debris, while melee attacks restore the Power consumed by those abilities.
There are six default primary and secondary Aberrant options, creating dozens of possible loadout combinations. Players can unlock, swap and test configurations inside the Gap, a limbo-like hub, while multiple skill trees provide further progression choices. Remedy has also built an expanded Assist Mode with granular combat settings, allowing individual parts of the difficulty to be made either easier or harder without disabling trophies or achievements.
Executions provide another layer to combat, with stunned enemies vulnerable to chainable finishing moves. Encounters are built around close-range positioning, dodging and precise attacks rather than reproducing Jesse’s more firearm-like Service Weapon combat. That shift places greater importance on selecting complementary Aberrant forms, status effects and Combat Abilities before taking on tougher groups of Hiss.
The new hands-on also provides a clearer picture of Resonants, the sequel’s major boss encounters. One battle featured an enormous porcelain doll face attacking Dylan with taxis and steel girders, while another encounter deliberately avoided the structure of a conventional boss fight. Remedy appears to be using these encounters to push the reality-warping elements of Control further, combining large-scale spectacle with mechanics that can change significantly between bosses.
Despite Manhattan’s increased scale, the sequel retains the horror elements of the original. The preview describes hallucinatory visions, sudden messages from the Board, reality-warping taxis and enormous malformed enemies appearing throughout exploration. Optional mini-quests can be considerably quieter, including memory-based activities in which Dylan recreates scenes from his childhood using objects found in the environment.
Control Resonant follows Dylan as he searches for his missing sister Jesse while Manhattan is distorted by a new form of resonance alongside familiar threats including the Hiss and Mold. Remedy says the main story will take roughly 25 to 35 hours, with additional content available for completionists. On PS5, the game also features several performance modes and DualSense features, including controller-speaker dialogue and adaptive-trigger feedback.
Control Resonant launches worldwide on September 24, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store. A Mac version is scheduled to follow later in 2026.
