CONTROL Resonant: Manhattan Has Misplaced the Floor

The big picture

Navigating Manhattan normally involves knowing which street you need and accepting that someone will be standing exactly where you want to walk. CONTROL Resonant adds a more serious concern: the street may no longer agree to be underneath you. Remedy sends Dylan Faden into a warped city where gravity has stopped behaving like a dependable service, giving the series' supernatural trouble room to spread beyond the Oldest House.

Dylan also brings a different approach to conflict. His shapeshifting melee weapon, the Aberrant, encourages getting close to things that any sensible person would prefer to study from another postcode. This is a single-player action sequel built around aggressive combat, flexible builds and spaces that need a second look. If the original Control made you suspicious of office buildings, Resonant would like to expand that suspicion to urban planning generally.

Sometimes the detour is up a wall

Manhattan uses expansive zones with optional discoveries and side activities, guided by a central story. Gravity Anomalies make walls and overhead structures possible routes. The environment therefore asks more of you than following a marker along an obedient pavement. Stopping to reconsider a surface can be progress, which is a generous arrangement for anyone already skilled at looking lost.

That spatial confusion gives the premise a purpose. A city coming apart should change how you move through it, and the altered routes let exploration share in the weirdness instead of merely decorating combat arenas. It also creates a clear comfort question. Some players enjoy reinterpreting a room; others would like the room to submit one consistent explanation and stick to it. Expect detours and orientation problems rather than an entirely streamlined corridor of fights.

Build development gives those detours another appeal, particularly if you enjoy discovering possibilities and returning to the story with an adjusted plan. There is no need to regard every optional activity as compulsory. A supernatural crisis is quite enough commitment without turning every intriguing corner into something you must complete before bedtime.

The difficulty can meet you halfway

Assist Mode lets you adjust enemy aggression, damage, dodge timing, projectiles and power recovery while retaining trophies and achievements. That specificity is valuable. You can ease the part causing trouble without necessarily flattening every other demand. A game about rearranging reality can reasonably allow a small adjustment to how often reality punches you.

Those settings make the recommendation more flexible for players who care about the fiction but have uneven appetites for combat pressure. A troublesome dodge window need not decide whether you see the rest of Manhattan. Choose the combination that makes the fighting engaging for you; there is no secret committee waiting to examine whether you earned the right to look at a sideways building.

Another lap, with the useful powers

New Game+ carries over combat upgrades, abilities, talents and artifacts, while traversal powers remain tied to story progression. That distinction matters: returning with a stronger build does not mean immediately walking through every route the narrative intends to unlock later. The October 1.4.0 update also added repeatable New Game++ runs and clearer build information, giving experimenters more room to keep adjusting the same increasingly unreasonable man.

The update's aftermath deserves attention too. Subsequent hotfixes addressed progression problems introduced by 1.4.0, with the October 8 hotfix tackling quest blockers and a missing reward. Install the current build, while keeping the distinction between repaired problems and a promise that nothing else can go wrong. The city is allowed to be broken as fiction; your quest progression has less artistic justification.

Make sure you're buying this sequel

General digital release was September 24, 2026. PS5 Digital Deluxe offered 48-hour advance access beginning September 22. Those were two entry dates for the full sequel, not a development-stage Early Access period or another edition of the first Control. Native releases cover PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Windows; GeForce NOW supplies streaming access, while Mac remains scheduled for later in 2026. The developer FAQ confirms offline play and a story intended to welcome newcomers.

Standard contains the game. Digital Deluxe adds an outfit, an artifact, starter resources, digital art and soundtrack extras. Weigh those separately from the pleasure of shaping Dylan's abilities. Existing Faden knowledge adds context, but newcomers need not complete a preliminary course in mysterious architecture before starting.

Resonant suits players who want close-range momentum and a strange world worth exploring, with useful options for adjusting the pressure. Be more cautious if its aggression, deliberate disorientation or recent patch problems sound like the wrong kind of challenge. Manhattan has plenty to offer, provided you can accept that asking for directions may now require specifying which way gravity is pointing.