One of the best (and oddest) blockbuster shooters of 2019 is $4 on Steam at the moment

Control was one of the best games of 2019, which is high praise: that was the year Disco Elysium, Untitled Goose Game, and Sekiro released. We gave it our "Best Setting" award, because even though Control is pretty much a third-person shooter at heart, its presentation elevates it into something much more interesting. This is a Remedy game, after all.

I don't remember a huge amount about its combat except that there's a lot of dashing, a lot of offensive levitating, and somehow office furniture is always involved. What I do remember well is the setting: Control is an action game, but it's also a very arch horror game set in the austere pebblecrete hallways of a brutalist tower called The Oldest House. Control's story and setting is often compared to the fictional SCP Foundation, which is basically hyper-conspiratorial crowdsourced weird fiction that has also inspired stuff like Lethal Company.

I don't know how much more I can say to sell Control to you, and it's probably a waste of time anyway because money talks: Control is $4 on Steam at the moment. That's for the Ultimate Edition too, which means you also get both expansions and all post-launch content bundled in.

A bunch of the bundles Control is in are also discounted dramatically: if you're after Control Ultimate Edition with the Alan Wake Origins bundle, that's going for $6.26, for example.

Now's a better time to play Control than ever, especially at that price. Its sequel Control Resonant is due to release some time in 2026.