I never had a chance to play Remedy's games post Max Payne series which I loved. Now I tried Control from ps+.
The aiming and shooting still feels very similar to MP. I suspect every Remedy game has the same foundations.
The SF powers and story, it's ok I guess. Nicely written and presented, but it's not grabbing my attention. I don't care about these characters. The documents scattered around are well written but there are so many that I started to not bother picking them up.
What's funny is I feel this is almost arcadey run 'n gun shooter at it's core. Everything is super fast, shooting, dashing, even the powers are instantaneous. Pop-pop, cannon fodder here, levitation guy there, run around pillars, throw everything at everyone, grab health crystals, oh guys with shields, moving kamikaze mines and a brute comes in. Simple gameplay loop. Not that it's bad I just thought with all the praise and "critic noise", that this is something more.
Even the point cleansing or whatever is just "You killed everything in an arena, here's a checkpoint."
Max Payne had even simpler gameplay obviously but I cared about what was happening. The setting, characters, story, feeling of being "there". I felt attached. Here, nothing.
It's a very solid game no doubt but I'm kinda glad I didn't buy it "normally".