Control: AWE Critic Reviews

AWE is an awesome, wondrous expansion with an Alan Wake experience that appropriately weds earlier Remedy titles with Control. Reuniting with the tortured author after nearly a decade in the Dark Place isn’t just fan service as Control works Wake’s universe in there naturally while fusing it with its own style that stretches from its mysterious narrative to its fast-paced combat mechanics. The result is an piece of DLC that intelligently borrows from Remedy’s two best franchises, provoking awe at every turn while laying the groundwork for a bright, exciting future for the studio’s next suite of games.

AWE is absolutely a worthwhile continuation of the Control experience. It introduces delightful new gameplay conceits and iterates on them masterfully within such a brief time frame. The story might not appeal to everyone but everything else that's worth loving about Control can be found here. Anyone who enjoyed the base Control experience shouldn't hesitate to give AWE a whirl.

I finished AWE with a yearning for more Alan Wake and a yearning for more Control. Remedy has more or less confirmed we'll get more of both at some point in the future, although they might be presented through the lens of yet another series. That's the reality of the Remedy Connected Universe. As a trial run, AWE manages to be a great double-dip on some beloved narratives, even though it's not necessarily a great representation of either Control or Alan Wake individually. Sometimes the sum is greater than the parts, sometimes the lake is really an ocean.

AWE replicated that feeling. Remedy continues to tell unique and extremely interesting stories, and in relation to how AWE concludes and what that means for the future of the Remedy Connected Universe, is just so damn exciting.

Control: AWE not only continues the story of the tormented writer Alan Wake, but find a way to create a solid connection between different worlds of different games. The future of Remedy lies here.

AWE's greatest strength is in how cleverly it merges Alan Wake and Control into a singular experience. I wouldn't begrudge Remedy for divulging in a bit of low-brow fanservice for the second expansion of a critically acclaimed game, but they really went the extra mile in delivering a cohesive experience that fits cleanly into both worlds.

Smaller and more focused than The Foundation, Control: AWE is sold entirely on the return and crossover with a certain Mr. Wake.

I still really love this game world and the mechanics they’ve developed for it. Using Jesse’s powers feels quite intuitive and powerful and is just a joy. If you haven’t grabbed Control already, grab the ultimate edition and you will get AWE with it anyway. If you already have the main game and want to learn more about Alan Wake and related characters then I’d still suggest it’s a worthwhile purchase.

AWE is like a bridge to establish the connection between Control and Alan Wake. The DLC, which we can consider as the first step to Remedy's Connected Universe plan, is satisfactory. It's a good DLC package, though it offers less than The Foundation as new content.

Quotation forthcoming.

AWE has problems to separate itself from the main game in almost every aspect. The connections to Alan Wake are interesting, but rather an appetizer. ‘The Foundation’ is the better expansion.

Both DLCs are mainly there to shed more light on the fantastic world of the original game - and to act as promises of future games. You won’t have as much fun actually playing them, though, mainly due to the frustrating combat.

Despite some flaws, AWE is a very good expansion that brings Alan Wake into Remedy's shared universe and teases exciting things for the future.

Teased in the base game through several documents, Alan Wake plays a central role in AWE. Unfortunately, beyond the act of diving back into the world of Bright Falls and the pleasure of reuniting with an old friend, this content highlights a certain looseness of Remedy. Less inventive than The Foundation, too busy sprinkling the fan service adventure from start to finish, to the point of neglecting most other aspects of the game, AWE is proving to be disappointing in many ways.

Alan Wake makes his official debut in Control in full force, delivering a very large helping of lore and storytelling that goes down great with the overall game experience. If only he had a brought a small side of new gameplay mechanics as well, because the formula remains pretty much the same.

AWE had a lot of potential and I'm sad to say that it's mostly wasted here. Most of what it offers is exactly the same as what players have experienced before and I found the new stuff to be equal parts obnoxious and tedious.

AWE is the story of expectations not quite meeting reality. It's exciting to see Alan Wake become a full-fledged addition to the Control universe and to catch up on different aspects of Remedy's growing universe. But this feels much more like a taste of what might come in future games than a strong addition to what's been built in Control. AWE is a missed opportunity for Remedy to really embrace Control's deep weirdness, and it's a missed opportunity for it to really expand on the story of Alan Wake after so much waiting. It's the unfortunate side effect of the idea of a shared universe--in teasing the next installment in the growing story, AWE doesn't do much to serve the story it's already in.

Control's AWE Expansion will satisfy a lot of Alan Wake fans who have been theorizing for nearly a decade about what happened to the writer. While it does introduce some great ideas, you'll ultimately have to wait for whatever Remedy does next to get real resolution.

Control’s new AWE DLC is simply more Control. While it explores a new area of the building, it doesn’t do anything new or expand on the lore of the first house directly. It does reveal officially how the 505 Games world setting interconnects, but that may not be such a good thing for some players.

I can’t think of many times in the main game of Control that I was worried about what might be around the next corner or when I was truly concerned about what might be right behind me while I was searching for a power cube to turn on a generator, but AWE has tapped into those feelings with a weird, warped creature whose design is going to stick with me. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that this is the last planned expansion for Control, since I’d love to see what happens when other horror genres get explored in the Bureau of Control (splatterpunk? slasher?) or maybe even other tones and genres entirely. Hell, give me a romance expansion. Let Jesse Faden smooch the Astral Plane (finally). I’m on board.