Control Ultimate Edition

Control has the specific, hard-to-fake reputation of a game that stayed on players' minds long after launch — reviewers keep describing the desire to revisit its setting years later, or buying it again on a different storefront just to support Remedy directly. That reputation is well earned. It's also worth understanding two real, specific problems that recur through its review history, because neither is the kind of vague complaint that dissolves on closer inspection.

A setting and a fight system that both stand out

The Federal Bureau of Control's brutalist, shape-shifting headquarters draws consistent, specific praise as some of the best environmental art direction in Remedy's catalogue — reviewers repeatedly call it a genuinely memorable, distinctive setting rather than a generic sci-fi backdrop. Combat, built around telekinetically hurling office furniture and environmental debris at supernatural threats, earns similar praise for feeling genuinely inventive rather than a reskin of more conventional third-person shooting. "This game is a masterpiece. It feels good to play, looks absolutely gorgeous and runs like a dream," reads a representative 2022 review, echoing sentiment that holds consistently across the game's history.

A specific, well-documented 2021 controversy

Here's a story worth telling precisely, because it's been widely misunderstood as vague publisher grumbling when it's actually a specific, dated, verifiable sequence of events. In March 2021, Remedy and 505 Games created a new, downgraded "standard" version of Control specifically for a Humble Choice bundle promotion — a version that, unlike the game's only prior Steam listing, didn't include DLC access. The problem reviewers documented in detail: Steam continued to list every version, old and new, under the same "Ultimate Edition" name in players' libraries, meaning buyers from that bundle period had no easy way to tell whether their copy actually included the expansions the label promised. "Remedy and Humble have deliberately tried to create a downgraded 'standard edition'... while STILL keeping the ONLY edition on Steam labeled as the 'Ultimate Edition'," reads one of the most-upvoted negative reviews in the game's history, with 1,936 votes. This is squarely a 2021-vintage issue tied to that specific bundle period — the current Steam storefront listing bundles both expansions directly — but it's worth understanding if you're evaluating an older gifted or bundled copy specifically.

A stranger, longer-running problem

Separately, and more persistently: reviewers spanning 2021 through 2025 independently report that Control requires an active internet connection to launch, despite being entirely single-player. "Yes, you have to be connected to the internet just to play a single player game," reads a 2025 review, echoing near-identical complaints from 2021 and 2023. This is an unusual, specific technical complaint that's shown real staying power across four-plus years without an acknowledged fix reviewers have found. A more recent, separate issue concerns newer NVIDIA GPUs: reviewers in 2025 report freezing and hard system crashes, which Remedy has publicly acknowledged is being investigated jointly with NVIDIA, though no fix had shipped as of this review's research.

Reading the completion data

With 67 tracked achievements, the completion curve reflects strong initial engagement tapering into a smaller committed core. Early story milestones sit between 64% and 89%, showing most buyers make real progress through the main campaign. The rarest achievements, tied to full side-content and lore collection, fall to 3-4%, reflecting how much optional depth exists beyond the main story for players willing to fully explore the Bureau.

7.5 out of 10. Control remains one of Remedy Entertainment's most distinctive and well-regarded works, and its setting, combat and writing earn that reputation honestly. The score reflects two real, specific asterisks worth knowing rather than a flaw in the core game: a genuinely documented 2021 bundle-era DLC confusion that current Steam buyers can sidestep by purchasing the listed Ultimate Edition directly, and a stranger, unresolved requirement for an internet connection to launch a single-player game that's persisted across multiple years of reviews. Buy it for the setting and the combat — both deliver exactly what Remedy's reputation promises.