Control Resonant Will Make Manhattan the Center of Its Paranatural Horror on September 24

Dylan's double jump, air dash, grappling hook, and flexible Aberrant loadouts support missions across focused Manhattan sandboxes.

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Hostile entities move through a red-lit room in Control Resonant.

Control Resonant will make Manhattan the center of Remedy Entertainment’s paranatural horror when it launches on PS5 on September 24. The sequel leaves the Oldest House behind and follows Dylan Faden through a warped city filled with hostile entities, folded architecture, and a search for his sister Jesse.

A PlayStation Blog hands-on preview details a sequel that expands the original game’s supernatural action without turning Manhattan into a conventional open world. Instead, its city is divided into focused sandboxes with room for combat, story missions, side activities, and plenty of unsettling detours.

Dylan’s movement gives Manhattan a different rhythm

Verticality is central to Dylan’s time in the city. Holding the X button after a double jump lifts him toward the tops of shorter buildings, while tapping Circle lets him air dash. Pressing Circle twice sends him forward at greater speed and leaves an afterimage behind.

Additional traversal abilities arrive through Jesse Quests, including the Reach grappling hook. Dylan can move across wide streets, rooftops, and areas where gravity has folded sections of the city over themselves. His movement is powerful, but it also fits his personality. Years spent in a coma and under FBC confinement have left him shy and hesitant, so he can look more like an awkward young man learning to handle impossible abilities than a polished superhero.

A more personal story for Dylan

Jesse’s recap helps bring returning and new players up to speed, while Dylan’s perspective provides a different way into the setting. His relationship with Jesse and his handler Zoe anchors a story about people who have been pushed aside or treated as unworthy. Dialogue choices in certain conversations also let players influence how Dylan expresses himself.

Optional mini-quests take that personal focus into stranger territory. One task involves rescuing a pair of inanimate cats and building a feline picnic area based on a drawing from Dylan’s childhood. Other activities ask him to recreate memories or imagined scenes with objects found around the environment, turning small pieces of Manhattan into reflections of a childhood he lost.

Focused missions leave room for odd distractions

Manhattan offers more freedom than the original game’s office setting, but Control Resonant still keeps its objectives readable. Missions can involve clearing out Hiss, investigating a missing person, repairing machinery, or following one of the main story threads. Players can decide whether to continue the central plot, search for Jesse, or pursue side stories.

Each zone also contains arcade cabinets with timed challenges, giving Dylan’s abilities another place to prove themselves. The structure should make the larger setting easier to approach without flattening it into a checklist of identical activities.

The Aberrant keeps combat close

Dylan’s shapeshifting Aberrant weapon pushes fights toward melee range. Dodging, precise strikes, stagger management, and combo finishers all matter when Hiss enemies close in, while bus shelters, abandoned trucks, and other parts of the city provide cover when a direct attack becomes too risky.

The weapon’s first and secondary forms can use effects such as burn and infect, along with perks that improve cooldowns or increase damage from finishers. The Gap, a limbo-like hub, lets players change and test their setups. Six total Aberrant forms and several skill trees create plenty of room for different approaches.

Dylan can also equip Combat Abilities built around a shield, a barrage of projectiles, or an ally assembled from nearby junk. These abilities consume Power, which can be restored through melee attacks, so aggressive play feeds back into the tools that keep him alive. The result is a combat loop that rewards getting close even when the city is doing its best to make that a terrible idea.

Resonants make Manhattan deeply hostile

The sequel carries over Control’s Brutalist architecture and reality-bending tone, then turns the strangeness up through its Resonants. One encounter features a giant porcelain doll’s face attacking Dylan with taxis and girders. Another boss sequence avoids a traditional fight altogether, keeping the game’s most unsettling surprises away from predictable patterns.

Hallucinatory visions, sudden announcements from the Board, warped taxis, and misshapen enemies add pressure between the larger encounters. Control Resonant is scheduled to launch on PS5 on September 24, giving players a new city to cross, a more personal version of Dylan to guide, and plenty of reasons to distrust whatever appears around the next corner.

Which part of Control Resonant sounds most appealing to you, the freer movement, the flexible combat builds, or the strange side quests? Share your choice in the comments, then follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.

Explore a warped Manhattan on the brink of paranatural annihilation in this thrilling action-adventure RPG. Unleash the extraordinary powers of Dylan Faden as he fights for his humanity and survival against a reality-bending cosmic threat.