1 control - trying out cloud gaming for the first time

Dear Readers,

Cloud gaming is back isn't it? Well, that's that some game companies really want at least. I thought I'd try it out when Control was announced in a recent Nintendo Direct.

I got lots of warnings and gatekeeping stuff. I had to have a Nintendo Account, though not the subscription, and I only had limited access without an Access Pass.

I had the option to choose between enhanced performance or enhanced graphics. I chose performance.

I went through quite a few logos and prompts, but the title screen loaded quickly enough. The text was really tiny.

I turned the brightness up to 80, the speaker to headphones, the subtitles on.

I found myself in the reception of an American government building. The front desk has a typewriter and an older phone on it, so it looks like this takes place in the 90s?

There's no one here so I just goof around here for a while, feeling the online connection to the game. Some interesting stuff here. The game stutters the odd time, but nothing too major, then the game gave me messages saying the online connection wasn't strong enough, so it did this weird lo-res YouTube thing with the graphics. After a few more minutes I got another message telling me the game was gonna quit automatically because of the connection and I was back at the title screen.

I tried again and messed around less. I went through the hallways of the building and met a janitor. The piece of dialogue about me being a night shift lone wolf was pretty cool. Then I took an elevator. Performance was better this time and I stayed connected, but the trial ran out when I got to the office with the talking gun thingy.

I tried again with an aim to goof around even less, but I was told I had no more play sessions available! Oops! I wasn't warned about that!

And yeah, you still gotta go through the logos and the loading and that weird greenish crystal graphic thing must be the cloud loading thing. I can see that becoming annoying.

As for Control itself, I only got a brief taste of the narrative and had a bit of a traipse around some offices. May be a good game who knows! It was recommended to me by a friend, so maybe another time on another system.