Control Players on Vanilla PS4s and Xbox Ones Suffering From Severe Frame Rate Issues

Control, the latest in Remedy Entertainment's lineage of bizarre third-person action games dating back to Max Payne, is subject to some serious performance issues on base PS4 and Xbox One hardware. While many players are enjoying the game and plowing through gunfights in spite of dropped frames, others are holding out for a patch or the opportunity to play the game on newer machines.

In his analysis for our sister site Eurogamer, John Linneman of Digital Foundry concludes that the game "flatters to deceive," with the first hour of the game playing smoothly across all PS4 and Xbox One models before beginning to regularly drop frames during combat sequences. Linneman characterizes the difference between playing Control on the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro versus their corresponding lower-powered models as "night and day," taking care to note that the vanilla PS4 was the worst performer of the lot after running through multiple checks.

This backs up the anecdotes concerning poor performance on the base PS4 that began trickling out around launch. In a popular thread at ResetEra, several forum members have said they've had difficulty configuring for a stable frame rate on PC or will be waiting for a patch addressing performance before playing on older consoles. Still, the game's combat, story, and art direction are enough to keep some people playing in spite of performance issues; one user noted that a texture loading issue (another problem players are encountering) isn't distracting but rather "adds to the game for [them] and helps create a surreal vibe."

We have reached out to Remedy Entertainment about the game's performance issues and will update this piece if we hear back. In the meantime, if you're more interested in Control's mysterious narrative or metroidvania-inspired structure, be sure to read our review of the game and acquaint yourself with our guides page.