Trippy hack ‘n’ slash sequel (and, for the benefit of anyone planning for this year’s Advent Calendar guessing game in the RPS Discord, my current second-favouritest game of 2026) Control Resonant has a big old update out today. As declassified by Remedy, it not only adds the pledged New Game++ mode for plus-deficient game replayers, but makes absolutely bloody loads of smaller bug fixes and quality of life tweaks.
Among these patch notes are, fittingly for Resonant’s offbeat tone, some entertaining oddities. The addition of a ‘Mute copyrighted music toggle’, which silences a particular song during the opening credits sequence, is suffixed with a cheekily accusatory “It’s a great track, so why would you”. Another, more spoilery nixed issue is described in fine detail before dropping a wonderfully Garth Marenghian “Despite everyone being dead”. Best of all, though, is the remedy (no relation) for a glitch that’s been raising my blood pressure for the last ten hours I’ve played: fast-travel doors in the starting area forcibly resetting my sick custom Dylan drip into the default postgame outfit. I can dress myself, game.
The update, catchily dubbed 1.4.0., also promises performance optimisations for low-end hardware – I suspect not enough to save the Steam Deck’s chances, alas – and a bunch of interface changes, most of which seem designed to demystify Resonant’s overlapping upgrade systems. Your overall build power rating, for example, is now on the main Loadout screen, not merely consigned to the Stats & Effects submenu. Tagging certain upgrade materials as priority finds will also make them appear when highlighting vendor markers on the map, should that particular reality-warping ice cream van carry what you need in stock.
These little affordances follow a release-day patch that more fundamentally empowered Dylan as a Hiss-crushing, Pattern-smashing melee machine, apparently in response to reviews criticising the meatiness of his enemies. Not mine – I thought some bosses, specifically, took a bit too long to bring down, but I’m of the view that Resonant’s combat is best when you’re stringing together massive, breathless combos that regularly flick between direct attacks, dodges, and power usage, and there just wouldn’t be space to pull those off if everything crumbled in two hits. That said, I’ve continued whizzing around Manhattan But Wrong almost every day since, and that patch turned out to be an agreeably careful set of buffs and nerfs. With this extra transparency around the levelling-up systems, Resonant should be easier to settle into without undermining the challenge of its own, aggressive, kill-to-survive fighting style.
Now, what else is in 1.4.0. Wait, “Finetuned the forklift enemy to be easier to hit”? My skill ceiling! I take it all back, game’s ruined.
