10 Best Games to Play if You Loved Control Resonant [2026]

Last updated 28 September 2026 — this guide was regenerated from a fresh market scan.

If you finished Control Resonant — the 2026 action-RPG sequel that GamesRadar+ has singled out for building its combat around Jesse Faden’s shapeshifting melee weapon — and immediately started hunting for something else that scratches the same itch — telekinetic combat, brutalist bureaucratic horror, a world where reality itself refuses to behave — you’re in the right place. Below is our updated list of the best games to play in 2026 if you loved Control Resonant, ranked from the closest tonal and mechanical match down to games that share just one or two of its defining ingredients. Whether you want more Remedy Connected Universe lore, a different studio’s take on supernatural powers, or a completely different genre that still nails the “unsettling, reality-bending” mood, this guide covers the spread.

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At a glance: the best Control Resonant alternatives in 2026

Rank	Game	Price (MSRP)	Genre / Style	Platforms	Best for
1	Control (2019)	$39.99 (often discounted)	Third-person action adventure	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X|S, Switch	The direct predecessor and closest match overall
2	Alan Wake 2	$49.99	Survival horror	PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S	Remedy’s connected-universe storytelling and horror atmosphere
3	Prey (2017)	$29.99 (frequently discounted)	Immersive sim	PC, PS4, Xbox One	Systemic exploration and supernatural-style powers
4	Returnal	$69.99	Roguelike shooter	PS5, PC	Kinetic combat with a demanding roguelike loop
5	Deathloop	$59.99 (often discounted)	Immersive sim	PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S	Time-loop design and ability-driven combat
6	Ghostwire: Tokyo	$59.99 (often discounted)	First-person supernatural action	PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S	Paranormal city exploration with elemental powers
7	Quantum Break	$39.99 (often discounted)	Third-person action adventure	PC, Xbox One	Remedy’s cinematic, time-manipulation roots
8	The Evil Within 2	$39.99 (often discounted)	Third-person survival horror	PC, PS4, Xbox One	Unstable simulated reality and psychological horror
9	Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice	$29.99 (often discounted)	Psychological action adventure	PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch	A shorter, intensely psychological unreliable-reality trip
10	Scorn	$39.99 (often discounted)	First-person biomechanical horror	PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S	Grotesque visual design and enigmatic worldbuilding

1. Control (2019)

There’s no better place to start than the game that started it all. With Control Resonant now out — GamesRadar+ confirms it launched across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series in September 2026 as a full action-RPG sequel — and reviewing well, going back to the original Control has become more relevant than ever — it’s the foundation the sequel builds on, and understanding Jesse Faden’s first trip through the Oldest House makes the events of Resonant land with far more weight. Control is a single-player third-person action adventure built entirely around the tension between rigid Brutalist architecture and reality-warping supernatural forces.

Mechanically, it’s the closest match you’ll find to Control Resonant’s combat loop: you wield the shape-shifting Service Weapon in one hand and a growing suite of telekinetic abilities in the other, hurling chunks of the environment at enemies, levitating across battle arenas, and slamming foes into walls with a satisfying crunch. The Oldest House itself is a character — a shifting, hostile bureaucracy of a building that keeps rearranging its own floor plan, filled with cosmic horror lurking behind file cabinets and break rooms.

Control is available on PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, with an MSRP of $39.99 that drops frequently during seasonal sales. If you want the full Remedy Connected Universe context before or after playing Resonant, this is mandatory homework, not just a nostalgic detour.

2. Alan Wake 2

Alan Wake 2 is Remedy’s other 2020s flagship, and it approaches the “reality doesn’t work the way it should” premise from the opposite direction of Control. Where Control is about controlling chaos through power, Alan Wake 2 is about surviving it while barely armed. This is a single-player survival horror game with limited ammunition, a flashlight that’s as important as your pistol, and two intertwined protagonists — writer Alan Wake, trapped in a nightmare version of his own fiction, and FBI agent Saga Anderson, investigating a string of ritualistic murders in the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls.

What makes Alan Wake 2 essential for Control Resonant fans is the connected-universe storytelling. Remedy has spent the better part of a decade weaving Alan Wake, Control, and now Control Resonant into a single shared mythology, complete with recurring organizations, characters who cross over between titles, and lore that rewards close attention. If you enjoyed piecing together the Federal Bureau of Control’s secrets, Alan Wake 2’s meta-fictional mystery — a story that literally rewrites itself as you play — will hit a similar nerve, just filtered through psychological horror instead of paranormal action.

It’s priced at $49.99 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Note that it skips older console generations entirely, reflecting how visually ambitious Remedy went with its real-world location scanning and live-action segments.

3. Prey (2017)

Stepping outside the Remedy universe, Prey is the strongest non-Remedy counterpart on this list, and for good reason. Arkane’s 2017 immersive sim drops you aboard Talos I, a space station overrun by the shapeshifting alien Typhon, and hands you an ever-expanding toolkit of neuromod-granted abilities that let you rewrite your own biology — and eventually mimic the aliens themselves.

The parallel to Control Resonant is in the systemic design: Prey is less about scripted set-pieces and more about a hostile facility you’re meant to explore, exploit, and eventually dominate using a combination of conventional weapons and increasingly strange powers. Environmental storytelling is Prey’s other superpower — emails, audio logs, and the physical layout of Talos I tell a slow-burn story about hubris and corporate secrecy that echoes the Federal Bureau of Control’s own skeletons. If you loved uncovering the Oldest House’s secrets room by room, Prey’s more open, systemic approach to exploration offers a similar payoff with even more player agency — and if you want a brand-new take on that same immersive-sim, first-person exploration loop, Steam listings already have RetroSpace pegged for an October 2026 release.

Prey carries an MSRP of $29.99 and is frequently discounted well below that, making it one of the best value picks on this list. It’s available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, so it’s also an easy fit for players still on older hardware.

4. Returnal

Returnal takes the “cosmic unease” half of Control Resonant’s DNA and cranks the difficulty and repetition mechanics up several notches. This is a single-player third-person roguelike shooter in which astronaut Selene Vassos crash-lands on the hostile, ever-shifting planet Atropos and is caught in a time loop that resets every time she dies — except her memories, and the planet’s own memory of her, keep bleeding through.

The combat is bullet-hell in the best sense: dense webs of alien projectiles you have to read and dodge while your own weapons scale in complexity as you loop. What ties it to Control Resonant is less the mechanics and more the mood — an isolated, intelligent, possibly sentient environment that seems to be reacting to your presence, doling out cryptic narrative fragments as you die and restart. It’s a demanding structure that rewards mastery rather than exploration-first players, so go in expecting a much steeper difficulty curve than Control ever asked of you.

Returnal is priced at $69.99 and is available on PS5 and PC. There’s no current-gen alternative pricing tier, so it’s a bigger up-front investment than most other entries here, though the replayability of a well-built roguelike can make that cost easier to justify over time.

5. Deathloop

Deathloop is Arkane’s other major contribution to this list, and it leans harder into supernatural-tinged first-person combat than Prey did. Set on the isolated island of Blackreef, it’s a single-player (with an optional two-player invasion mode) immersive sim where hitman Colt Vahn is stuck reliving the same day over and over, hunting down eight targets before the loop resets at midnight.

The connection to Control Resonant is strongest in how both games treat supernatural ability as a toolkit for creative problem-solving rather than a simple damage button. Colt’s Slab powers — including a Blink-style short-range teleport and the ability to link enemies’ fates together — pair with a genuinely excellent arsenal of firearms to let you approach every encounter multiple ways. Deathloop’s time-loop structure also means the island itself becomes a puzzle you solve across multiple in-game “days,” rewarding the same kind of patient, curious exploration that made the Oldest House so compelling.

Deathloop launched at $59.99 and is now frequently discounted on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. If reality-bending mechanics paired with sharp, stylish gunplay are what pulled you into Control Resonant, this is one of the strongest matches on the list — and if you’d rather look ahead, Steam listings have the stealth-flavored action-adventure Intravenous 3: Borderline slated for October 2026.

6. Ghostwire: Tokyo

If what you actually want is more paranormal city exploration rather than a brutalist government facility, Ghostwire: Tokyo is the closest thing on the market. Tango Gameworks’ single-player first-person action adventure strands you in an empty, spirit-haunted Tokyo after a mysterious fog erases most of the population, leaving you to fight yokai and vengeful ghosts using elemental hand-sign combat drawn from Japanese occultism.

The combat feel is distinct from Control Resonant’s telekinesis-and-gunplay loop — here you’re slinging wind, water, and fire attacks through stylized hand gestures rather than throwing furniture — but the underlying appeal is the same: a stylish, supernaturally powered protagonist cleaning up a city that’s fundamentally broken. Tokyo’s empty streets, glowing torii gates, and unsettling yokai design make for an atmosphere that’s less bureaucratic-horror and more urban-legend-horror, but the sense of exploring a familiar space made deeply wrong will feel very at home to Control Resonant fans.

Ghostwire: Tokyo launched at $59.99 and is commonly discounted; it’s available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

7. Quantum Break

For players who want to trace the Remedy Connected Universe all the way back, Quantum Break is the studio’s direct predecessor to Control in both theme and structure. This single-player third-person action adventure gives protagonist Jack Joyce the power to manipulate time itself — freezing bullets mid-air, sprinting in bursts of super-speed, and rewinding short sequences to change outcomes — while chasing down the fallout of a broken time machine.

Quantum Break pioneered the cinematic, live-action hybrid approach that Remedy would later refine in Alan Wake 2, splicing full-length television episodes between chapters that change based on your choices. It’s a noticeably older game now, both visually and mechanically, and the console version is locked to Xbox One hardware (with a PC release also available), so don’t expect Control Resonant’s fidelity. What you will find is the clearest evolutionary link in Remedy’s design philosophy — reality-disrupting powers, tight cover-based combat, and a conspiracy-thriller plot that rewards the same kind of lore-hunting Control fans love.

Quantum Break is priced at $39.99 and frequently discounted; it’s the most budget-friendly way to see where Remedy’s modern identity actually began.

8. The Evil Within 2

The Evil Within 2 swaps Control Resonant’s bureaucratic horror for a shifting simulated reality called STEM, but the psychological unease is cut from similar cloth. This single-player third-person survival horror game follows detective Sebastian Castellanos into the fractured mind of his daughter, navigating a semi-open small town that periodically glitches, folds, and rebuilds itself around him.

Combat blends firearms and stealth in a way that forces careful resource management rather than constant confrontation, and the game’s best moments come from watching supposedly solid environments buckle and warp — hallways that fold into new configurations, houses that turn inside out, entire streets that reset when the simulation’s control breaks down. That instability, paired with a genuinely unsettling atmosphere and a cast of grotesque STEM-born creatures, makes it a strong pick for anyone who valued Control Resonant’s sense that the world around you might not be real, or might not stay the way you left it.

The Evil Within 2 has an MSRP of $39.99, is frequently discounted, and is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

9. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice trades Control Resonant’s sprawling facility and combat variety for something far more linear and far more intimate. This single-player third-person psychological action adventure follows Senua, a Pict warrior journeying into a mythic version of the Norse underworld to save the soul of her dead lover, using melee combat and environmental puzzles as she goes.

What earns it a spot here is Ninja Theory’s committed, unflinching depiction of psychosis — Senua hears constant, contradictory voices, and the game’s audio design and unreliable-narrator visuals put you directly inside a mind that can’t fully trust what it’s perceiving. That’s a very different flavor of “reality isn’t stable” than Control Resonant’s supernatural bureaucracy, but the underlying unease of not knowing what’s real is remarkably similar. It’s also considerably shorter and more linear than anything else on this list, making it a good option if you want a focused, single-sitting-friendly experience rather than another sprawling open structure.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is priced at $29.99, often discounted, and available on PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox consoles, and Nintendo Switch — making it one of the most widely accessible games on this list.

10. Scorn

Scorn is the pick for players who were drawn to Control Resonant primarily by its visual and atmospheric design rather than its combat systems. This single-player first-person biomechanical horror game strips away almost all UI and hand-holding, dropping you into an oppressive, Giger-and-Beksinski-inspired alien architecture where every door, weapon, and mechanism looks like it was grown rather than built.

Combat exists — you’ll find firearms fused with organic material — but Scorn is far more interested in environmental puzzles and slow, dread-soaked exploration than in encounter design. There’s essentially no dialogue and almost no explicit narrative; instead, the story is told entirely through the enigmatic, unsettling spaces you move through, in a way that rewards the same instinct that made you pore over every strange room in the Oldest House. If Control Resonant’s grotesque, brutalist visual identity is what stuck with you most, Scorn delivers a purer, more concentrated dose of that specific mood.

Scorn is priced at $39.99, frequently discounted, and available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.

How to choose the right Control Resonant alternative for you

With ten very different games covering a wide range of genres, it helps to think about which specific part of Control Resonant hooked you before picking your next purchase.

If it was the combat — the telekinesis, the Service Weapon, the sense of being an overpowered agent in a hostile building — start with the original Control, then branch out to Deathloop or Prey for a first-person immersive-sim take on similar ability-driven fighting. If it was the story and lore, Alan Wake 2 and Quantum Break are non-negotiable, since they’re directly stitched into the same fictional universe and will deepen your understanding of Control Resonant’s own plot threads. If it was the atmosphere and dread, Scorn and The Evil Within 2 lean hardest into that register, while Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice offers a shorter, more personal psychological gauntlet. And if what you actually want is more of a challenge, Returnal’s roguelike structure will test your reflexes far beyond anything Control Resonant asked of you.

Budget is also worth factoring in. Prey, Hellblade, Quantum Break, and the original Control all sit at or below $39.99 MSRP and go on sale frequently, making them the easiest entry points if you’re not ready to commit to a full-price purchase. Returnal, at $69.99, is the priciest pick here and best suited to players who know they want a long-term roguelike investment rather than a one-and-done playthrough.

Frequently asked questions

Is Control Resonant a direct sequel to Control?
Yes. Control Resonant, which launched on September 24, 2026, continues the story established in the original 2019 Control and is part of the broader Remedy Connected Universe that also includes Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2. Playing the original Control first is strongly recommended for full context.

Do I need to play Alan Wake 2 before Control Resonant?
It’s not strictly required, but the two games share characters, organizations, and lore threads. Fans who want the complete Remedy Connected Universe picture should play both, ideally starting with the original Control, then Alan Wake 2, before or after Control Resonant.

What’s the closest game to Control Resonant that isn’t made by Remedy?
Prey (2017) is generally considered the strongest non-Remedy match thanks to its systemic exploration, supernatural-style neuromod powers, and hostile, secret-filled facility setting. Ghostwire: Tokyo is the best pick if you specifically want paranormal urban exploration instead.

Which game on this list is hardest?
Returnal, by a wide margin. Its roguelike structure and bullet-hell combat demand mastery and repetition in a way none of the other nine games do, including Control Resonant itself.

Which game on this list is the best value?
Prey and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice both carry a $29.99 MSRP and are frequently discounted further, making them the best entry points if you’re working with a smaller budget.

The verdict

With Control Resonant now out and being well received, this is arguably the best moment in years to catch up on the games that shaped it or share its DNA. The original Control remains the essential companion piece — it’s the game Resonant is a direct sequel to, and revisiting it (or playing it for the first time) will only make the new game’s story land harder. From there, Alan Wake 2 and Quantum Break deepen the Remedy Connected Universe, while Prey, Deathloop, Returnal, Ghostwire: Tokyo, The Evil Within 2, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and Scorn each pull on a different thread of what made Control Resonant special — supernatural powers, unstable reality, oppressive atmosphere, or all three at once. Pick based on what you’re chasing, and you can’t really go wrong with any of the ten.