As announced in Wednesday's Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, you can now play Remedy Entertainment's phenomenal Control [GN score 8.5] on a Switch. Which is crazy, right? I loved every minute of Control but still had to knock off entire points for how poorly it ran on a vanilla PlayStation 4. I heard it wasn't exactly running buttery smooth on PS4 Pro or Xbox One X either. It's a good thing it's such a great game otherwise, so it still pulled in a bunch of end-of-year accolades.
So what's the catch to running this resource-heavy game on a Switch? It's only playable through the cloud. According to the game's landing page on Nintendo:
You can only download a free launcher application to test the game for a limited amount of time. This game uses cloud streaming technology, and you require a persistent high-speed internet connection to play the game. If your internet connection becomes unstable, the service will disconnect after a few minutes.
Please use the free launcher application to test the availability and quality of the service for your region.
A Nintendo Account is required to access the cloud service. To access the game after the free trial, this free launcher application and the purchasable Access Pass are required. Pricing can be found on the Nintendo eShop page for the Access Pass once the 5 minute trial has been successfully completed.
• Stable and persistent high-speed internet connection and Nintendo Account required to play.• After having tested the game for at least 5 minutes, to access the game you must purchase Access Pass. Pricing can be found on the Nintendo eShop page for the Access Pass once the 5 minute trial has been successfully completed.
There it is. The catch. The fine print. Now, if you are able to get it going, and you pony up the cash for the online service, I do 100 percent recommend you play Control. Jesse Faden is a stellar and thoughtful protagonist, the art direction is so good it makes brutalism look beautiful, and the rip-chunks-of-concrete-out-of-the-wall-and-throw-it-at-bad-guys gameplay never gets old.
Again, Control is out now on Nintendo Switch, October 28, but you'll have some hoops to jump through to make sure you're good to go.