Control Resonant is one of the best-looking games at low graphics settings I've ever seen

I'll admit it, I'm normally a bit of a graphics settings snob. 25+ years of PC gaming has conditioned me to think that "Low" is an option to be avoided on everything but the most budget of rigs, or the most demanding of games.

But I've just finished my early performance and image quality testing of Control Resonant, and it's remarkable how good the open world looks in motion with everything turned down to the minimum. The clip below was recorded at 1080p, Low graphics preset, with ray tracing turned off:

I appreciate you're likely viewing this on a phone screen, so it's difficult to get a bead on the details. And the video compression does the clip no favours once you fullscreen it. But those Manhattan streets still look pretty good with all the options cranked down.

I think what we're looking at here, more than anything else, is a very strong art style. The details of the buildings remain distinct, the contrast between light and shade as I wind my way around the corners is prominent, and the non-ray traced shimmering puddles still look good.

There's a real sense of scale here, too. While the buildings in the background are shrouded in haze to obscure any uglies, they work with the lighting to create a very evocative, atmospheric effect. Here's an image taken at 1440p Low (again, with ray tracing off), to show how the graphics scale with the resolution at these settings.

And my eye is continually drawn towards the reactivity of the environment. Control Resonant likes to play with its semi-destructible world elements, pulling broken fragments of them into Dylan's wake when he sprints, and throwing them all over the shop mid-combat. There's a lot going on here, but most of it still looks more than acceptable with the options turned down.

Which is good news for those of you with less-than-top-tier rigs, as there's some performance to be found when you drop the settings. Yes, you'll notice some plastic-looking faces in the cutscenes with everything set this low, and the odd shopfront sign suffers from low-res textures. But overall, the effect in motion (while you're actually playing the game) is still remarkably good.

In fact, I struggle to think of a better-looking big-budget game with all the options dropped. Halo: Campaign Evolved, perhaps? It's a close run thing, but I'd still pick Control Resonant out of the two. Perhaps we're entering an era of reasonable low settings becoming the norm, rather than the exception?

Given the price of graphics cards right now, one can only hope.