I "finished" Monster Hunter Rise between Subnautica and this, but I really shouldn't have been tackling Monster Hunter games as part of my backlog (at least, not with the way I had been doing my backlog), and looking back on the game just fills my mind with static interrupted by occasional flashes of half-remembered creatures and vistas.
Anyway, Control.
I have mixed feelings on this game. It's well made, and I think the setting is cool in a way I don't see very often, but it left me feeling pretty cold emotionally.
The only characters that actually made lasting impressions on me is Dr. Casper Darling (whose name I had to look up) and Guy Who Is Trapped Watching A Refrigerator (whose name I did not look up). Apart from Dr. Darling, everyone in this game felt like a facade. I was able to buy into Jesse's story at the time, but all sense of that has evaporated in the months its been since I played this game. They're certainly not bad characters or a bad story, I think my chief complaint here is just that, largely, the stories felt pretty bland.
I think I got a bit overwhelmed the setting is presented. There is a lot going in Control and its DLC. It often feels like it's trying to do too much all at once, presenting a lot of interesting ideas very quickly, and not being able to spend time and burrow down on many of them. I can definitely see the intention, wanting to present the Oldest House as assailed on all sides while also being an unknowable force itself. The sheer chaos of this setting is there to call into question the FBC's decision to base their operations out of it. Still, I just wish they had given some of their elements more time and space to breath.
It's no secret that Control is inspired by the SCP Foundation among other things. It shines through pretty clearly in game for anyone familiar with the SCP Foundation. I don't think it's particularly reasonable to compare a 20 hour game to a massive wiki of horrors with literally thousands of entries, but I'm going to anyway. I think Control, a 20 hour game, ends up throwing too much at the wall to see what sticks, and the SCP Foundation, a wiki with thousands of entries, actually shows a lot more restraint when it comes to weirdness by volume.
Part of the reason for this is just sheer format. The SCP Foundation isn't just a collection of anomalous objects and places, it's the story of how those things are found, how they're dealt with, what they're capable of. Each entry is a story. People probably know the big ones like the lizard who really needs to be killed, SCP-682, or the fucked up Ikea, SCP-3008. A good SCP is, in my opinion, one that has a story, a narrative and characters who interact with the object or place, and it's this element that I wish Control had more of. Otherwise, it's just weird for the sake of being weird, and the setting can feel a little underutilized.
That said, I think the rest of the presentation of Control is pretty spectacular. Having every one of Dr. Darling's logs be entirely presented as Full Motion Video, that one song from Poets of the Fall, the way the transportation hotel feels familiar in a way I feel unqualified to describe. The absolute level of the craft that has gone into this game is phenomenal and inspiring. I can't wait for Control 2, and have also gone and added the Alan Wake games to my backlog.
Which means clearing one game from my backlog list just added three more. Oh no.