Control is probably the closest thing we have to a major SCP video game, and it does a pretty excellent job of it. The Oldest House is a fascinating and beautiful place to explore (even if the rendering resolution on Series S is clearly sub-1080p). Exploration comes in the form of competent Metroidvania-esque power ups to gain access to new areas.

Honestly the real joy of exploration is finding new tapes and documents that flesh out the weird and wonderful world of the FBC and the extradimensional forces it contends with. The idea of scattered logs through a game world might seem derivative, but in a setting like Control's, it actually works incredibly well. Plus the little Dr Darling presentations are genuinely charming.

The story is fine - I felt the worldbuilding was better than the main plot, but there's no denying that one sequence near the end of the game is amazing. It's a bit of a shame the story doesn't quite stick the landing after that and kinda limps to a rather mundane ending, but the story in general was interesting enough to keep me motivated.

The combat is functional. It's not amazing, although launching debris and bodies at enemies telekinetically never, ever got old. I had little interest in stuff like Expeditions though, nor did I find the random mod system to be particularly interesting, just another shoehorned loot system in a game that didn't really need it. Overall though, the combat was certainly good enough to serve the purposes of the campaign well enough and keep things interesting.

My biggest complaint is the boss fights. They are mostly awful, chaotic messes where you try to land damage on a bullet sponge while trying to ward off the waves of minions they spawn in. Many of the bosses aren't even particularly hard, they're just not really fun to fight. Fortunately, many of the worst ones are optional and part of sidequests, so you can at least just focus the campaign and avoid them.

The DLC was fine - I appreciated the non-linearity in their objectives. Foundation was decent but nothing special, and it bugged out on me several times trapping me in rooms after I'd cleared them out, or in one case simply hard crashing. AWE was a lot more stable, and more interesting with its darkness based mechanics, but as I haven't played Alan Wake, I suspect at least some of it is lost on me - though Control does do a decentish job of establishing who he is through side materials.

I think Control is generally fantastic, despite its weaknesses. The mystique of the Oldest House definitely lends it an atmosphere that many games would struggle to match, and I had a lot of fun discovering its secrets.