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I’d love to tell you more about Control, the eagerly-awaited Edge magazine coverbait from Remedy Entertainment, the mad Finns who brought us Max Payne, Alan Wake and Quantum Break. I’d love to. And I feel… I guess sort of qualified to do so, since I have played Control for a few hours. But I’m not going to. To heavily paraphrase a trademark opening line in the (delightful) Girlfriend Reviews videos…

This is not a review of Control. This is a review of what it’s like to wish Remedy would fix Control.

Video games are about imagination. They’re about going to places you might not otherwise go and doing things you might not otherwise do; they’re about meeting people and entities you might not otherwise meet and having experiences you might not otherwise have. The medium allows us, essentially, to take a life for a test drive. And the more advanced the technology gets, the less hard imagination work is required to “be” there. I don’t know whether this is good or bad, it’s just the way things are. But one thing’s remained the same since day one: there is always you, on the other end of the mouse or controller, always you separated from the other world by a screen. Video games can be about anything, but they always have you in common.