I don't play many Big Games these days, which means I don't buy many Big Games these days because I've learned some hard lessons and try to no longer let them sit around in my to-be-played list on Steam for five years (or more, alas). There's already plenty sitting there, representing a pile of spent money, some of which will never give value received.

I don't play Big Games much because Big Games tend to be things that absorb my entire attention, meaning I can't do story renders at the same time. Games that I can play while doing renders tend to be things like puzzle games that don't have story and don't have timers and can be paused and returned to at will.

But there is also the question of attention span in general. The issue with games is the same as it is with novels and television shows. If I consume them, it will of necessity need to be something that can be consumed in a few big gulps. I need to have three or four days where I can just say "OK, that's going to be the thing I do for recreation this evening" and devour it. I won't have more than those three or four days to spare at any given time; and if I step away from it for more than about a day, I likely won't come back to it. I need to be able to keep it in my brain reasonably well -- saved state -- and all it really takes is having to focus on something else, like my day job, to lose that state, possibly never to be regained.

For the last few nights (and probably for the next few to come) I have been playing CONTROL, a game which is by no means new, nor even newly purchased. I bought it ages ago in the expanded edition (that is, bundled with both of its DLC add-ons) for some ridiculously low price and it's been waiting since then for its time to come.

I'm a little sorry I waited this long to play it, because it's very good. But I'm also not surprised it's very good. As I said on Bluesky the other day: If y'all had bothered to tell me it was made by Finns, I would have played it sooner.

I am reasonably familiar with the Finnish temperament at this point in my life, though not as much as I'd like to be. Helsinki was one of the very small handful of places in my life that I've visited and thought immediately "I like this. I could live here."

There are people who will say things about Finns. My sister, rest her soul, would probably hate them, because she did not care for Bostonians. Finns and Bostonians have a number of key similarities.

We (I'm afraid I've naturalized -- to Boston, I mean, not Finland) are thought to not have much emotional expression, but in fact we are capable of extremely strong passions ... it's just that they're not for strangers, or even casual acquaintances. You'll need to know us pretty well before we let the wall down. This, I feel, is as it should be -- but, again, I have the temperament; when I got to Boston I said "Yep, I belong here," and never looked back.

Finns are not rude. Every Finn I've ever spoken with was extremely polite, far more polite than they had to be to a stranger. What they are not is effusive. They are not determinedly, in-your-face cheerful. They are not smilers. Good. I distrust habitual smilers; I think they are trying to pull something. I would rather have a genuine and polite scowl than an obviously fake smile.

They are seldom extrovert, even when drunk. Also good. I dislike extroverts. They drain my energy and make me want to be somewhere else.

And they are all, every last one of them, deeply, intrinsically weird people, which is the best thing of all, because all of the best people in the world (and, to be clear, some of the worst) are dyed-in-the-wool weirdos.

This last bit is most important because it seems to carry over to their game-making, at least in my limited sample set. I've played four or five games, large and small, that I know to be made by Finns, and they've all been good ... and they've all been kind of off-kilter in various ways.

The first Finnish Big Game I played, to the best of my recollection, was a game called INFRA ... which, god help us, Wikipedia informs me is ten years old now. INFRA is not a game I would necessarily recommend to everyone. Some people would be bored to tears by it. It has no combat and not an enormous amount of plot, though it does have one and there is a sequence of events. A lot of the game feels like freeform wandering. There is not much urgency, even as it becomes apparent the situation is deteriorating around you.

INFRA in the title is the first part of the word "infrastructure." This is a civil engineering game. Possibly the world's only one. You are a structural inspector. As you proceed through the game, you are supposed to take photos to document things that you find broken. Crumbling undersides of bridges. Machinery that needs maintenance. Missing parts. Etc. This is your job. You just happen to stumble on some breakages which make you aware there is a larger pattern to pursue.

I played INFRA basically non-stop until I was done with it, and my only gripe about it is that the final event in the game is, unexpectedly, timed, and I despise all timers in games. HATE THEM SO MUCH. They give me agita.

Anyway, I mention INFRA at length not just to recommend it to you, but also to note its intrinsic weirdness. I mean, it is conceptually weird -- who else would come up with that concept? (It's also full of Finnish humor, but you may not realize it because Finnish humor is dark and peculiar and sometimes slips right by someone who's not expecting it.)

The best thing in CONTROL is the building where the game takes place.

Oh, everything else in it is good too, but the building is the star. Finns pay attention to architecture (as you would realize if you looked at the list of Famous Finns An Oblivious American Might Have Heard Of and it's almost all architects, plus Paavo Nurmi and Jean Sibelius). It's not so much that the building is visually astonishing, though it does have some very impressive areas; it's that the building is basically alive. It rearranges itself. It tries to get you lost. It has areas which are extremely intimidating to enter for various reasons. The map is almost incomprehensible because of things stacked on top of other things.

And this building, this shifting place of ancient power ... is filled with the most dead-eyed symbols of faceless bureaucracy you can imagine. It's office space. It's haunted, arcane, shifting office space. With a janitor who mumbles half in mangled English metaphors and half in Finnish (he says 'perkele' a lot, heh) and knows more than he lets on. A lot of the characters in this game know more than they want to let on. The building, and its staff, have a lot of secrets. In fact, the game is pretty much about secrets. About keeping them, and the consequences of doing so.

It also has a lot of combat, and let me be clear: I find the combat to be the most tedious part of any game like this. But the game also has assists (cheats) built in (I gather these were added after initial release, and thank goodness). I admit: I am playing the game with immortality turned on. The interesting thing is, the combat is still interesting even without it. It's fun to hurl office equipment at enemies and mind-control them and other tricks. It's a nice change of pace from just shooting them.

It has some boss fights, and for those I temporarily turn on the "one-shot kills" option because I like boss fights even less than I like combat; my life is too short to spend hours watching the pattern and wearing down the boss's health one teensy drop at a time while simultaneously dodging for my life. But, again, the game is compelling even with the cheats. It's compelling even if you aren't particularly invested in the story, just for wandering around this building and trying to figure out how you get to certain places and discovering new weirdnesses lying around everywhere (there are documents to read and audio to listen to and film/TV clips to watch, and quite a lot of them are gently unhinged).

The game is well-written enough to pull you into its peculiar rules, and before you know it you have sort of naturalized to that universe, and you find yourself, for example, trying to pursue an artifact imbued with strange energies which needs to be put back into safe storage ... except the artifact is a rubber duck and it can teleport and you have to catch it ... and you don't question that this all makes perfect sense.

Anyway. CONTROL is good, and I'll likely be consumed with it for at least a few more nights to come. Not many, though; I'm supposed to start Sleeper Squad 61 tomorrow, and I can't delay that for long (and I don't think I can play CONTROL while doing renders, even though I can generally pause at will without consequences; it's just too absorbing).

I probably won't end up playing the new one (CONTROL RESONANT, which my eye thinks could use a colon, but no), because I've just the other night met the character who I'm told is that game's protagonist, and I hate him. I don't think I could spend a whole game with him unless he gets a lot better.

Also, he's a boy and I get real tired of boys.