Generally the control im talking about is whether or not I can continue to play the game.

Obviously, and I’m saying that’s an extremely small amount of control, for which you give up a lot of other control to have.

“Straightforward” or not, it’s well-trod territory, and devs don’t do their homework on a doing a good job before putting games out. I don’t just mean absurdly basic niceties like rebinding (which is frankly only difficult if your game input is built wrong), but mechanics like deadzones, trigger response handling, aim reticle behavior, and so on. All these are things I frequently need to adjust from outside of games, because we simply can’t rely on developers to do quality work, nor to correct things afterward. Building new input schemes is also occasionally useful, eg Curse of the Dead Gods used a dumb weapon switching mechanic on controller, but I was able to build a more reasonable swap-button mechanic on top of it, and share it so anyone else running through Steam can load that config to play that way. It’d be nicer if devs listened and did it themselves, but they couldn’t be bothered, even though they already built the kbm input to work the right way.

I’ve had one Steam game delicensed the past ten years or so, and I got it replaced later. I couldn’t easily count the number of games I’ve changed in one way or another, but I’ve got a couple thousand hours playing controller in a game with no support whatsoever, so the control I have over my how games play seems a pretty big deal ;) Off-Steam, there was Ubisoft taking The Crew away from owners. How’s your physical copy of that running for you? Oh, right, it doesn’t run for anyone, at least aside from PC people working on modding in replacement servers.

I’m just saying, there’s a lot more to it all than “game runs”.

It’s funny to talk about “keeping control” because you can put a disk in a device that completely locks down every aspect of the game environment. PC offers generally way more control over games, allows more games, etc.

And there’s GOG to buy from if one doesn’t want Steam’s potential ability to delicense a purchase, but I’d be playing games through Steam either way because of it’s ability to tweak and rebuild controller handling for each game. I’m picky and a lot of game devs are sloppy about how they handle controllers, so having that extra control over the experience is a major plus to me.

Combat Complex

Twin-stick shooter against various bugs and robots with some ARPG gearing, and the action here is fantastically tight with probably three key factors:

• Enemies target you but hit each other, so you manage their attacks to help your fighting instead of just staying out of trouble.
• “Frenzy” orb pickups, which act a bit like combo meter fuel except instead of chaining hits you make frequent choices about whether an orb drop is worth chasing, keeping you close to danger.
• Instant gun switching with overheating instead of reloading, so you fight hard and switch constantly between your three guns to keep any one from overheating while getting the best out of their specific properties.

I play a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this does a great job mixing the arcade twin-stick feel of high intensity fending off a swarm with tactical top-down dungeon crawling elements, and it’s just really special feeling to play. The core action feels not just well designed but like it was made just for me, and I’m genuinely glad someone made it (or is making it, since it’s early access). Plus, it’s extraction style instead of being a roguelite, so you’re always right at the best action while still getting procedural levels, to keep runs a little different.