I haven't played Control so I can't speak to how fun actually playing it feels, but I watched an LP of the entire thing and I agree with JDR's take. Lots of backtracking through fairly boring office environments, fighting the same few enemies over and over. The story didn't interest me much, personally.
I'm sorry, and I don't want to argue, but I think it's objectively impossible to say you saw the whole thing and you only saw boring office environments. Or maybe I have a different definition of what boring means. It starts off pretty tame, but it gets really wild throughout with the locations. And even the initial office environments have a beautiful art style in an amazing brutalist architecture. Maybe I just like brutalist architecture too much, but a lot of the "office locations" look exquisite, especially in the amazing lighting they have.
I just searched for some location screenshots, and mind you some of them might be spoilerish for future locations you encounter, but I cannot look through this album and say "boring office environments". Maybe it's just me, since it is subjective after all.
Explore this photo album by Jamie Harris on Flickr!
www.flickr.com
And these are mostly static location shots. Most don't even convey the beauty of them when in full combat, with destructibility all around, you tearing slabs of concrete and marble off the walls, throwing them around, just making a big mess of it all. I swear, the combat is so fun, especially when you overpower your enemies.
I didn't like it for the same reason I didn't like Alan Wake. It seemed like you encounter the same few enemy types over and over again. That, and most of the rooms I saw looked very similar.
I don't remember exactly how long I played it though. I want to say 4-5 hours, but it might have been less. It's probably just one of those games where you need to invest more time before it really opens up. How long did it take you to finish the base game?
I think the base game took me around 30h, but I explored a lot, and backtracked a lot ever since I got the levitate ability, and did a lot of backtracking, finished every story mission and a lot of randomly generated contract missions. I think I'm around 5h into the Foundation expansion, and it's also been pretty nice. The locations are so beautiful and alien. The game really has a wonderful lighting and atmosphere.
Anyway, I feel I've been defending it long enough, and it needs no defending. It can stand on its own. Currently the only thing I liked more in Max Payne was the protagonist and the overall story. But aside from that, it's got it beat in everything, especially gameplay/exploration/combat. That's another thing, exploration is so good in Control. The huge brutalist house hides so many things. And there are even some very thought and great puzzles. And some really weird twists on things.
I'll stop here since I feel myself going into PR mode for the game, and I'm not getting paid. But it's so good.
EDIT: I guess it's fair to also name some negatives. The only ones I can remember were two boss fights that absolutely enraged me. One of them was quite grindy, especially until I realized what I was supposed to do, and not just attack with regular attacks. And the other one had the annoying habbit of killing me off in one move, since I could fall through the floor, in holes it made. That was absolutely bullshit. But, I hear from others, they didn't have the same issue with those ones. So maybe it was my build. Since there is only one difficulty level.