Views Contextual Filters and URL Aliases
If you set the Views page path to node/% and add a Contextual Filter of Node ID and take the default argument from the URL you can use Views to override the node display.

However, this is probably not the best solution. You mention in your post that "I don't want direct access to the node as I want to control all the content formatting" but if you use the correct options you can fully control the node output. My recommendation would be to use Display Suite and control everything via the Manage Display tab of the content type and if necessary an override of node.tpl.php