Full Review: The Order: 1886. Leaving much to be desired.

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS. I WILL TRY MY BEST TO NOT REVEAL ANY HUGE STORY LINE PLOT POINTS BUT MAY DESCRIBE DETAILS INVOLVED IN THE GAME. ALSO, MY OPINIONS ABOUT THIS GAME ARE COMPLETELY MY OWN, AND IN KNOW WAY SHOULD EFFECT HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT. PEOPLE ENJOY GAMES IN DIFFERENT WAYS. Thanks for reading!

For those of you reading who don’t know: The Order: 1886 is a third person shooter created by Ready at Dawn and SCE Santa Monica Studios. The game is set in a steam punk-ish London in an alternate history version of the year 1886. The world of The Order is much more futuristic, but does involve characters known in real history such as Nikola Tesla and Jack the Ripper though they are not it’s main characters. It’s main character Galahad is a knight of The Order along with other minor characters Isabeau, Lafayette, and Alistair who are also members of The Order. 

HERE COMES THE REVIEW:

So, I stayed up until 2 in the morning so that I could FINALLY beat The Order and do a full review on it. I posted my first impression of it a few weeks ago and only now got an opportunity to really sit down and ‘binge play’ the rest of it, hard core. Now, to ease you all in I’ll start with the things that I like/love about it first and then the explosion of sadness and disappointment that will ensue later.

Let’s talk about the good things first. *Mario voice* LETS’A GO:

So we can start with the obvious things. This game is absolutely beautiful. I am blown away more and more by new generation consoles. I mean, Resident Evil was remastered for a third time recently, and it looks beautiful on the PS4 (who knew Chris Redfield had 5 o’clock shadow eh?). So it goes without saying that these characters look unbelievable. You can see the blood, sweat, and tears of the creators, literally on these characters faces and bodies. Now that’s one thing that I’d like to comment on. The character design for this game was so great. Not once during the game did I see two faces that looked exactly alike. We all know that many games have similar looking minor characters. Be it enemies, people in crowds, etc. but these creators really went out of their way to make sure that your immersion was not soiled by seeing two of the same enemies standing next to each other looking like twins. The monsters/creature design are also top notch, and very impressive and scary.

Towards the end of this game I really started to appreciate the amount of detail that went into it. At one point, during a shoot out, I shot at someone but ended up hitting a model ship inside of a glass case, and watching every shard of glass shatter and fall to the ground was really satisfying. So satisfying in fact, that I may have ended up doing it to every other case in the building while my dad shouted, “It took me 3 months to make that model ship!” on the couch next to me.

There are so many little things about this game that I could compliment such as; the beautiful weapons designs, the cool alternate shooting, the weapon (who’s name escapes me) that shoots out stuff that you can light on fire and burn a big group of people, the awesome dialogue, “Dammit, I am in no mood to jest!” I mean, sure, all of those things are really cool, but none of those things are ‘game changers,’ so to speak, for me. There just isn’t that much to be impressed with save the graphics.

Okay, here’s the fun part, if you really loved The Order: 1886 and don’t want to see it ripped apart into a million pieces then this is where you stop reading. Although it should be said that I did like the game. I waited all day for my dad to let me play it on his Playstation because I’d been really excited to pick it up again. I’ve just played much better, more complete games, so I have a lot to complain about. You’ve been warned.

ALSO BE WARNED, THERE WILL DEFINITELY BE SPOILERS IN THIS PORTION OF THIS POST.  🙂

Now, I took notes while I was playing of all of the little things that I have to complain about and I’ll just put them in little bullet points here, and then after that I’ll get into the big problems that I have.

BEC’S NIT PICKY LIST OF THINGS SHE FOUND WRONG WITH THE ORDER: 1886:

• Oh, of course. Vampires. Because werewolves: Why do these two mythical beings always get forced together? Can we not just have one without the other. Now, I realize that the vampire thing is meant to be a big *GASP* moment in the game before you burn them all (muahahaha) but, I completely called it. I was walking around a warehouse FILLED with HUMAN SHAPED BOXES (caskets?) and there were already werewolves I had to contend with. This is how that moment went.

Me: Omg .

My dad: What?

Me: If there’s a goddamn vampire in this box.

My dad: *snickering* what?

Me: Omg.

I don’t know why I was expecting otherwise from an already pretty predictable game. Although I will say, I like the way that the vampires look. Kind of weird and skinless in a way? Instead of them just being their usual like beautiful, sparkly selves that we’ve grown to know and (not) love. My only big question is: if there were werewolves, and then vampires, where were the zombies? That would have been a real THRILL. If you catch my drift.

• Chapter 10 is just a cutscene! I mean, I can’t say much about that other than MY GOD WAS I BORED. Truthfully I probably missed like at least 20 minutes of this game in total from getting up to go to the bathroom or getting a drink during the long, boring cutscenes. Galahad: You have to listen. Dude with awesome beard: No. Galahad: Please. Beard dude: No, leave me alone. For god sakes Galahad we know you’re just going to do it yourself. Just get on with it!
• Chain mail is not bulletproof. The “shotgun specialists” in the game are wearing this weird chain mail-like armor. And just everyone known. That sh*t is not bulletproof. So when I’m spamming at them with my powerful freaking shotgun, I expect them to go down after 5 or 6 shots. Not 20 or 30 shots. And if I’m spraying them with my machine pistol I definitely do not expect them to just ignore the fact that I’m shooting them, and SHOOT ME IN THE FACE.
• That brings me on to my next complaint. The mechanic for getting up once you’ve been knocked down is HORRIBLE. So first, you fall to the ground and everything gets kind of read and you have to wait for it to prompt you to get up. You hit triangle. (in my case I’ve been spamming triangle the whole time anyway) and then you spam X AND GALAHAD STANDS UP. If i’m behind cover and I get knocked down AND THEN STAND UP while trying to revive myself. What’s going to happen?!? Duh. I get shot again. That is the dumbest mechanic I have ever seen in a game truly. It still frustrates me and I’m done with it!
• The ending was predictable.
• The boss battle at the end was, ‘eh.’
• There wasn’t enough character development for anyone. I felt nothing for anything of them at the end, really. I mean, at the end, all I really wanted was for it to just be over. so….yeah…

Okay so now here are the big things that I have to complain about:

The game play is very very repetitive. You pretty much learn all that you need to know in the first firefight in the game. And the first boss battle in the game, you learn how to defeat the last boss. And those are the only two bosses. It just seemed as if there was a lack of effort there.

Sure there were different types of enemies like the shotgun specialists, and the thermite gun guys, but it doesn’t get much more creative then that. Basically, when you’re playing this game you’re doing three things. 1.Watching a cutscene or slowly walking and talking to another character in what could basically be a cutscene, 2. In a firefight that is identical to the last one you were in, 3. Fighting a lycan, which is identical to the last fight with a lycan that you have. Did I already say, predictable?

My other, big point that I didn’t like in relation to this game is that, at the end, I just wasn’t having fun anymore. It was just a great long repetitive firefight, and then another long cutscene, a boss battle, and a cutscene. There isn’t much more I could have expected I suppose. But most gamers would hope to enjoy a game from start to finish and I enjoyed this game from about middle for like an hour to about 30 minutes before the end fighting. So a total of like 3 hours of this game were truly enjoyed, the other hours were spent moaning about the amount of cutscenes and slow walking. Seriously people, the WALKING.

So, it goes without saying, although I just said it in all of the above ranty paragraphs, that this was not my favorite game of all time. The Order:1886 could have done so many great things with it’s characters, its world, and its storyline, but it just simply fell short in too many places for me. What disappointed me most, I think, is that it sold as many copies as it did, most likely because of the console that it was on. I don’t think that the gaming community should be encouraging game makers to make beautiful games with bad story lines, unrelatable characters, and overall bland game play and expect it to sell well. Much of the gaming community expects much more than a pretty face for it’s games. Yes, we are all extremely impressed with what new gaming consoles can do with a mustache blowing in the wind. But I care much more about the quality of the game play and the story, rather that simply what it looks like. I mean, I still play the old unremastered Resident Evil games where the zombies look like aluminum foul that has been squished into a weird shape and then painted on, and their blood looked like a bad game of red tetris and I enjoy it. Because they are great games. I’m most definitely never going to go back and play through The Order again because it was a good game, in fact if I ever play it again it will be to show off what could have been.

Over all I give The Order:1886 3 out of 10 pointless smoke grenades for it’s beautiful graphics, fantastic fancy dialogue, and some creative story points, but lack of proper character development, repetitive gameplay, long, drawn out cutscenes, and lack of replayability.

First Impression: The Order: 1886, i.e Slow Walking Simulator 2015.

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN A FEW SPOILERS FOR THE GAME.  THIS IS ONLY MY FIRST IMPRESSION AND I’VE ONLY PLAYED ABOUT THE FIRST 2 HOURS SO I DON’T KNOW ANY OF THE MAIN PLOT POINTS BUT MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR FIRST 2 HOURS OF GAME PLAY. THANK YOU.

Within the first five seconds what I mostly thought was, “Wow, this game is so beautiful. I think it’s hurting my eyes it’s so beautiful. I love this. I love that games can be so damn beautiful.”

Within the first five minutes I started to wonder when the real game play was going to happen. Here and there would be button prompts for me to press and I would wander around a bit, but it was mostly just cutscene after cutscene. By the time the intro to the game was over, I’d been playing for about 10 minutes and had actually PLAYED about one minute. But who cares, it’s the beginning of the game, there’s bound to be a lot of cutscenes at the beginning of a game, right? Wrong. After the intro is over the game takes a whole new light, it’s bright and (still) beautiful but there’s more cutscenes, and more painfully, long segments of slow walking. At this point I was asking myself whether or not I could put the controller down and get a snack, and the answer was yes, I could run to the fridge and take a quick look, grab a pudding, and sit back down and still have plenty of time to pick up the controller before there was a prompt to look at another object or open another door. That’s all the beginning of this game is. BUTTON PROMPTS. Now, I of all people (and a lover of telltale games) can understand what’s fun about having a few button prompts. I mean Telltale’s game are basically just button prompts, but the difference is, that those button prompts don’t take away the game from you. In The Order, every time you have a button prompt there another short (or more accurately) long cut scene following the prompt. It was driving me absolutely crazy.

After the first hour of the game we were finally starting to get somewhere. The controls are really easy to pick up, which is good because you’re pretty much just thrown into the fray (after long, seemingly endless bouts of slow walking), and it pretty much controls like every other third person shooter out there. The guns are fun, and very steam punk looking. I’m a big fan of the steam punk look. (By the way Galahad is a fantastic name for a character. Is he supposed to be like Sir Galahad from the round table? Like King Arthur’s round table? I have no idea. And Igraine/Isabeau/Isi? Please pick one name and stick with it. PEOPLE (me) ARE EASILY CONFUSED) Speaking of Igraine, I loved her ’empowered female’ mentality during one of the looooong cut scenes at the beginning. GIRL POWER, and all that jazz. And do I sense a little bit of sexual tension between ole’ Isi and Galahad? Bow chicka wow wow.

Basically, once you get past all of the cut scenes and you get into the core action/fighting sequences, the game starts to be not that half bad. With that in mind though, the action sequences are not nearly long enough. You shoot a rebel here, shoot a dude there, and then there’s another (big surprise) PAINFULLY LONG CUT SCENE. I found myself groaning and twisting around on my couch begging to be able to shoot more people. PLEASE.

I will take one minute to say that the design of the lycans during the first lycan action sequence, are FANTASTIC. I was so scared. The game calls then, “Half-breeds” and they’re basically sphinx hairless cats, but big werewolf-like men. I will admit that when I first encountered them, I ran into a corner and let them kill me because I was so frozen in fear. They are truly beautiful. I WANT MORE OF THAT READY AT DAWN AND SCE SANTA MONICO STUDIO. I like to imagine that there is definitely more of that later on in the game, but not within the rest that I played.

Overall, my first impression of The Order: 1886 is that it is an absolutely beautiful game with so much wonderful potential. But that’s it. It has potential. The beginning is very very slow and it might get better, but my very first impression of those first couple of hours is that good god I was so bored. There is way too many cut scenes and not enough real game play. I might have more to report later when I finish it (if I finish it) and I’ll be sure to change my mind if it gets better with age. I mean, who doesn’t get better with age, right?

‘Til next time.

-Bec

(P.S props on the boobies and wee wee lady and gentleman in the brothel, I am quite impressed.)