Critical Consensus: Little love for The Order: 1886

With apologies to Knack and DriveClub, The Order: 1886 is Sony's first major new intellectual property for the PlayStation 4. Unfortunately, the Ready-at-Dawn-developed shooter isn't faring significantly better than its fellow PS4 originals when it comes to reviews. The Order: 1886 hits shelves tomorrow, and critics are decidedly unsatisfied with the game.

While the reviews are rife with negativity, there is one aspect of The Order that has received almost universal praise: its visuals. The game's steampunk Victrorian setting drew raves for the fidelity and attention to detail.

"There is, in my estimation, no better looking game on consoles."

Justin McElroy

"The Order: 1886 is an incredibly handsome game," said Eurogamer's Martin Robinson, "perhaps the finest-looking the new generation of consoles has provided to date - its world full of detail and art that's both striking and bold."

Polygon's Justin McElroy agrees in his 5.5 review, saying, "There is, in my estimation, no better looking game on consoles. Victorian London is rendered in beautiful, exacting, sooty detail with just enough steampunk flourishes to make it seem otherworldly."

However, there is the sense throughout the reviews that the game's good looks come at the cost of gameplay, from an abundance of non-interactive cinematics to a letterboxed presentation that left some reviewers wishing for a larger field-of-vision in shooting segments.

As IGN's Brandin Tyrrel put it in a 6.5 review, "Even more than its secret battle against the monsters of legend, The Order's greatest struggle is ultimately its own internal tug-of-war between telling a beautifully presented story and granting the level of interactivity we've come to expect from a game."

"The Order is a barely competent third-person shooter."

Kirk Hamilton

In giving the game a 5, GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd said The Order splits its time almost equally between cutscenes, quick-time events, third-person shooting, and segments where players walk around environments examining items or listening to characters spout exposition.

"The action is almost an afterthought, given all the talking, the walking, and the quick-time events, few of which complement onscreen motion in the manner of Telltale Games' best QTEs," VanOrd said. "It's a shame that The Order evokes Heavy Rain so early in its six-hour play time, because the comparison does not work in this game's favor."

Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton seconded that idea in his own review, which answered the review system's "Should you play this game?" question with an emphatic "No."

"The Order is a barely competent third-person shooter," Hamilton said. "It repackages the cover-based shootouts of Gears of War and Uncharted without managing to capture any of the artificial intelligence quirks and level design tricks that made those games so reactive and exciting."

Tyrrel was similarly unimpressed with the action, saying, "Cover shooting falls into the old comfort zone where lining up the camera and popping out to kill an enemy becomes a rinse-and-repeat cycle of near invulnerability thanks to your vial of Blackwater - The Order's secret serum you can drink (via a quick-time event) to revive yourself from the verge of death."

Robinson was slightly more upbeat on the action, calling the shooting "competent and enjoyable, if never quite spectacular."

"A bad game can make a case for itself. A boring one is harder to forgive."

Kevin VanOrd

"The Order: 1886 isn't a disaster, nor is it a particularly good game," Robinson said. "It's a hollow diversion, entertaining but outmoded and caught somewhere between a medium it repeatedly fumbles and one it fails to effectively embrace."

McElroy was likewise irked at the game's use (or lack thereof) of an interactive medium.

"Every moment of The Order: 1886, from the in medias res opening to the abrupt final battle, feels entirely predetermined," McElroy said. "With the exception of a handful of gun battles, in which the player is free to decide in which order they will kill all the bad guys, Ready At Dawn is entirely unwilling to let go of the player's hand... This is the sort of game that prompts you to hammer on the X button to break a thug's arm, but should you decide not to, Galahad will simply continue to hold the rogue's wrist and keep smooshing his face into a wall for all of eternity. It simply has no vocabulary to speak to the player who doesn't instantly comply 100 percent of the time."

VanOrd summed up The Order with a line that wouldn't have seemed out of place in any of his peers' reviews, saying, "It is, at best, perfectly playable, and lovely to look at and listen to. But it is also the face of mediocrity and missed opportunities. A bad game can make a case for itself. A boring one is harder to forgive."