The dark, captivating setting of Victorian London is one of aesthetic beauty but fails to be a fully realized world.
User Rating: 4 | The Order: 1886 PS4
Pre Launch, The Order 1886 was met with some extreme controversy, which is in most cases can be good or bad depending on the game. But controversy aside, let's deal with the game at hand. The Order: 1886 in my opinion is an adventure game, similar to something like Heavy Rain, Beyound Two Souls and Murdered: Soul Suspect. Much of the traditional gameplay was set aside to tell a story. And as far as narrative goes, the plot of The Order is very compelling. Without giving anything away, the story is heavily political. The writing and voice acting is some of the best in gaming, rivalling that of Troy Bakers performance in the Last of Us and Courtnee Drapers performance in Bioshock Infinite, the emotion and attention to detail the actors took was well worth the extra effort. But the biggest selling feature of The Order was the breath taking aesthetics. The world of Victorian London is simply a marvel and by far some of the best art direction seen in a video game. All of this backed up by graphical power making everything seem almost life like. The sound design is also top notch as well. Clearly the Order: 1886 had some amazing production values but... It is the unfortunate truth that a beautiful game, does make it an incredibly exciting one. The game takes a very linear approach which to some players may become annoyed or angry with, but with me it didn't play a factor into my overall feelings about the game. It was the amount the game had to offer which frustrated me. Besides the 6 hour main story, the game just feels lifeless. The third person shooting mechanics are top notch, but it is nothing we haven't seen before. Hide behind cover and shoot at human characters before they shoot at you. The how the guns feel and control is one of the joys of the Order, because each gun was designed very well. And all provide there own unique punch. The very rare werewolf fight or as the game calls Lycins are by far the most satisfying parts of the game, even killing one with quick time events feels exciting, but there is so little of these fights. Between the combat sections however, there is heavily scripted segments whether your moving your character or the game uses many of it's very lengthy cutscenes. The world of The Order is never fully realized in the game and certainly never explored. There is hardly any lore hidden through out the game to even provide the player with multiple play throughs. There are short segments where you can see how people in the world interact but the dialogue is so short it doesn't provide anything worth while. At the end it all comes to the pacing of the game. There are literally chapters in the game that are simply cutscenes and cinematic moving sequences. As I kind of explained before, these segments make up the largest portion of the game. And this might have been excused if the game as a whole wasn't so heavily scripted. And as for someone who is not the biggest fan shooters, the shooting mechanics are not executed well here The fantastic setting of Victorian London of course is dark and full of mystery. Expessally with the inclusion of werewolves, but the way the game goes about showcasing such an amazing setting is never reached to any sort of height. And just when the game is hitting a climax or jumping to some sort of excitement, it simply ends as credits roll. With an obvious sequel in mind. And without having any drive to go back and play through The Order, it makes it hard to recommend the 69.99 plus tax (Canadian) game. It is beautiful and visually stunning, while providing really good production values. But without anything new, or interesting to experience, The Order: 1886 is hard to recommend. But with the low number of Victorian themed games, this may be the closest we may see for quite some time. With all this comes to the largest problem with the game. I wanted to like and there were aspects of the games production that I admired and genuinely liked. And I mean this with every word, I wanted to like it, but The Order 1886 just doesn't have any redeeming value. 
