There comes a time in your gaming life when you should probably ask yourself “Is this kind of stuff fun anymore?” or “Does it even do it well?”. This game is one such an experience that you should ask yourself these questions, as it’s the kind of game that doesn’t seem worth the time and monetary investment needed for it. It’s also proof of just how tolerant gamers are to derivative titles have become as long as they get their instant gratification of ‘shooty shooty bang bang’ and pretty graphics. Or maybe I’ve become too cynical and hard to please. Read on to decide that for yourselves.

The Order: 1886 is Ready at Dawn’s first original IP, and for the PS4 no less. They have received some help from Santa Monica Studios as well. It’s a third person shooter set in a Victorian era London. The Order is actually a secret group of people that have fought in the shadow keeping Britain safe from the threat of werewolves, or ‘Lycans’ or ‘Half=Breeds’ as the game calls them. They have apparently been doing this for centuries with the use of a substance called Blackwater, which grants a measure of eternal youth and heals wounds. Since the time of King Arthur in fact, the Holy Grail is the source of this liquid. Oh, and since it’s a fictional world, the Order’s Knights also wield weapons and other tech that’s beyond their era because it’s cool I guess. Have your electric and thermite guns, courtesy of Nikolai Tesla. So it has a bit of an Assassin’s Creed interpretation of historical figures. Sounds cool right? The thing is, it should be, but what happens in the game doesn’t quite pan out that way.

First of all, the game is yet another third person shooter in a sea among other third person shooters that came before it. And it seems that the developers have learned nothing from the past to make a more refined experience. They opted to use an old checklist made nearly a decade ago. You go through a linear path, often through corridors, and gunfights are usually with other humans and not the Lycans as nearly as much as it should be. All while using cover based mechanics and regenerating health. The one interesting thing about the health though is that it ties in the fiction, so it makes a degree of sense here. And since it’s a single-player only game, you have a chance to recover after been shot down, rather than waiting for a buddy to pick you up. The combat itself is alright, and every weapon is fun to use, and they all have their own feel. However, the game withholds the ability to make more instances of certain weapons available, so many weapons get little playtime. There are also some enemies that absorb way too much damage before going down. Other issues stem from how the game doesn’t seem to value the player’s time.

There are many times in the game where players don’t have the freedom to explore, let alone at a pace that would even accommodate such a thing. Often your character is prevented from running and you are forced to walk at a very slow pace. Even if you know that you can open a door, you are unable to do so until the game tells you that you can. There are also annoying time wasting hacking mini-games and ‘press arbitrary buttons to not die ‘ QTE’s. Another thing is that is annoying is that the text size is way too small, making reading the collectible documents or following the story hard to do. And the story only vaguely becomes interesting toward the end of the game, at the 9th hour mark. It’s not that the game is too short, so much as it doesn’t make good use of the time it’s given. The voice-work and soundtrack are somewhat wasted on an experience that feels nothing more than a teaser for something bigger. Like another installment. So while the game is decent, it has a weak start. And one can only hope the future installments actually happen, and that they improve considerably on the formula. I just wish it hit more of those notes the first time.

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