The Order was something I was very interested in when I first saw it. When it was first shown I was intrigued because I like Victorian England as a setting in a video game. It was originally sold to me as a monster hunting game set in VE, then I saw the futuristic weapons. This immediately made me lose interest, but then when I saw the gameplay of the fight with what I thought was a werewolf, I was right back in there with interest. Anyway, let's get started.
The Order set in London, in the late 1800s follows a small group of knights who protect the world from 'half-breeds' and also protect against the Industrial Revolution. It's a third person action game that features a substantial amount of quick time events. You're put straight into the game where you play as Galahad, a knight who is in quite the predicament. Shortly after the prologue, you are taken back some time to where the story really starts. Galahad is a very serious man, which can lead to a boring playable character. There's something off-putting about a character that has the same angry face throughout. That's just it, all the characters are serious and they're often with you. Ingraine isn't always serious, but by God she is always annoying. Marquis is by far the best, he's funny and likeable, but he's surrounded by serious folk so his humor is quickly swept under the rug. I'd much have preferred him to be the star of the game.
Now, what people will have you think, is this is an average game and incredibly short. These are lies, the game is fairly short, I'll admit. I heard someone say they finished it in four hours, this is insane. It took me around seven, short I know, but I can only imagine it was completed in four hours on the easy difficulty. Now, if you're complaining about a game being too short and completed it on easy, you have no right to moan. A disappointing factor was that a couple chapters were just cutscenes. It's a shame they decided to do this and make you think the game was longer than it actually was, with it having sixteen chapters and at least three are cutscenes and a few more are rather short. Anyway, don't let reviews tell you this game is near four hours or its average. It's gameplay is pretty good.
The graphics are exceptional, truly some of the best I've seen. The detail in the faces are incredible, facial expressions are up there with LA Noire's face scans. The performances are really good, just all a bit too serious. The scenes look great and the way they transition into the gameplay are flawless, you almost don't realise you can now move your character. When you play as Galahad near the start, he is looking over the edge of a building and his hair is blowing in the wind, it's extraordinary! Hair is an incredibly difficult thing for developers, but Ready at Dawn not only made hair blow in the wind, but made it look real. There's no denying how good they made this game look.
The gameplay here is good, nothing really new, but well done. Typical cover shooter, with some good gun play. The blacklight move allows you to kill multiple enemies at once in slow motion and move the cursor to where you wanted to hit them. It was pretty cool, but I find it difficult to really aim at enemies heads, so I just shot where the aim already was and it worked just fine. There's a good amount of weapons and lots of ammo pickups for you too. The science weapons were great, although they felt out of place in a game set in the past. One would fire thermite and then let you fire at it to blast fire, another would shoot a burst of electricity that would instantly kill anything in the way and the last had a stun mechanic, you'd fire a sort of smoke blast that would stumble the enemy, leaving them at your mercy. Another cool feature in the gun play I liked, was when you killed an enemy the cursor went red as you shot them, this was a confirmed kill, so you needn't worry about them rising up from cover.
The enemies were quite smart too, always in cover and not just idly standing by, waiting for death by science! The shot-gunner enemies charged at you and were armoured up, they were pretty challenging. There was a lock picking mechanic that hadn't been done before, sometimes you gotta ask yourself, just how many ways can game developers come up with to enter locked doorways. You could use the PS4s touchpad once to call in support, but it was pointless, but I think the whole touchpad debacle is pointless in whole.
There wasn't a lot too bad with this game, a guy's beard was see through looking at it from the side, but I got over it. The credits went on so long, the music got bored and stopped. It was quite short, BUT NOT THAT SHORT! I think the most disappointing thing was that the boss battle was just a big QTE. It looked great though, one on one with a half-breed, armed only with a knife. Also the ending left me with so many unanswered questions. *SEQUEL ALERT*.
All in all, a decent story, amazing graphics, far too serious characters, disappointing boss battle, but with the capability of Ready at Dawn, I'm certainly looking forward to what else they can do. Just hopefully it looks as great as this and is a bit longer.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment