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Ready at Dawn's new game is nothing like 'The Order'
While Ready at Dawn developers were working on The Order: 1886, they saturated themselves in big-budget single-player experiences. The office's gaming nook was usually occupied by one person running through a gorgeous digital world as developers studied 3-D environments, motion-captured facial expressions and cinematic cut scenes. In the end, Ready at Dawn created a beautiful game that was widely criticized for its lack of mechanical or narrative innovation. For many players, The Order was missing something. That thing might have been a sense of pure, unadulterated fun -- specifically for more than one person at a time.
The real horror of 'Until Dawn' is that Sony sent it to die
"Are we, like, in a movie right now?" It's an apt question one of the handsome teens starring in PlayStation 4's latest exclusive, Until Dawn, asked about an hour after I picked up the controller. Yes. No. Maybe. It's kind of hard to explain, and it appears Sony would rather not. At its core, Until Dawn is an interactive teen-horror movie (think '90s genre staples Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer) set at a remote ski lodge where a murderous psychopath is on the loose. But after critics almost universally chastised Sony's other AAA tentpole, The Order: 1886, earlier this year for its gorgeous but bland cinematic leanings, "interactive movie" is a label the gaming juggernaut would rather not bandy about here. In fact, Sony would prefer you not pay attention to this game at all. It's getting no love from the company's marketing department and was weirdly absent from this June's E3 media briefing. And that's a damned shame because Until Dawn is one of the best horror experiences -- interactive or not -- I've ever had.
JXE Streams: Fight the werewolves of London in 'The Order: 1886'
Sometimes you just have to walk in blind. Could there be monsters waiting inside the dimly lit alleyways of The Order: 1886's merry London town? Of course! Could the game be god awful? Almost certainly. That isn't going to stop JXE Streams from walking into the game, having never played a single second of it previously, for a solid two hour stream this afternoon.
'The Order: 1886' is the latest in a long line of beautiful, boring games
The Order: 1886 isn't anything new, but man, is it pretty. Every review I've read mentions just how absurdly good-looking the PlayStation 4 exclusive is (out today); that praise is buried under heaps of valid criticisms regarding monotonous gameplay and hackneyed storytelling. Based on what I've played, I'm inclined to agree. Regardless of the pretty visuals, I've yet to be tasked with doing anything particularly interesting. The cover-based shooting is adequate, but I just can't shake the feeling that I've done it all before in better games. What's more, the narrative is incredibly dull: non-interactive scenes plod on for too long, helmed by characters I have zero connection with, spouting rote dialog that's difficult to decipher more often than not. Its just not very good. But it is pretty!
