PlayStation Experience Hands On — The Order: 1886

The Order: 1886

While At The PlayStation Experience I Was Able To See The Order: 1886 In A More Intimate Setting Than Just A Trailer. Here’s My Take On The Victorian Age Shooter Coming To PS4 Next Year

Only a few months now until The Order: 1886 releases at is shocks me that it has taken this long to get my hands on the game. Well if you negate the fact that the average wait time to play the demo at the PlayStation Experience was about three and a half hours then it may not be as shocking. Luckily for me, and in turn you, I was able to bypass the long wait (by rushing to the booth first thing) and was able to get my hands on the public demo and the press demo that Ready At Dawn and Santa Monica Studios brought to the PSX. Here’s what I have to say about The Order: 1886 as of now.

I’ll preface with that I was losing hope in The Order: 1886 over the last few months as the trailers of gameplay have doing very little for me in terms of excitement. Once I actually sat down with the game that quickly faded into a sheer want to have the game now. The first demo I was able to experience, you can see it around the 18 minute mark in the bottom video, was a higher action sequence than I was ready for. Read that as I was looking at The Order: 1886 as having more intrigue and stealthy sections as they are hunting down some horrible creatures and people in the world.

I began my first experience sniping enemies that were trying to stand ground in their ship that we had boarded. There was no context to this in the first demo I played so we’ll continue with that. The first thing I noticed and loved was how smooth the controls for the sniper scope were. There is no aim-assist, at least it wasn’t turned on if there was, but I found that I was able to actual move, aim, and kill with such precision that I have yet to see possible in a game. It wasn’t that The Order: 1886 made shooting easy but it made it feel natural and not something that we’d have to get use to during gameplay.

This blended over to the cover system as well. If I didn’t know better I’d swear that Ready At Dawn took the system for The Order: 1886 right from Gears Of War or Uncharted. Most likely the latter if they did but that’s a different story. I never felt like I was vulnerable to attack nor stuck in place if I accidentally dove into cover at the wrong location. I was even able to stay in cover from the rest of the enemies while firing at one that came behind me as one would in the real world. I’ve never been sure why that occurs in games up until now outside of really bad game design. The Order: 1886 nailed it there and made the whole experience not feel like a trial by fire.

Unfortunately there was a portion of The Order: 1886 that really bothered me in terms of combat. I could be wrong but there is a standard in games when it comes to quick tossing of grenades. With The Order: 1886 you have to go through a weapon wheel and spend a lot of time getting ready to toss even a smoke grenade in the middle of a fire fight. It didn’t ruin the experience at all but it definitely didn’t help by any means. I just didn’t feel natural to ALWAYS need to be precise when tossing a grenade. I was not able to find any other way to do this during the demos which, like I said, is unfortunate.

Moving away from the weapons and heavy combat of The Order: 1886 there was a small section where the espionage came in and I had to use one of the Nikola Tesla designed items. It was a weird mercury switch thing (that is the best description) that allowed you to bypass specific locks. The mini-game of this required me to push down on the L3 and R3 buttons to hold the mercury in place to fry the lock. When I saw the controller calls for this on screen my brain went to a bit of doubt. That’s when participating in the whole experience made sense and felt natural like all of the other controls I had run into thus far. I only hope all of the other items in The Order: 1886 add to this as well.

If there was one thing that The Order: 1886 taught me during the PlayStation Experience it was definitely NOT to judge a game based on the trailers we are given. Watching someone else’s play through that was then edited to look awesome does not do The Order: 1886 justice at all. Even my own words here cannot describe how smooth and fun the game feels; even in its not so finished version we had to experience. I easily see The Order: 1886 taking home a lot of awards and nominations when it finally releases on February 20^th next year.