Some new gameplay footage has been released for The Order 1886, featuring a look at some of the cover-based shooting mechanics as a squad of hunters take on some rebels. If you were hoping for something special, unique, different or original, you came to the wrong game.
The nine minutes of off-screen gameplay comes courtesy of IGN, where the game is showcased while peering over the shoulder of what appears to be a very frightened and tepid journalist. The shock-fried hairstyle and continuous glances over his shoulder in that dark little corner of the room made it seem like he was pirating film footage or something.
Anyway, there are some good points and some bad points about the footage we see from The Order 1886, none of which has to do with the game being filmed off-screen. Actually, I was quite impressed with the sound capture quality, as it did a pretty good job of setting up the game's atmosphere and characters.
Now, let's start with the good parts: The weapons in the game look quite unique, like a cross between Teslapunk technology and World War II rifles. It's pretty slick and the design of the weapons fit in nicely with the game's visual motif.
In addition to the guns looking good, they also sound good. The crackle and pop from the lightning rod cannon was quite impressive and showcased a good deal of visual fidelity to help bring the game's time period to life. The particle effects also looked spot-on, as hot metal and burned debris sparked and flew across the screen at times. The glowing hot metal contrasting with the game's foggy atmosphere really lit up the battlefield in a nice way.
I also liked the way the recoil on the gun gives the characters a nice kickback. It's quite righteous.
Now for the bad parts: The game looks terribly boring. The gun-play is kind of trite and the whack-a-mole shooting doesn't appear to advance the third-person shooter genre beyond anything we haven't already seen from every other Gears of War title out there. Heck, even the newest Gears of War will have to compete with its own legacy, so as not to become a derivative copy-and-paste job of its former glory, sort of like what happened with Gears of War: Judgment.
The cinematics in the video for The Order 1886 were okay, but they did little to excite or propel any interest in the gameplay itself. It was just a bridge from one segment to the next with that little interactive bit with the map to ensure that players were still in “control” of the game.
Right now the biggest hurdle The Order 1886 needs to overcome isn't a graphics or frame-rate issue, but an issue of gameplay. Previously there was a teaser video with a werewolf really taking it to one of the members of The Order, and that video seemed like it gave gamers a nice look at the potential of The Order 1886. Hopefully there's still more of the game we haven't seen that actually makes it seem fun, because right now the whack-a-mole gameplay isn't really selling me on the overall game.
