The Order: 1886 is a shitty game according to just about
every reviewer with a keyboard and a reader base. It’s a waste of time. It’s a
linear slog full of quick-time-events and button prompts, and stale third
person gameplay that the developers tried to sneak by us with their pretty
visuals and carefully choreographed cutscenes. Kotaku doesn’t even think you
should bother with it.
What a joke. Look, you may feel disappointed because a
certain game did not give you exactly what you were hoping for, but many of the
reviewers out there who played The Order and didn’t think it offered anything
worthwhile just don’t understand gaming. Rather, they don’t understand what
does and does not make a game worth playing. Or maybe they just bought into
their own lazily crafted narratives?
The Order: 1886 is a linear game. If you go into it expecting
sidequests and wide open worlds to explore, you’ve been misled. This is not
that sort of game, but that does not mean that it sucks, or that it’s a failure.
Saying that The Order is not worth playing is like saying that Yosemite is not
worth visiting because it doesn’t have a hip nightlife. Every game is
different, and the best way to approach one (as a reviewer) is to take what it
gives you and determine whether or not it’s goals are worthwhile, and then
decide if the game achieved those goals.
Every game shares at least one common goal: to entertain the
audience. Maybe The Order didn’t entertain you, and that’s perfectly fine, but
if you can’t see why other people might be more appreciative of what the game
offers then you shouldn’t be reviewing it. Go write about it in your blog or
whatever, but don’t tell people that the game is objectively bad.
With that out of the way, I’d like to say a little bit about
why I’m so wonderfully impressed by this game.
