Few games at E3 2014 were as visually impressive as The Order: 1886. For as limited as the demo’s offering was, it sets high standards for what gamers should expect to see on the PlayStation 4, alongside of course that trailer from Naughty Dog during Sony’s pre-E3 media briefing.

It runs superbly even during intense combat, the character models are impeccably detailed, and the fire and lighting effects certainly add an aesthetic touch to what is otherwise a very purposefully mundane gothic environment.

Unfortunately, there’s little else that really makes The Order all that interesting at the moment. At least from what Sony has shown so far. The long lines at E3 should represent a game that has plenty to offer, but there’s nothing about the game’s core gameplay that makes it all that special.

There are the foundations there to build a really strong game around, and ideally its most interesting aspect is something Sony should have been showcasing at E3: that is of the game’s supposedly epic and ruthless beasts of the night. We play “knights of the night”, so I was admittedly expecting to play a game that showed why these people had such power.

Instead, all I and everyone else that played it saw was a run-of-the-mill cover-based shooter, one that throws goons at you from left, right and centre while pushing you down a frustratingly tight linear corridor. The gameplay breaks away from the combat, prompting you to throw down explosives to break open paths or carry injured characters to other locations, but it felt frighteningly similar to a game that suffered from goon-syndrome in Uncharted 3. Blend in what feels like another “interactive movie” and you have a game that lacks the hands-on appeal to be a long-term franchise.

The gameplay demo we saw during Sony's briefing introduced us to one of the beasts, but it was still a corridor battle that forced our hero down a path. It seemed linear, and now I can confirm the game plays similarly as linear in its application.

I don’t agree with some suggestions I’ve seen thrown around that call it the PlayStation 4’s Ryse. There’s more potential here, and we’ve seen so little. But it’s troubling that for a game supposedly eight months from release that we haven’t seen its most appealing aspect, the enemies that formulate the game’s core narrative and how they tie into its gameplay. Throwing two goons at me, then another two, then another two, then prompting me to blow up a leaking gas main isn’t quite what I expected from The Order. It’s not what’s going to sell me.

Whether the game’s ready to be shown in its best light or not is unknown, but from a gameplay perspective, there’s nothing that really sells The Order: 1886 as a must-have game for the PS4. I need more than goons and nice graphics to sell me: I need substance and reason, and unfortunately, The Order seems to lack that. There’s plenty of time to make up for that, but it’s hard to get excited over a linear cover-based shooter that hasn't quite yet differentiated itself from anything else in the genre.

http://mmgn.com/ps4/articles--the-order-is-visually-engrossing-but-uninspir