Just finished it. It might be the most polished action game I've ever played. Outstanding story and I'm looking forward to playing it again on Hard with The Arsenal unlocked.
I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who was a fan of The Last of Us. Personally, I enjoyed The Order more.
Only on chapter 3, and I am definately digging what little I've played. I loved reading that first newspaper you find, and pretty much pegged Jack The Ripper was going to be relevant in some way from that, so that was neat. A few lines of Dialogue can be a bit 'eh', but really good on a whole.
Really the fantastic art direction is the selling point thus far.
I got to Chapter 4 today. It's definitely the best looking game that I've ever played, no doubt about that. I really like what it's trying to achieve with its cinematic style, the acting is top notch and there's a good atmosphere. Gunplay is also fast and fluid. Yes there are quite a few moments when you need to "tap x" or "press triangle" to auto-climb a ladder, but there's been nothing so far to diminish my enjoyment of the game.
This game has been great. Easily the best looking game to launch this gen. Pretty good story, fantastic characters, and decent gameplay. Really other then the few fights agains the Half Breeds, which end up boiling down to 'shoot a lot, press X to dodge, keep shooting', there aren't really many problems with the game. Unless of course you don't want to pay 60$ for an 8-10 hour campaign and no Multiplayer.
What is an 'acceptable' amount of time for a non-open world action game I wonder? 8-10 hours seems pretty reasonable. Games should not be evaluated based on how much time you sink into it, they should be evaluated based on the overall experience.
Now the concerns about the game being too much QTE and cutscenes is concerning. $60 is a lot to pay for an interactive movie. But, the great thing about free markets is that if there's no demand, the price will drop. I'll probably give it a try once that happens.
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Those games you traded in could have been used to lower the price of a different game thoughOriginally Posted by fat_moogle
I might get it when it goes sub-20 dollars.
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A game's length shouldn't have any impact on its quality as a game and its artistic merit. Neither longer nor shorter makes a better game. Though certainly there are games that I wish had been shorter as the second half of them were less enjoyable than the first (hi FFXII) though the obvious solution to that is having good pacing and a consistent product throughout.
What it does impact on is its value as a product for us, the consumer. Assuming the Order is of equal levels of fun to Skyrim, why get 5 hours of the Order at $60 ($12 for each hour) when I can get 80 hours of Skyrim at $15 (A shade under 19 cents paid for each hour)? You might very well have created a great product that I would love to experience, but I don't find the value in what you're asking so I'm not going to put the money down.
A short campaign isn't necessary a death knell. Do you have multiplayer? Do you have co-op? Are there different endings? Different playable characters? Are there secrets to uncover? All of these elements add value to the product you're releasing.
I think releasing a 5 hour game for $60 is both arrogant and anti-consumer. But then if there are those willing to pay it and Sony make a profit then maybe they do have the right idea of it.
The prologue reflects your concern but once the game proper begins, it's an action game through and through. The QTEs and cut scenes are not that much more prevalent than your typical shooter. And The Order is a really good one at that - the weapon responsiveness and feedback is unreal and it's fun experimenting with the variety, even for the guns that appear more par for the course.
I think that's a superficial belief that very few people honestly follow through on. I never touch the multiplayer in series like this that shoehorn it in (like Dead Space, Bioshock, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us) and I suspect most do not either. Nor have I ever felt like alternate endings or characters make as big a difference as people pretend they do.A short campaign isn't necessary a death knell. Do you have multiplayer? Do you have co-op? Are there different endings? Different playable characters? Are there secrets to uncover? All of these elements add value to the product you're releasing.
The whole length argument is pretty obviously facetious: it only makes sense in the context of someone who absolutely refuses under any circumstances to replay games or resell them in the alternative.
Let's be honest here - game length is invariably correlated to recycling art assets and enemy encounters. I'd much rather play a game where every sequence is unique and memorable, which is the concept that The Order succeeded in achieving. There are some parts of this game that are beyond anything we've seen in the medium thus far, moments I did not expect the limited hardware of current gen consoles could accomplish.
Great games are meant to be replayed and I feel sorry for anyone who needs arbitrary incentives to do so. Our free time is precious but the short length makes it less daunting and more likely for me to replay a game again.
You're mistaking your personal preference for the preferences of the gaming public, especially in regards to multiplayer. This is fine when you're considering the value you personally place on these products, but not entirely relevant if we're looking at wider consumer behaviour as your post implies.
Is it mandatory for a game to have multiplayer to be a good game? No, of course not. Does it increase its lifespan and therefore value as a product? Assuming you even try it just the once, yes. If you don't have the slightest interest in multiplayer, no.
I beat Enslaved: Odyssey to the West in like 7 hours, and stumbled across it as a budget. I would have gladly paid full price for that game. As long as the experience feels justified. A great story, great characters, great environment and atmosphere, great pacing. If what everyone is saying about The Order is even half true, it sounds like it more than merits a full price, despite the size of a campaign
Taking a peek at The Last of Us on "How Long To Beat", it seems to average about 15 hours. And I remember being extremely surprised at how long that game took. It was so amazing, so beautiful, so well done, its hard to imagine them putting so much time and effort into making an entire 15 hour run feel fresh and unique at every turn. I wouldn't have batted an eye if that game were closer to the 10 hour mark. That's a lot of magic to store in just under a dozen hours. Its extremely rare to get something that great that breaks the dozen hour mark and keeps pace until the end
Even my love of Alien Isolation, and scoffing at people who thought it was "too long", I can agree that some segments were unnecessary filler, and it could have easily been quite a bit shorter. I wouldn't dock points for it. They did more than a competent enough job for my liking. But when companies rise above that bar, it starts to stop being just an enjoyable game. To me Alien Isolation was an amazing game. And to me, The Last of Us was an amazing experience
Sounds like The Order went for the "experience" route
I think you can beat Ico in like 6 hours
And that was also an amazing experience with no multiplayer and I'm pretty sure there were no alternate endings. And it was completely worth full price at the time of release :]
So while I still haven't played The Order (though this conversation is seriously making me want to), I can totally get behind people willing to pay high prices for higher experiences in gaming
Though I agree that's kind of a risky endeavor for a developer. Lots of money, and lots of flack from people looking for more, who aren't charmed, and just want to play a standard game for extended time
Two important points about The Last of Us in particular.
Firstly, a lot of that length came from stuff that is actually quite low intensity in terms of development effort. It has quite big, open levels, stealth heavy gameplay, exploration, and so on and so forth. So a single room with 5 enemies in can take five or ten minutes as you plan, move about, craft stuff. Obviously care and attention has to go into the level designs, enemy placement, AI and the game systems. But these are nowhere near the draw on resource as a detailed cutscene is. All that gorgeous animation, sound design and set piece special effects take ages. And while there are a large number of detailed cutscenes in The Last of Us, the ratio of gameplay:cutscene is much more in favour of gameplay compared to something like The Order. So I'm not sure the two can really be categorised together on those grounds, or if they can I definitely think Naughty Dog were much smarter in how they went about the design.
Secondly, because of the game systems allowing for multiple play styles, I think TLoU has much more replayability. You can do a stealth run, a run-and-gun run, explore the routes you didn't take the first time through. Even though it's a linear game, you can get a fairly substantially different experience with multiple playthroughs. Again, I think this sets it apart from something like The Order (and not just The Order, the same stuff sets TLoU apart from Uncharted as well. And I really like two of the Uncharted games).
Touché. Both very good points
Its hard for me to break down mechanics from a technical perspective as purely a consumer. Watching behind the scenes things (there's one on YouTube for The Last of Us which is an amazing documentary) always astounds me as to just how much goes into games of that caliber that you don't even think about when enjoying the game
And I agree there was something special about the team that did TLoU. I guess that's what made it transcend the medium a bit and venture into the "experience" area of video gaming. Probably what makes certain games more considered art as well
Money vs. time isn't a good way to judge the value of a game at all. I can buy a deck of playing cards for $2 and play a thousand hours of it. I started speedrunning an old NES game last year and I put in hundreds of hours in a game that you can buy used at a flea market for < $5. You can go outside and play with sticks and dirt for the rest of your life for free if you want.
You can pay $60 for Guild Wars 2 and play it forever for free. Why play any other MMO, especially ones with subscription fees? Why do WOW or FFXIV exist? I put 750 hours into GW2 before I got sick of it. So why buy or play any other game at all, ever?
I can buy a Super Bowl ticket for $3000 and get a few hours of entertainment; is that worth it? Why does anyone play golf when it costs huge money for clubs and course time, when you can play frisbee for almost free?
It's because there's much more to a game than that. Gamers aren't really looking to maximize money vs. time, or else they wouldn't be playing video games at all. Video games are an expensive hobby compared to many, when you add up console/PC cost + accessories + game cost. I bet $30 vs $60 is barely a blip on the radar if you look at your lifetime spending on games.
Some kinds of video games cost a fortune to make. I watched a few hours of The Order 1886 and it looks really impressive graphically. All of that voice acting and motion capture and art design can't have been cheap. I imagine that has a lot to do with the price tag. Does that mean I want to spend $60 on it? Maybe not for me, I think it's a bit silly to spend that much money to produce this kind of game if it doesn't add a lot to the gameplay. But many people (myself included) are definitely impressed by graphics and physics and immersive games, or else why aren't we all still playing PS2 instead of PS4? Those things do have value to us. Everyone can decide where to draw the line of worth it / not worth it for themselves.
When I buy a game, I ask myself if it offers something that I enjoy that I can't get anywhere else. Sometimes that means $15 for a game that I beat in < 3 hours. Take The Swapper for example; it's a very short puzzle game, but I really enjoyed it because the art style was so unique (hand-crafted clay models), the puzzle mechanic was very fun and interesting, and the plot offered a lot of things to think about. I'll never play it again, because puzzle games don't offer a lot of replayability, but I felt like I got my money worth. It won lots of awards. And this game has approximately the same money-to-time ratio as The Order 1886.
Does the Order 1886 offer you something unique that you can't get elsewhere? The graphics? The setting or the story? The gameplay? The total package? If so, buy it and be happy; if not, don't buy it and be happy. Playtime is waaaaaaay down on my list of priorities.
I can agree Unne, though there are times where it can get a little extreme. Example being Mad World on the Wii. 50$ game you could beat in just under two hours. There is a point you are spending to much for how little content the game has, regardless of how unique it is.
Though in most cases it ranks pretty low on my Priorities as well.
Having beat The Last of Us Remastered a few months ago, I feel like the gameplay:cutscene ratio was about the same in The Order.
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