It's shallow fun while it lasts, but The Order feels dated before its time. Despite being the PlayStation 4's new poster child, the latest pretty face for the new generation, Ready at Dawn's truncated epic feels like a product of the year of its inception - a time when the world was in thrall to Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain, and before the prescribed dramatics of Quantic Dream turned sour with Beyond: Two Souls. The result is an earnest game, sometimes disarmingly so. There are no levelling weapons, no branching narrative decisions, no litany of unlockables - and there's absolutely no reason to return once it's all over.
The Order: 1886 isn't a disaster, nor is it a particularly good game. It's a hollow diversion, entertaining but outmoded and caught somewhere between a medium it repeatedly fumbles and one it fails to effectively embrace.