The Order: 1886 has seen its fair share of controversy leading up to its recent release. The PlayStation 4 exclusive, by most accounts, is an impressive visual experience that falls somewhat flat in the gameplay department. Critics took Sony Santa Monica and Ready at Dawn to task, with the review scores coming in quite low for a console exclusive, and arguably the biggest game of 2015 thus far.
Apparently, at least one developer at Sony Santa Monica is fed up with it, according to some captured tweets by Crave Online. Dean Rymer took to Twitter to call the games press “Hateful,” and suggested that ‘We’ shouldn’t buy ads or send them games. Rymer calls The Order: 1886 “well made,” though “NOT a 6/10.”
Rymer deleted the tweets shortly thereafter, as it was obviously a moment of frustration for his friends or co-workers that may have contributed to the game. The Order: 1886 launched last week and currently holds a 65 on Metacritic. Not exactly a great score, but apparently the game has still been selling well. UK sales figures came in yesterday and revealed that The Order: 1886 was the top selling game for the week.
Our review went up over the weekend on a copy that we were not sent. We gave it a “7/10”, and we’re not sure if that’s to be considered “hateful” or just critical. On the other hand, we can certainly see how Rymer’s reaction was somewhat warranted. Once reviews started corroborating the rumors of a short campaign with little replay value, memes and humorous videos started surfacing online. One site took a pot shot in their review with an animated gif that turned from a nine to a six advising readers to “deal with it.”
Rymer’s sentiments aren’t exactly anything new. If you’re trying to avoid bad reviews scores, you don’t send bad games out to the press ahead of release. Or, you just embargo said reviews until after the game has been launched. That’s something that we’ve been seeing more and more of as of late.
