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In video games, the term 'cinematic' can cut both ways. It speaks of the grand sweep of Naughty Dog's Uncharted, where players are washed away in the tightly scripted matinee-idol action of Nathan Drake. It speaks, too, of the frictions that have existed since such lavishly animated Laser Disc adventures as Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, where players are pushed to the sidelines as the spectacle unfurls before them, asking for only occasional minor prompts. Ready at Dawn's The Order: 1886, the first original home console game from a studio that made its name with portable versions of Sony's God of War, cuts a curious line between both concepts of cinematic gaming, finding shaky new ground between the choreographed shooting of Uncharted and the more prescribed, cut-scene-laden drama of Heavy Rain. The action never clicks and its dramatics fall consistently flat - but the spectacle they are slave to is unquestionably stirring.
The Order is a brutally filmic game. Like The Evil Within and Beyond: Two Souls before it, a 16:9 screen ratio isn't adequate to frame the cinematic ambitions of Ready at Dawn; rather, it's presented in 2.35:1, an approximation of CinemaScope that leaves big black bars at the head and foot of most modern televisions. Film grain and excessive motion blur mimic the soft static of celluloid - and, as a result, this is a more impressive game in action than in stills - making for a succession of sumptuously lit, breathtaking scenes.
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