8 Video Games That Could Have Just Been An Email

Now to be completely fair to Ready at Dawn's alt-history steampunk action-adventure game The Order: 1886, it would've made for a really, really pretty e-mail.

The marketing for the game focused on its undeniably jaw-dropping visual presentation, with Sony hyping it up as their next big AAA IP, the potential of which spoke for itself.

But the rug was firmly pulled out once the game launched and critics and players alike expressed their thunderous indifference. 

This was a game that, despite its technical innovations, was otherwise a bog-standard third-person shooter with nothing even remotely mechanically interesting on offer.

Even worse than that, neither the characters nor the story made much of a dent, wholly unaided by a brutally short five-hour length, ensuring players were afforded little time to immerse themselves in the game's superficially rich world before it was all over.

Though some scattered enthusiasm for The Order remains, it evaporated from mainstream gaming culture in the blink of an eye, likely because it felt less like the start of a franchise than a thinly drawn proof-of-concept.