Spec Ops: The Line is a pretty unique game in my gaming history, and it's a bit tricky to write a review for. It would seem the best thing to do is split the review into two halves. During the first half, I'll talk about the gameplay, which is pretty simple, as well as basic things like mechanics, enemies, and setting, and then the last half will be about the story, themes, and basically whatever else I can fit in without spoiling anything. Honestly, if I ever went the opinion route, there is plenty of material there to keep me employed for a while, but I'll do my best.
As far as the gameplay goes, Spec Ops: The Line is a cover
shooter. You'll spend your time dodging from cover to cover, jumping over
barriers and dashing to the next car, or wall, or whatever is there to keep you
from getting shot. This is, as far as I can recall, the only game like this I
have ever played, because usually I prefer my shooters a bit more like
Half-Life, where you're not a deity slaughtering hordes of enemies, a la Serious
Sam, but you're not spending most of your time cowering behind cover either.
That in the middle, "you take damage and if you take too much you will
die, so just be a good shot and you'll be fine," is what I like, but
still, there were some mechanics of this game that I enjoyed, and I would be
willing to try another cover shooter in the future, so that's good.
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| "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai." |
The game is set in a Dubai
that has been ravaged by sandstorms, which gives way to one of this game's
coolest mechanics. Much of the city has been buried in sand, and in Dubai, which is this city
of opulence beyond belief, there is a lot of glass. Glass that is holding back
walls of sand. Walls of sand that are generally right behind or right above
your enemies. So you can shoot out that glass and send a flood of sand down on
top of your enemies, either burying them if it's enough, or stunning them long
enough to pop out of cover and get a few shots off. The down side to this
mechanic is that I never used it. There are staged times when you must, such as
during the first level, which acts as the game's tutorial, or when it's part of
an event and your squad mates shoot out some glass to get you out of an area,
but during the normal game I may have used it, at most, once. I'll attribute
that more to the fact that I've played so many shooters now that I focus on the
basic point and shoot more than any other mechanic, no matter how novel, rather
than claim it wasn't available in the level design. I was actually far more
likely to shoot out the glass underneath an enemy's feet, as many times you are
inside a building and enemies are on the roof firing through gaps at you.
Another interesting mechanic, though Spec Ops is in no means
the first to do it, is destructible cover. Hiding behind a thin barricade while
enemies hiding in the remnants of a damaged building rain fire down on your
position, until ultimately it crumbles and you need to run to the next
available cover, is an interesting feature. When you're so pinned down you can't
do anything you'll sometimes get the choice to order your squad mates to throw
out a stun grenade, as opposed to generally being able to order them to focus a
specific target, or heal one another if one is injured. Of course, you can
always stick your gun over the edge or around the corner and fire without
aiming, but that generally isn't too effective when you're that pinned down.
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| The RPG flying by your position is a nice touch. |
The game is also pretty violent at times, particularly when
you stun an enemy, usually from a melee attack or by vaulting over cover
directly into them, and your are given the option of executing them. You might
stomp an enemy's head in, choke them with the body of a shotgun, or simply
fire a round from your machine gun point blank into his head, all of which are a
bit unsettling, such as when you see your enemy struggle to move the barrel
from his face before you fire. You are however encouraged to do this, because
it rewards you with additional ammunition, which, if you prefer a particular
weapon, is scarce in this game.
There are issues with the mechanics as well, such as certain console like
feel to the controls, where the same button is your use, sprint, and cover, and
sometimes the cover system isn't the greatest. Another is that this game uses a checkpoint saving system, which can be frustrating. More of an issue is that the game doesn't save the state of dropped weapons if you have to reload a check point. So if you, say, dropped your shotgun because you need a sniper rifle for a time, then the game saves as soon as you shoot the last guy you need a sniper rifle for, you better hope you can make it to the next checkpoint without dying, because if not, when you reload, you will have the sniper rifle, and that shotgun you dropped will be gone.
All in all, if I were tasked with simply rating the gameplay
and cutting out the story that goes along with it, I would say it's a 6, being
above average. I mean, you're simply going from cover to cover, waiting for
your opening, and then popping up to shoot someone, so it plays like pretty
much every other modern military shooter ever, except it's in third person. The
sand mechanic is nice, but I left it unused. Enemies will spawn infinitely
until you reach certain points, or at least so it seems. And there are
exploding barrels pretty much everywhere. Perhaps the reason I would give
it a 6 rather than a 5, is more because I haven't played a cover shooter
before. Still, the gameplay itself is not much of a reason to play this game.
That part comes when talking about the story, after this picture.
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| There is plenty of action though, such as this helicopter crashing into the building on the left. |
First, a bit of background on the game, and it's setting. Dubai was being hit with
major sandstorms, so much so that the city needed to be evacuated. A U.S. military officer, Colonel Konrad, who led a
unit in Afghanistan
decided to buck orders to return home and attempt a rescue mission. It failed.
Six months later a garbled radio transmission gets out, and you and two Delta
Force members are sent in to investigate if there are any survivors. Turns out
that there were, and things get pretty bad, pretty quickly, as you realize that
some of those left behind are attacking the remainder of the American forces in
the area. As such your mission to access the situation quickly changes into
helping those other U.S.
forces.
While the game starts out in a pretty typical manner,
pitting you against a generic Middle Eastern threat, it very quickly evolves,
and the majority of the game has you fighting those U.S. soldiers you thought you were
going to save. Between the long periods of slaughter, the game occasionally
pauses to give you a snippet or two of dialogue, generally reflection on the
situation. After the first time you are attacked by the Americans, you have
this exchange with one of your squad mates:
Adams: We just killed
American soldiers.
You: It was in self defense.
Adams: That doesn't make me
feel any better.
You: It's not supposed to.
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| As you progress, you look more and more beat up, which is an external display of what is going on inside. |
That really sets the tone for the game, because things go
from bad to worse, and pretty soon you'll find you're justifying terrible
things, claiming such actions were necessary to the mission, or that they are
all someone else's fault. In some cases you even have a real choice about how
to proceed, and I've got to give the devs credit, because they set it up so the
most logical choice is to fire on a group of unarmed civilians, though other
options exist.
It's said that the game is inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness, as well as the film Apocalypse Now, which itself was inspired by
that same novel. Honestly, it's been so long since I read/viewed them that I
don't remember too much, and way back then it was assigned work anyways, so I
doubt I was paying attention. Still, I recall some of the themes, such as how
things start out all clear cut and nice, but down the line the boundaries get
blurred, until you ultimately end up at the point where they don't seem to exist
anymore. It's this sort of descent into madness thing, and I can definitely see
how that's the same journey this game has in mind.
However, that does depend on a few things, such as the
reason you play games. The dev's assumed it is because you, as an individual,
want to identify with the character you're playing. We could debate the
accuracy of this at length, and I'm sure it's true to some extent, perhaps even
the majority of people who are engaged in the whole modern military shooter
thing. Regardless, that's part of the dev's premise, and if you notice, the way
I wrote this review, stating that you're the one who is killing Americans, who
is smashing people's faces in. And, ultimately, the dev's have a message for
you, because it's not a game for people who want to be a hero and play these
kinds of shooters - it's a game about those people.
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| This is the real tipping point of the game. It's not nice. |
You can figure this out by the way the game starts to shift
it's focus, breaking the fourth wall during loading screens with little
snippets that say things like "This is all your fault." "How
many American's have you killed today?" And, my favorite "To kill for
yourself is selfish. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for
entertainment is harmless." I could say a lot more, but I feel I'm getting
dangerously close to spoiling parts of the game, and perhaps, have already
given away a bit too much. Still, this is a pretty harsh criticism of a genre
that the game is actively participating in, with a bit of disjunctiveness
between the gameplay and the narrative, since the latter dislikes the former.
Ultimately I've got to recommend this game to everyone. I do
find the game mechanics to be interesting enough, but not enough to make the
game that worth while, rather focusing on the story and the combination between
the two. Frankly, even having a general idea of what was going to happen
through my past experiences with the inspiration, I was quite surprised by this
game, and perhaps more so that anyone would make it, since it's anything but a
"safe" game. There are special collectibles littered throughout the
game, and I would recommend that you try and pick them up, because many add to
the game, such as a snippet of someone's personnel file, or a doll that tells a
story all by itself. Doing that and taking some extra time to get a video
review, as well as dying plenty during the rougher parts of the game, means
that the experience lasted about 11 hours, which was much longer than I had
been told to expect, so you could probably cut the time down a bit if you're
not back tracking for stuff like I was. I could easily spend $15-20 on this
after having gone through it, and am almost disappointed I didn't pick it up
right away just so I could have paid full price for it as a reward to the ones
behind it. Quite possibly the best game I have ever played, and certainly the
most adult in nature - 10 out of 10.
So, the final breakdown:
Score: 10/10
Suggested Price: $15-20
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