[Introduction]
Spec Ops: The Line is a third person cover-based shooter and the 10th game in the Spec Ops franchise. Everything about its gameplay is bog standard for its time and it does nothing to distinguish itself from its contemporary peers.
Except the story.
[First Impressions]
The first thing you might notice is, as has already heavily implied, that there is nothing at all remarkable about this game when you start out. Here you are, with your two BFF NPCs, going into a modern military shooter and all that that implies. You've got your two-weapon loadout and your cover mechanics. Nothing unusual. Nothing you haven't tried before. Maybe you can squeeze some fun out of what looks to be a borderline cookie cutter game.
[Development]
The first thing you might notice if you look into the development of Spec Ops: The Line is that it came out almost a full 10 years after its immediate predecessor in the franchise, Spec Ops: Airborne Commando, a 2002 title for the PS1. You might also notice that this predecessor was released 2 years after the PS2 became available and didn't exactly review particularly well, which should tell you how well things were going for Spec Ops. In fact, I'll just straight up tell you how well things were going: straight into the ground. The franchise was dead following the release of Airborne Commando.
This began to change in 2006, when Yager Development pitched a concept for a cover-based shooter to 2K Games. This was rejected, but was brought up again in 2007, when 2K proposed that Yager turn their shooter idea into a revival of the Spec Ops franchise, and the rest is history. Aside from what must have been some pretty intense writing sessions and storyboard meetings, development was pretty normal for a game like this.
EXCEPT THE MULTIPLAYER.
If you're anything like me (and I know I am), then you might be wondering why a story-focused game even has a multiplayer. In fact, near as I can tell, Yager wondered the same thing, but apparently 2K insisted on it. It wasn't even developed by Yager; the whole thing was outsourced almost entirely to another studio called Darkside Game Studios. In fact, don't just take my word for it. This next paragraph is straight from director and designer Cory Davis:
"The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package – it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating."
This is in addition to describing the whole shebang as a "waste of money" and a "low-quality Call of Duty clone." I promise you that this is no exaggeration. It was never very popular, but as of writing, it's effectively dead.
Oh, right, and the United Arab Emirates banned the game for showing Dubai in a state of destruction. It really doesn't matter much at all, but I suppose it warrants mentioning. Consider it mentioned.
[Game Mechanics]
There really isn't much to say. If you've played a cover-based shooter before, you've more or less played Spec Ops: The Line. You get two guns, and if that sounds like a limited loadout, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to learn that you can apply the illusion of freedom on top of it. Why is that? Because limited ammunition often forces you to use the weapons wielded by whoever you're fighting. Sure, you'll occasionally run into the odd ammo crate, but that's the exception rather than the norm.
The cover system is nothing out of the ordinary either. You run up to a piece of cover, hot glue yourself to it and pop up to shoot at whoever is shooting at you. To spice things up a bit, you could fire blindly, but 95% of the time, you're better off just waiting for your health to fill up or the enemy to stop shooting for a hot second.
Your AI buddies are decently competent, but frequently seem to suffer aneurysms, or maybe it's their dissociative disorder acting up, I don't know. Whatever the case, they sometimes have the wherewithal to shoot enemies, and sometimes... don't. Like the rest of the game, they're not bad, they're just unremarkable. I will admit, however, that calling targets can help their usefulness a lot. It just seems odd that I have to babysit them before they pull their weight.
An attempt was made to make the whole "sandpocalypse" scenario relevant to the player. There are sandstorms at key moments throughout the story that obscure vision and reduce accuracy for both you and the enemy, but these are little more than set pieces. There are parts of the environment that can be shot to literally drown enemies in sand, but this doesn't so much offer a dynamic combat environment as it provides an in-story end to firefights beyond just shooting a bunch of bad guys.
Executions and ziplines are another two shots at adding variety, with the former providing you with extra ammo for both equipped weapons and the latter adding vertical movement to mission areas. At least, that's how they're sold to you. In reality, executions offer paltry ammo rewards and often leave you exposed to enemy fire, taking precious seconds to carry out. Ziplines are just points of no return where you move on to the next section of a given mission and ensuring that you can't go back. The ziplines aren't bad, but executions are situational and pretty much a waste of time. Enemies drop their weapons and ammo when they die anyway, so you aren't missing out on much if you just shoot them the old-fashioned way.
[Graphics]
It looks nice.
I mean, of course it does, this is Unreal Engine 3 in 2012, how could it not look nice? Hell, in terms of just raw appearance, it still holds up today. The frequent use of a shaky cam does occasionally get annoying, but it goes well enough with the story's premise, the player's circumstance and the general feel of the game that I don't consider it worth really complaining about.
The real icing on the cake, however, is that the player model changes throughout the game. Same deal with your AI BFFs - you all look increasingly haggard as you get closer to the end. Injuries from firefights, raw skin from sandstorms, damaged equipment, it all fits together marvellously. You're not just experiencing a downward spiral. You look the part, too.
With the game's intense focus on details and its use of environment for narrative purposes, you won't find a whole lot of places where the devs got sloppy either. It's not a flawless work of art or anything, but I don't recall stumbling across blurred textures or clipping issues. At worst, you might notice some elements on certain models stretching to accommodate movement.
[Story]
Part of me considered whether I should just put the whole story segment in spoiler lockdown. It's hard to talk about it in any meaningful way without giving away too much, but I'll try.
The game starts with Walker and his buddies flying a helicopter through the ruins of Dubai. This lasts about five minutes before a mid-air collision and, significantly, a cut to black. Next time we see the Delta boys, they're entering the city from the open desert. Things are already feeling kinda weird, but the player is informed via exposition that their mission is really rather simple:
Go through through the storm. Find survivors. Go back through the storm. Radio for evac.
That's all you have to do. Of course, it'd be a pretty short game if that's all you actually do, so Walker quickly throws those orders out the window upon finding a dead American soldier. We're still not in spoiler territory, because this all happens before the 10 minute mark. So we've gone from recon to rescue - what now? Well, we keep going is what, and boy do we keep going. We have to contact the 33rd and their commanding officer, Konrad.
Walker continues to find more and more reasons to stay in Dubai rather than get the hell outta Dodge, the situation keeps escalating and shit keeps hitting the fan. It's all very compelling, and chances are you won't be questioning anything initially. Even if you do, Walker's motivations are awfully persuasive. No man left behind, right? You gotta do what's right.
And that's where Spec Ops: The Line really shines. The narrative is very human, for lack of a better term. Even though the vast majority of us have never been Delta Force operators, and likely never will be, there's an inherent relatability to the characters, their objectives, their motivations and their circumstance. This presentation of characters being actual people is certainly helped along by the gradual change in appearance, as well as the changes to voice lines. What begins as a professional squad in presentable gear communicating calmly but firmly eventually becomes a ragged band of beat up bastards yelling with more frustration in their voices than anything else. Even the executions become gradually more brutal as less and less holds are barred.
Moreover, when it's all over, you have an opportunity to reflect upon everything that happened, which I highly recommend that you do.
[SPOILERS - seriously, don't read this unless you've already seen the ending]
Would you believe me if I told you that turning off the game and not playing it anymore is considered an ending? I'm not joking. If you want, you can go into Dubai, encounter survivors, then turn off the game. This is representative of Walker and his team completing their mission as ordered. Of course, most people don't do this, because as the loading screen will eventually tell you:
Can you even remember why you came here?
And,
If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here.
There are many others, but both of these are true. By the time you've scorched the 33rd camp at The Gate, do you really remember how it came to this? Why are you continuing? Walker is constantly compelling his squad, as well as the player, to keep going, but why? The mission was completed long ago, survivors were already located, and at this point, Delta has killed more refugees than they'll ever save by continuing. Prior to the sandpocalypse, Dubai had a population numbering in the millions. Even now, what can 3 men possibly hope to accomplish that an entire regiment of US Army soldiers could not?
The answer is simple, and is even provided in-game: Walker wants to be a hero, and through his actions in Dubai, he becomes the very personification of the proverb "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Make no mistake, Walker's intentions are noble. He truly goes above and beyond the call of duty, which is commendable. The problem is that he's doing this without the means to actually accomplish what he's trying to do, and this inevitably leads him to a breaking point where his actions, though well-meaning, turn into atrocities. After this, he persistently blames everyone but himself, particularly Konrad.
Crucially, Walker also begins to hallucinate a great many things, up to and including his own death, and these tend to fade to white rather than cut to black. A popular theory is that cut to black means something actually happened, while fade to white implies hallucination. This ties into a belief held by Walt Williams, one of the writers, that Walker died when the helicopter crashed. It gets a little meta, but the notion is that Walker is in a sort of purgatory as punishment for his actions.
Even if you don't buy into that, the sheer attention to detail in presenting Walker's psychoses is impressive. Personally, I don't believe that Walker's urge to be a hero is something he's entirely conscious of, which only makes it even sadder. This is a man driven beyond the brink of madness by an all-overriding desire to do good, turned into an insane and self-loathing shadow of his former self because nothing played out how it was intended.
[Pros]
- Above all, the story. I'm so confident in this that I'm not even gonna list any other pros
[Cons]
- Everything but the story is unremarkable
- Multiplayer was a travesty and is dead
[Conclusion]
By and large, the gameplay of Spec Ops: The Line is perfectly serviceable, but the only real reason to buy it is to experience the story.
Moral compass optional. You didn't mean to hurt anybody.
/DUX
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