Spec Ops The Line

Subject: Spec Ops The Line Sat Feb 23, 2013 9:54 am

After having heard this game is inspired by the story Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, i decided to pick up this game and see what all the fuss what about.

Hindsight is always perfect, and i'm not sure it was a good idea to play this game.

The story begins with Dubai being engulfed in the biggest sand storms ever recorded, we're talking entire buildings buried in sand, hundreds of thousands...maybe millions dead. An American battalion, the 33rd, is returning from a tour in afghanistan and is volunteered by its Lt Colonel, aptly named John Konrad, to aid the evacuation of the city. The evacuation is a complete failure with the UAE government declaring Dubai a no go zone. The storm wall prevents any access or radio transmission and the city goes dark.

Several months later a radio transmission was able to penetrate the storm wall, a message from Lt Colonel Konrad declaring that the evacuation failed with massive casualties. An elite Delta Force Recon team led by Captain Martin Walker and his squadmates Lieutenant Alphonse Adams and Sergeant John Lugo are sent to investigate...

The gameplay is mostly your standard third person cover based shooter, you can issue some commands to your squad to target enemies and revive fallen squad mates but they cannot revive you if you go down. The game can have quite a steep change in difficulty depending on what setting you choose though they all share the same idea that you are not a bullet sponge...you can only take a few shots before being killed. It has the usual mix of weapons for a modern shooter, though most have a secondary mode which can help in certain situations where stealth or long range accuracy may be needed, there are a couple of on rails sections aswell where you must defend yourself from hordes of attackers. Also the game has multiple endings depending on your actions which is again a nice change from the linear shooters so popular these days. There is multiplayer but i haven't bothered with it so i won't discuss it.

Some things that annoyed me in the game was the developer assigning like four different actions to the same button, sprint, take cover, heal ally, and use items like emplaced machine guns all use the X button on PS3, this can lead to some frustrating deaths where instead of taking cover like you wanted to you end up healing an ally and getting shot while doing it. Another thing which i noticed though its not a huge deal is sometimes (and i mean like a few times in the entire game) there is some low res textures with the high res ones popping in after a few seconds.

Spec Ops also takes the opposite route to most shooters in that it does not glorify anything you do, there is no mom, apple pie and american flag waving as you mow down hundreds of faceless enemies. On the contrary you end up

Spoiler:

Executions can be performed on wounded enemies. I wouldnt perform them so much if they didn't provide extra ammo which is scarce through the game since the city has been abandoned. This was probably a developer choice to force you to do these horrible acts to push the horrors of war theme. Bodies are everywhere, torture is evident through transmissions over loudspeakers throughout the city and illegal weapons and tactics become the norm.

This was the beginning of the decent into darkness for the character and myself the player, as the game goes on Walker becomes more violent in his actions and how he speaks. The start of the game you are Delta Operatives giving clear orders in impeccable uniforms...as the game progresses your team becomes more disheveled and bloodied and irritable towards each other as the actions of your team and the things they are seeing all around them start to tear at their humanity and the dialogue becomes more aggresive to the point where command and control is replaced by rage, vengeance and insubordination.

Spec Ops The Line Spec-ops-the-line-20120202010729903-000

Spec Ops The Line Spec-ops-the-line-20120202010729903-000

The soundtrack to the game is sublime with bands like Alice in Chains, The Black Angels and Nine inch Nails setting the mood for the horror and just the sheer insanity of whats happening and whats to come, here is a few examples, try not to read the video comments or you will have the game spoiled.

At a certain point in the game there is a sequence which left me so horrified that i felt physically ill at what i had just done. I knew this was a game but it felt truly horrifying that my actions had caused this. Once you play the game, you will understand. This is the breaking point for the team as your character starts losing his grip on reality, becoming more disheveled, brutal and angry in his quest to find Konrad and the truth of what is going on in Dubai. By the games end...and after the final realisation of why everything happened... i felt so weary, guilty and sick that i hated myself after all that i had seen and done in the game. Even the loading screens show disgust at you. The imagery of what i had done in the game...especially the sequence that left me feeling sick will haunt me for the rest of my days.

There is no winning in Spec Ops The Line...you just lose more as you move forward.

Do you feel like a hero yet?

Spec Ops The Line Spec-ops-6

Certified IGN Reposter **Stature** : 194

Subject: Re: Spec Ops The Line Sat Feb 23, 2013 1:36 pm

Finally a game where i get to kill dem murikans

Subject: Re: Spec Ops The Line Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:05 pm

tahmidk wrote:: Finally a game where i get to kill dem murikans

I don't get it. If it's a spoiler then don't say it, I wanna play this game.

Subject: Re: Spec Ops The Line Sat Feb 23, 2013 7:10 pm

It's a joke that one of the comedic supporting cast says, it's funny because he's Jewish

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