![]() ![]() ![]() While most games make some sort of flourishing “finishing move” out of killing an incapacitated enemy, Spec Ops: The Line portrays it as a mercy killing. It gets a bit more intense than normal when explosive weapons blow enemies to pieces and headshots from powerful weapons blow enemies’ heads off. ![]() A larger amount of blood splatters on the floor or wall when an enemy is hit in the head. Most of the in-game violence is fairly typical. This violence is not for some sick satisfaction, but a disturbingly brutal and real portrayal of the horrors of war. But this game sets out to depict war as absolute hell, and it pulls no punches in doing so. Not just because of how graphic it is the sheer amount of blood and gore has nothing on the likes of Gears of War. So let’s see who should be playing this game in the first place before we get into why those who do will find it rewarding. But when the refugees turn out to be hostile, Walker and his men are seemingly stuck in a battle for their survival in a place that ensures a high cost for such determination.Ī story like this can be powerful (especially in an interactive medium such as video games), but certainly is not fit for all age groups. Captain Martin Walker is sent with a small team of two other soldiers to investigate. In a genre mostly consisting of simple invasion plots, overly simple morality (despite the gunning down, however justified, of hundreds of your fellow man), and characters that never rise beyond the most basic of character tropes, Spec Ops: The Line tells the story of a soldier’s slow descent into madness as he loses more and more of his humanity to a conflict in which there is no clear right and wrong, only what seemingly “needs to be done.” When Dubai is all but destroyed by a horrifying and seemingly endless sandstorm, the soldiers sent to evacuate the city drop from contact for months. ![]() What sets this game apart and ensures it a permanent place in your memory is the story. The campaign’s gameplay is enjoyable but unremarkable, and the multiplayer is functional but forgettable. And the multiplayer is basically third-person Call of Duty with an even more poorly-balanced leveling system that ensures those who have played longer will win easier. It does a few cool things with the control scheme, but it’s still pretty simple. The mechanics are largely familiar third-person, cover-based shooting reminiscent of Gears of War, with the more realistic damage thresholds of Call of Duty and a splash of strategic squad commanding that makes it feel mildly tactical at best. So you’ll forgive me for having passed off Spec Ops: The Line as more of the same. But ever since Call of Duty fast-forwarded its setting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, we’ve gotten a slew of samey military shooters with weak stories, bland art direction, stereotypical characters, lazily-designed campaigns made as an afterthought to the multiplayer, and the exact same basic shooting mechanics as every other game in the genre. Even the shooter craze spawned by Halo got us some unique sci-fi settings. At least when everyone was copying Bejewled we got hidden gems like Puzzle Quest. At least when everyone decided to rip off Mario we got some interesting new platforming mechanics out of the deal. The modern military shooter genre is getting old. ![]()
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