Review: Spec Ops – The Line

Some of you might already know that playing video games is a favorite hobby of mine and now I’ll be able to write about my thoughts on games as they get released here in Kuwait. Mark worked out a deal with the local online game rental service Digumz.com who will be providing the games for me as soon as they’re out. I’ll be reviewing a game every week or two depending on when they get released and if there aren’t any new releases I’ll probably write about an older game I find worth sharing.

This week I’ll be reviewing a fairly new release called Spec Ops: The Line, spoilers will be kept to a minimum.

[YouTube]

Spec Ops: The Line is not your ordinary war themed video game. It isn’t anything like Call of Duty, Battlefield or Medal of Honor. Spec Ops: The Line has a proper, mature script that will have you talking about the game long after you put the controller down. The gameplay is flawed and has trouble dealing with the issues that the script raises, but it’s still a lot of fun to play. Think of it this way: if Call of Duty is a Michael Bay movie, Spec Ops: The Line is Apocalypse Now (which it has been compared to). There was some controversy in our region due to the fact that the game takes place in a destructed Dubai. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is. All major metropolises get destroyed in games and movies; how many times has New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo been demolished by either a giant monster, war or aliens? As far as I’m concerned, the fact that Dubai is destroyed in this game is a good thing. If the UAE government is concerned about the portrayal of their citizens, then they have nothing to worry about. In the game, Dubai may resemble real Dubai, but it’s not an exact replica. You’ll see skyscrapers that look like they should belong in Dubai, but you won’t see an exact copy of Burj Khalifa.

For those who haven’t heard of Spec Ops: The Line, it’s a third person shooter that puts you in the shoes of Martin Walker – a Delta Force operative (along with his squad-mates) – on a rescue mission in Dubai which has been ravaged and destroyed by catastrophic sandstorms, leaving the city mostly abandoned with its inhabitants either dead, evacuated or stranded. There’s no electricity, no infrastructure and no water. An army unit tries to evacuate the city, but fails so they retreat back into Dubai and this is where you come in: the hero, the rescuer. Or so you think.

There aren’t any major flaws with the game, only some minor issues here and there. First, the character animations can be a little off in certain scenes. There are some minor control issues, like trying to move while in cover and accidentally moving out of cover. The enemy A.I. is pretty good for the most part; they’ll try to flank you, toss grenades at you to draw you out and even charge at you with shotguns or knives, but sometimes an enemy will just stop in the middle of the firefight and freeze. They don’t shoot, they don’t run for cover. This doesn’t happen too often, but when it does, you’ll notice it.

Shooting in this game is fun. There are a variety of weapons that you can pick up for whatever tactics you choose to go about killing your foes. If you want to stay back and snipe them, you can. If you prefer to be a little more up close and personal, then shotguns are for you. Your character can only hold two weapons so make sure you decide correctly before a firefight unless you want to try and pick up your enemies’ dropped weapons while you’re under constant fire. What I also like about this game is that it doesn’t follow a very generic formula where you enter a room, clear it of enemies, enter another room, rinse and repeat. Firefights in this game are usually spanned out in a large area, where you’ll need to strategically move from cover to cover and if you hang around in one place too long the enemy will get you. Visually, the game is really easy on the eyes, Dubai and the levels are at times quite stunning to look at. You’ll notice scratches, sweat and blood on your character. Music in this game is also topnotch; you’ll hear tunes from Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Mogwai among some other artists.

So what differentiates Spec Ops from other games in this genre? You won’t be killing your typical cliche Arab terrorists; you’ll be killing American soldiers. You’re not necessarily the great American hero that’s welcomed and cheered on. This game will make you question your in-game actions and motives more so than that controversial airport level in Modern Warfare. This game will force you to use questionable tactics and then it will force you to bear witness to the consequences. You’ll see Walker develop over the course of the game, which is something you rarely see when it comes to games that deal with war. This game also has a handle on other war games because it deals with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), which is a very serious and tragic issue. The flaw here is that the game doesn’t give you any real choices. Even as you, the gamer, know something is off, but obviously the developers don’t want to give you a choice. They intentionally want to make you feel uncomfortable. When it comes to games that let me choose (for example Mass Effect), I’m usually good. I’m not used to dealing with gray moral dilemmas and I’m not used to choosing the lesser of two evils. In one instance, the game stopped being fun for me just because I felt bad – I was forced to do something I didn’t want to, and in this case, I applaud the developers, because isn’t that a part of war? Sometimes soldiers are forced to do things that they would normally choose not to do, but an order is an order and you have to follow it.

Call of Duty, Battlefield and Medal of Honor are fun games but they don’t touch upon any serious topics and character development is generally scarce in war games. You never question who you’re shooting and why. You are told who the bad guys are, that they’re evil and that you should shoot them. Spec Ops: The Line isn’t perfect, but it’s an interesting take on modern generic wargames. Is it worth buying? Once you beat single player (which should take about 10 or so hours), there is a multiplayer mode similar to Max Payne 3, but I personally didn’t really get into it. It’s definitely worth a play-through though. The story should be experienced and even though not everyone will love it, I think the majority will appreciate what this game is trying to achieve.

Spec Ops: The Line was provided by Digumz.

Posted by Patrick