In the video game medium, shooters
tend to be the equivalent of summer blockbusters. Their plots rarely make you think, the
characters are serviceable and sometimes good but never come close to BioWare
level of fleshed out, their usually tends to be more emphasis on multiplayer
then single player, they revel in how many explosions they can make and how high
they can make their body counts and they almost always end up as best sellers. However, Spec
Ops: The Line promised something different.
Part of a franchise that went defunct back in the early 2000s, Spec Ops: The Line was announced back in
2009 and was developed under the new game development company, Yager Development. And when I played the demo a while back, I
decided that I needed to play the full game.
And seeing as how everyone else is either distracted with Dawnguard, Lego Batman 2, or the Mass
Effect 3 Extended Cut, I decided to give this game some attention,
considering no one else is. So does Spec Ops: The Line prove that shooters
can have great stories as well as intense gameplay, or is it just cheap cash in
on the genera with a lot of false advertising?
Read on to find out.
The
game takes place in U.A.E. city of Dubai six months after a series of massive
sand storms hit the city and effectively cut it off from the rest of the
world. Before the city went dark however
a colonel by the name of John Konrad volunteered his regiment, the 33rd,
to help evacuate the city. Unfortunately
things didn’t go as planned and the regiment effectively deserted the army
after Konrad refused an order to abandon the city. The last anyone had heard from the 33rd,
Konrad was about to attempt to lead a caravan of people out of the city. Two weeks before the game starts a message
comes out of the city, telling of the failure of the caravan and the deaths of
many. The army decides to covertly send
a Delta Force team to investigate. What
they find, much to their surprise is civil war in the city between the 33rd,
led by Konrad, and armed civilians, armed and led by various CIA agents and the
recon team is forced to fight for their lives and find out just what the hell
happened within the city and get the survivors out.
And I have to say that when they
promoted this game for its Heart of
Darkness type story, they were not falsely advertising. This is probably the only shooter out there
that I can honestly say has a really intelligent plot, full of twist that I
didn’t see coming, digging into intense themes with heavy visuals to compliment
it, taking a lot of inspiration from Apocalypse
Now! without directly ripping off it.
While the plots of games like Modern
Warfare, Black Ops, Halo, and Gears aren’t horrible by any means, they aren’t exactly what I
would call thought provoking. This is a
game that really digs into themes that no other developer that I know of has
ever addressed and contains really dark plot elements to compliment it, and to
be honest I’m honestly surprised that the game hasn’t gained more controversy
over it. And believe me, when I say
these elements and themes are dark they are DARK, often digging into what is acceptable
for the military to do and what is not.
Whereas other games would probably draw a distinct line on this and tell
the gamer what is right and wrong matter Spec
Ops does not, often putting you into “us or them” type situations and/or
revenge dilemmas and leaves the gamer to choose what he or she thinks is ultimately
right or wrong without being preachy about it.
A prime example of this is the question over who the real villains
are. You have the military, which are
apparently a bunch of tyrants, the CIA led civilians who are constantly being
intentionally led to horrible deaths by their leaders and then there is your
group who constantly seem to make situations worse for both sides as the game
goes on.
There are, however, two major issues
I have with the plot and I can’t help but turn my head at these things in
confusion. The first thing is that I’m
not really sure about the whole “city being destroyed by sand storms”
thing. Now I openly admit that I don’t
know how sand storms work but I just find it a little hard to believe that sand
storms can constantly hit a city like that for months on end, effectively
cutting it off from the rest of the world and making it all but
uninhabitable. The other, and the bigger
one for me, is the ending. I don’t want
to spoil too much for you but it’s one of those weird, narrative shattering
endings and, quite frankly, I didn’t think the ending needed it and it just
raised so many questions and confuse the hell out me.
But all around the storyline of this
game was fantastic. The situations, the
themes, the atmosphere, and the way everything was built up was just
incredible. To put it simply, more
videogames need to follow this game’s example in how to tell a story. If for no other reason than this, the game is
worth checking out for its story because it is incredible.
Like
the plot, the characters are fantastic and complement the plot perfectly. For starters you have the three main
characters, Captain Walker, Lieutenant Adams, and Sergeant Lugo who are all incredibly
compelling characters and have their own arcs.
Adams and Lugo both have their own sense of right and wrong and as the
game goes on serve as kinds of moral compasses for Walker but the game is smart
enough never to make either one of them right or wrong in any given situation,
adding to the moral ambiguity that made the plot so good. As the game goes on we see how the situation
in Dubai affects them both physically and mentally we legitimately care for
what happens to them and even question whether or not we actually want them to
succeed given the way they’ve developed and how they’ve affected the city.
While
I do question the voice casting decision for Konrad, the writing for the
character was top notch and adds yet another dark element to an already dark
and demented game. While he is similar
to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now!
in physical appearance and the things he addresses, he is different enough to
where he is his own character and not a direct rip off. The same thing can be said for the about The
Radioman; a voice who constantly gives the 33rd news about what the
protagonists are doing much to their inconvenience. While he is obviously inspired by the
photojournalist from Apocalypse Now!,
(listen to his voice and tell me he doesn’t sound like Dennis Hopper), their
again is enough differences in their dialog and role to ensure that he is his
own character.
While
they don’t offer nearly as much to the game as other characters, the various
CIA agents leading the civilians against Konrad add even more uncertainty to
the game. While they are the closest
thing you have to allies in this city, their actual motives remain a mystery
and when revealed you find yourself disgusted by the fact that you worked with
them.
One thing that I found really
interesting was how the tone of their voices changed throughout the course of
the game. Now I’m not just talking about
the way they do in cut scenes but the way they do in gameplay combat
situations. When the game starts, they
talk in tones that are similar to the way the characters always talk in games
like Mass Effect or Gears of War. By the time the game reaches its final act
the tone of their voices completely shifts.
Walker’s voice becomes hoarse and there is a lot more rage to it and he
is clearly more passionate about killing his enemies and has an almost obsessed
hatred of them. The tone of your two
teammates also shifts, going from taking your combat orders without question to
grudgingly doing what you say, with clear resentment and distain in their
voices. It’s something that’s really
interesting to see and I honestly don’t think there is another game out there
that actually does this and I hope to see more games that do this.
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Graphics wise, the game is slightly
above average and its visuals match the game’s tone perfectly. You actually see physical damage, dirt, dried
blood and sand on the characters over the character over the course of the game,
(you would be surprised at the number of games that don’t do this. Looking at you, Gears 3!). Oh and the music
in this game is frikkin awesome. It’s
really weird, but music from the Vietnam War era always compliments these kinds
of stories perfectly and almost makes the game feel like a throwback to the
1970s anti-war films like The Deer Hunter
or Apocalypse Now!
But despite all the good things that
I have to say about the plot and characters, where this game really dropped the
ball was in the gameplay aspect and it really drags the game down. Combat mechanics are that of a basic 3rd
Person Shooter and don’t really bring in anything new to the table short of
burying your enemies under tons of sand, (which can be satisfying). However, the actual combat often comes off as
stiff and clunky and the control layout doesn’t really help with action buttons
placed in areas that often seem to contradict those of other third person
shooters. The enemy AI is a little on
the slow side often slow to react to your presence and often run out into open
areas without cover and can make some battles a massacre.
The
multiplayer fails on nearly every front, with very generic leveling systems and
multiplayer types that we’ve seen a dozen times before and fails utterly to
bring anything new to the table. While
the maps in this game are big, this ends up becoming an annoyance given the
fact that there only 8 people are allowed per match and you’ll find yourself spending
way too much time looking for people to kill rather than actually
fighting. Add to this is the fact that
the gameplay mechanics seem even stiffer and clunkyer in multiplayer and you
get something that just fails to impress in anyway.
So,
did Spec Ops: The Line deliver on all
of its promises? Well, in the story and
character department, yes. It does for
videogames what Apocalypse Now! did for films and what The Heart of Darkness did for books in the plot, themes and
character department and that’s where the strength of this game lies; in the
sheer darkness of all the things it shows. Unfortunately the gameplay really drags the experience
down and in this regard, it feels like it was developed back in 2008 or
something, (four years can be a lifetime for games), with mechanics that were
innovative back then but are more than a little old now. I really wanted to like this game a lot more
and give it a high rating and recommendation.
At worst it’s a solid rental for a campaign playthrough and at best it’s
worth the 50 bucks that it costs on STEAM but I would wait for the price to
drop a little more before making any decisions on buying it. Ultimately, the story is worth playing
through but the lack of innovation in gameplay just drags the whole thing down
and that’s my final word on this game.
All
Around
7/10
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