Spec Ops: The Line

[Rick_D]

so.. i finally sat down and gave this a fair shot. it's actually fucking brilliant. and judging by the complete lack of pages in this thread it seems a lot of people didn't give enough of a fuck to try it out.

that'd be a big mistake, seriously. go give it a try, leave your feels at the door, there'll be plenty of them inside.

[e-freak]

controller or mouse/keyboard? have this sitting here and didn't try it yet!

[Sentura]

playing it currently, i'm about 8 or 9 chapters in. story is very interesting, i like how you actually getting involved in big shit in a coherent manner. gunplay is really tiresome though, getting some combat fatigue rivaled only by halo and killzone

[Sentura]

finished it. i liked the story, but i'm a bit disappointed by how few choices i could make that would turn out bad. having the character issue the orders instead of giving me the choice removed the suspension of disbelief for me, which i guess is why i don't feel anything here. i'd really have appreciated having two options and both of them being bad instead.

[Erratic]

Finished this a few days ago. It's pretty much as stock a shooter as they come. And with every atrocity they show it seems like the next one is just trying to one up the previous. That shit works in moderation, not so much when it's just one after the other. Changing Walkers VO and making the executions more savage as the game progresses was neat. The fight club ending was odd, I don't know if that sent the message home or not, cause it mostly just confused me. All those situations could have played out the way you initially perceive them and nothing would have changed. Or maybe I missed something.

I liked the first level where I could shoot people right away during the stand off instead of having to listen to their dialogue, though. That should have been a recurring aspect through the whole game. Also I tried not to use the white phosphorus and they just up the damage on the enemies so it forces you to use it, boooo.

[Algor]

My favorite part in the demo of this Nolan North simulator was when I shot a knife wielding lunatic with a rocket. The $10 price tag and your kind words have touched my heart. Purchased.

[Mazy]

Played through it in the summer. Honestly a sub par shooter, but I thought they did some pretty interesting stuff with the narrative (especially towards the end) that definitely lifted it up from being completely generic. By no means a terrible game, I think they did right by releasing it during the summer, otherwise I'd never gotten around to playing it.

[Rick_D]

thing about the combat.. i don't think it's MEANT to be anything other than the usual cover shooter, and that's kinda the point. you plow through the game killing everyone the same way you've been doing for years, thinking nothing of it as you move between objective markers.

the atrocities may have been over the top, but i was playing some MW3 today and some of the shit you do there is so obscene when you look at it from the angle spec-ops was coming from - yet you just chalk it up as another "epic" moment and move on to the next slaughter trigger.

i think they did something pretty brave, especially considering you play nathan drake, killing hundreds of american soldiers, who writhe on the floor screaming in pain until you execute them (wtf) or just leave them to die slowly. the music that plays in the heavy combat arenas is genius, considering it's coming from a radio station that exists in your head.

i hate to be 2deep4u soEdgy5real but i think the problem is the game went over peoples heads. i don't think it can be discounted because it had "bad mechanics" when those mechanics seem to be designed that way for a reason.

honestly i thought it was a shit game the first time i picked it up, but it's definitely an under-rated classic and will probably be remembered more fondly in years to come as the current FPS action shittery collapses in on itself.

[dux]

It did go over peoples heads completely. The majority of people looked at the combat and immediately debunked it as another generic cover based shooter which you can't blame them for in a way as that's all it is at the start but for those who stick with it get a real sweet reward I think, at least I liked what it turned into. I was pretty impressed with it.

I'm still not too sure about which parts were real and which parts you were... you know. And that's what made it cool for me.

[Erratic]

I'd heard about about some of this stuff going in and it's still no excuse for the game being a mediocre run throughout. And yeah, knowing what the game was chasing before hand probably didn't help but I'm still not really seeing it. Yeah, shooting american soldiers (like 600 of them wtf, did they send an entire regiment to get trapped in Dubai?) is messed up but it's not SHOCKING on any level but a distant intellectual fart. I can appreciate what they were going for but there's really nothing beyond this singular idea of showing a mirror up to the player to really latch onto. There's almost zero logic to the entire scenario, there's no interesting characters but angry shit talking grunts, and the games combat is as stock as they come.

Who sends 3 guys on a rescue mission? Why did the rescue mission suddenly turn into a blood bath after one case of friendly fire? Am I supposed to believe Walker (Me) is just completely insane while he (I) have zero choice in the matter? It's one thing to approach this material and another to approach it in the context of a game. If you're going for the latter, give me some choice, otherwise everything feels like a contrived, in your face setup for the writer to get his rocks off. Which is probably the case. If you're going to be didactic, at least entertain me.

[Sentura]

it's not so much went over people head as much as the approach it took just wasn't feasible. i didn't get the oh shit moments because i was feeling to frustrated to feel the game. i guess they didn't account for that because apparently mechanic fatigue is something that is still not fully understood or whatever. and that's just one part of it. i'm with JP on this that the choices are not made to make the player feel involved as a protagonist, but more as an observer.

another thing that kind of bothered me is that the people who made this most likely never served in a war or know how it is. so comes the problem of overdramatization. while the story stays sober for the most part (an insane man going loose on an entire battalion (i looked it up, it's 1200 men. just about what you kill throughout the game)), but there are some things that i just doubt would happen in a real life war scenario.

they used a lot of subtleties, granted, and many went over people's head. i remember an "illusion" i think it near the WP thing where you see a tree with leaves looking like it's fresh, then, if you look at it once you pass it, it's wilted. there are some nice touches, but way too hard for the average joe to find or figure out.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Sentura

[knj]

ok, so i've played this game, couse i heared that it is really good in terms of your character evolving and story wise - before that it was off my radar.

But i've gave it a try, and gameplay wise it is boring after the first part of the game (it has great using environment mechanivs tho), but God damn, the story and relations between you and two soldiers in your squad - this is intense.

Some great story twist

i wont event mention the end of the game which is just OMFG, but for instance using white Phosphorous to to kill many many soldiers, but instead you learn that you have killed many CV's - still can see the mother holding her doughter burned to ashes . . . and many more like this

this game is playing with you, giving you possibilities to make a choise, but EVERY SINGLE ONE is a bad one, you (player) ultimately start to feel bad with yourself and actions you have commited - really unique experience

and ending of this game is just crazy and still i have some theories and not sure how to interpret it

one of the most underrated games of 2012 IMO

Edited May 13, 2013 by knj

[Warby]

do you guys also have this moment of realization that a game is actually shit or brilliant month after you play it ?!

it happens to me constantly that i play something,finish it and think that was an "Alight" 7/10 game and 6 month down the line everything that i can remember from the game are the shit parts and the stuff that was broken and pissed me off!

leaving me to wondering how the fuck did i think that was a 7/10 experience ....

now specops the line is the exact opposite i also thought "its an 7/10 okay shoooter" right after finishing but now all i can remember are the awesome bits so "NOW" 3-4 month later is an AWESOME game in my mind 9/10 !

[Nysuatro]

I am not so sure if I understand. I might have to play it myself I guess

[knj]

it is one of these games you should play to get your point of view, deffo worth it