So I bought "Spec Ops: The Line" on Steam sale two days ago. It was a third-person action game I'd been lining up to get for a while.
I'll open this review by saying I'm a "Battlefield 3" person when it comes to action gaming. I love BF3, but really went off CoD after Modern Warfare 1.
Now, when I first saw Spec Ops flash up on Steam, I immediately started rolling my eyes when I saw the cover picture:
How generic does that look? It's almost like someone copy-pasted the typical "Cool CoD pose" soldier and put it on a new game.
Exactly. Because once you play Spec Ops, you realise that's just what the developers were going for. You start the game, expecting to be playing Call of Duty: America Saves The World Again and instead you get something quite different.
Quite different indeed. Because Spec Ops: The Line has much more in common with a horror game than an action shoot-'em-up.
Set in Dubai in the near future, the city has been ravaged for months by a gigantic sandstorm. The US government completely loses contact with a Colonel and his troops sent in to evacuate the populace (Colonel Konrad and his 33rd Battalion). The result is that the player (Captain Martin Walker) and his two underlings (Lugo and Adams) are sent into Dubai to assess the situation and report back.
Initial gameplay is disarmingly generic. Lugo is your typical "Sniper with a sense of humour", and wisecracks constantly. Adams is the painfully stereotypical "black guy heavy weapons specialist". As you walk towards the ruined city, you get all the usual bullshit "America, hell yeah!" nationalism spouting out, as you'd expect in CoD or even BF 3.
The first enemies are foreign insurgents. Again, so far, so "Battlefield of Duty". Then, before you know it you're killing fellow American soldiers, witnessing genuinely shocking war crimes...and even committing barbaric acts yourself.
It's as the game progresses that the tone takes this subtle but continuous dark slide, finishing up in an abyss of despair that I don't think any previous action shooter has even thought of venturing to.
This shift of mood is shown amazingly well in not only the well-acted cutscenes, but also the mannerisms and appearance of the squad and player character during actual gameplay.
Walker himself starts the game clean-shaven, macho and confident of his heroic ability to save the day. When you order Lugo and Adams to take down enemies, he's precise and efficient. By the end of the game, however, he's scarred and broken, his eyes displaying a prominent thousand-yard-stare.
The orders you give your men start to sound borderline psychotic, and even the finishing moves you perform on wounded enemies progress from mercy killings to sadistic, unhinged executions. Your own squad becomes frightened of you.
As an example: early on Walker might say: "Lugo, neutralise that sniper." This becomes: "Lugo, kill that guy." and finally morphs into an enraged gravelly scream of "Lugo, I want that motherfucker DEAD! NOW!"
But what triggers this disturbing change in personality? Well, from the moment you arrive in Dubai, it's evident things are very, very bad there. As the game progresses, the excellent story gives you some really tough choices. Almost every choice you make, regardless of your intentions, becomes a bad one; this culminates in a horrifying decision you're forced to go through with that has appalling moral consequences.
It was this particular event that actually made me pause the game with discomfort. I'd crossed the titular "line", through no real fault of my own (other than wanting to play a good game I'd paid money for), and it felt horrible in the best possible way. The game had made an emphatic moral statement, directly to me, the player.
Following on, the ending is a masterstroke: a twist revelation that heartbreakingly undermines not only your character's obsessive glory-seeking, but that of your own desire for "glory and fun" through entertainment too.
Interestingly, for me the most shocking moment of the game wasn't any particular "forced" sequence, but instead a pretty standard on-rails shooter sequence. Given the opportunity of finally leaving a huge group of hostile soldiers behind and escaping in a helicopter, your character shouts that he doesn't want to leave as you begin to fly away.
Completely confused, your pilot almost begs you to just let him fly out of there as the enemy gunfire begins to hit the chopper. "No.", Walker growls, steadying a mini-gun mounted to the fuselage. "I want to see what this gun can do!"
The following shooting sequence, which most games play for fun, suddenly becomes a drawn-out foray into needless carnage that made me more uncomfortable than even the harshest of the "scripted horrors" the game had laid out for me previously.
--
Summary:
While I've said little of actual gameplay here, I think this echoes the focus of the game. Spec Ops is primarily story-driven, and truly has a fantastic narrative that will get you thinking not only about the rights and wrongs of warfare, but also how we unthinkingly lap it up as exciting entertainment in the media these days.
The gameplay itself is reminiscent of Gears of War - if you like 3rd person shooters with cover elements, you will be happy here. It doesn't particularly innovate (there are no truly unique gameplay features), but the shooting on offer is very solid and I didn't find myself frustrated by even the most challenging segments.
Graphics are universally very good. Dubai has a bunch of varied, colourful interiors (a huge aquarium penthouse was my favourite) and the characters look fantastic. Animations are smooth too.
"The horror...the horror."
Final word:
If you want an interesting shooter with varied environments that will give you scope to make your own decisions (and live with the consequences), give Spec Ops a try. Even if you don't typically like 3rd Person Shooters, it's worth a look for the mature and compelling story.
Just be aware that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Score: 5/5
[*][*][*][*][*]
No comments:
Post a Comment