When I first played Spec Ops: The Line way back at the Gadget Show Live I told them it was a lot like Call of Duty but in third person, they took it well seeing it as more of a compliment. However, the more I played the game the more I realised that I was wrong, so very wrong.
The game is set in Dubai, one of the richest places on Earth. And for those of you that don’t know, Dubai is surrounded by desert, which means water is quite important. Anyway, things fuck up and some dick ends up hoarding all of the water. Meaning that he can pretty much control everything in Dubai.
You play a rough ‘n’ tough soldier who was sent in to look for survivors in Dubai, and while you’re there you begin to realise the place has a lot of issues. It’s pretty much a war zone, and you take it upon yourself to find out why. You start off killing crazy generic guys with guns, who look like random rebels from Dubai or something.
The game instantly encourages you to shoot glass and bring down sand on your enemies, it’s an interesting mechanic, in battlefield you could drop pylons and buildings on people, so seeing them do a lighter version of this with sand is pretty smart. The buildings in Dubai are notoriously big, so it makes sense that you can’t knock them over.
The game is pretty standard for gun play, third person shooter, simple cover system. One thing that did surprise me was that you only have to tap the sprint button on and off, not hold. It made a lot of sense but wasn’t exactly ground breaking. Very noticeable though. The most interesting is the interaction with sand, it amazes me how something like sand can play such a big part in a shooter.
You can stun enemies with it by dropping it on them, push them over and drown them with it, and even use it to provide light cover, like a smoke grenade. This is because when you throw a grenade the explosion fires the sand up and it gets in the eyes of the enemy, crippling their vision.
The game has a good (Not great) range of weapons, but each one feels like a gun, you don’t get a half arsed pea shooter thing, desert eagles, AA12s, all of the most fun toys are available. There are 3 kinds of grenades, frag, stick and stun. Or it might be flash, I don’t care, they do the same thing. You have to use your arsenal to take on US troops, CIA, Dubai fighters, and maybe even a civilian or two. There’s also heavy troopers. Which basically walk around with over sized guns and take more bullets, like usual. And one special weapon, but I won’t ruin the surprise.
So the gameplay doesn’t scream out, but it’s fun and enjoyable, simple and straight forward. But, the gold is in the story, following a squad of three with the only thing to stop them turning insane is their witty banter, which dries up pretty quickly. Here’s a video to show some of the humour of the game, it’s a RAW file, so this is exactly how it was in game
As you fight through Dubai you see what war really does to people, you have to make choices that really feel like they have an effect on the game, you see your squad turn on you, you see your choices get people killed and enemies become friends.
I really began to connect with the characters in the game, I felt as though I was with the squad the whole time, something that I rarely feel in a game. So when I saw my squad arguing I felt as though I had to try and find a balance of choices to please them both.
The story really develops, and for lack of a better phrase, mind fucks you. You see a psychological story that I don’t think anyone has seen in a game before, it turned the whole game upside down and changed my view on it completely.
So, to summarise, gameplay: Nothing too amazing, but still good and interesting. The story though, fuck me, it was like a hooker injecting an STD into my brain. In a good way.
Also, fun trivia, there’s an achievement for killing an animal, this is because one of the game testers was really pleased you could kill animals on it, how do I know that? Well when I played the preview I said to a developer “Holy shit you can shoot animals, pew pew pew.” And then he told me about the game tester.
Here’s a video to show the gritty side, but it’s of one of the endings, so I suggest that you don’t really take a look unless you really don’t care
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