It's been more than a year since I've seen Spec Ops: The Line. In fact, I'm one of the few people to have played Spec Ops, back at a pre-E3 event in Los Angeles in 2010. It was an unofficial session, as previews were limited to eyes-on impressions, so I won't go into too much detail about it. But even then, it was clear that Spec Ops: The Line had a long way to go.

Now, 18 months later, I've played more than an hour of a Spec Ops that feels solid and functional -- current, even. But now that The Line seems well on its way to relevancy as a game, developer Yager faces what might be an even bigger obstacle. In a quest for a literary sort of statement and message, Spec Ops: The Line has the baggage of the entire medium to overcome.