Spec Ops: The Line Message Board
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With Spring on the horizon, we figured it might be time to test a new format of delivering your PS Plus updates. This month, we’re providing an outlook of the major stuff hitting the Instant Game Collection in March with this update, but you’ll still want to check the weekly posts to see the discounts and any other freebies available to you as a PS Plus member.
To kick things off, the following games, displayed in no particular order, will be added to the Instant Game Collection throughout March!
PSN Price: $39.99, Free for PS Plus members
Set in a fictional Dubai which has been wiped off the map by a cataclysmic sandstorm, you’re tasked with leading your squad to find out what happened to the American squad that was sent in to rescue the city, and find out what lies buried beneath the sand, along with the world’s most opulent ruin. It’s a fascinating take on the shooter genre with white-knuckle gameplay and a powerful message only unraveled once you make it to the thrilling end moments of the game. Don’t miss it.
Joe Danger 2: The Movie (PS3)
PSN Price: $14.99, Free for PS Plus members
Take Joe Danger on a death-defying thrill ride across the set of the greatest blockbuster movie ever made. Chase crooks on your police bike, destroy laser firing robots with a stolen jetpack, escape giant boulders in a minecart, time-travel to punch dinosaurs and divert the nuclear missiles on your unicycle. Yes it’s as awesome as it sounds.
Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (PS Vita)
PSN Price: $39.99, Free for PS Plus members
One of the kings of strategy RPGs makes its debut in the Instant Game Collection! Take a field trip any time you want with Mao, Raspberyl, Almaz, and the rest of the Evil Academy gang with Disgaea 3 on PS Vita! Offering incredible depth and hours upon hours of strategy RPG goodness, Disgaea fans or RPG fans in general should have this one on their PS Vita, which features 5 new chapters on top of the original’s content.
The Cave (PS3)
PSN Price: $14.99, Free for PS Plus members
The Cave is a new adventure game from Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion creator Ron Gilbert, and Double Fine Productions. Assemble your team of three from seven unlikely adventurers, each with their own unique personalities and stories, then descend into the mysterious depths to explore locations including a subterranean amusement park and a medieval castle, not to mention a fully armed and ready-to-launch nuclear tipped ICBM. The Cave awaits.
Tekken 6 (PSP; Supported on PS Vita)
PSN Price: $39.99, Free for PS Plus members
Armed with the largest character roster ever in TEKKEN history, a robust single player game experience, countless mutiplayer and online options, and an addictive character customization system, the greatest fighting game franchise soars is here for PS Vita and PSP owners to add to their Instant Game Collection!
We hope you’re as excited as we are to see Joe Danger 2: The Movie (PS3), Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (PS Vita), Tekken 6 (PSP; Supported on PS Vita), and The Cave (PS3) which will be arriving throughout the month of March!
Leaving PS Plus In March- March 5th – Guardians of Middle Earth
- March 12th – Quantum Conundrum
- March 19th – Dungeon Defenders
- March 19th – Foosball 2012 PS Vita
- March 26th – Plants Vs Zombies
- Spec Ops: The Line (PS3)
- Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (PS Vita)
- Joe Danger 2: The Movie (PS3)
- Tekken 6 (PSP; Supported on PS Vita)
- The Cave (PS3)
For the week at hand, please welcome the critically acclaimed Spec Ops: The Line to the Instant Game Collection; meaning it’s free for PS Plus members to download starting with the March 5th PS Store update. We’ve also got week 2 of the PS Vita Anniversary Sale with a bevy of discounts on fantastic PS Vita games, with even deeper discounts if you’re a PS Plus member.
Spec Ops: The LinePSN Price: $39.99, Free for PS Plus members
Set in a fictional Dubai which has been wiped off the map by a cataclysmic sandstorm, you’re tasked with leading your squad to find out what happened to the American squad that was sent in to rescue the city, and find out what lies buried beneath the sand, along with the world’s most opulent ruin. It’s a fascinating take on the shooter genre with white-knuckle gameplay and a powerful message only unraveled once you make it to the thrilling end moments of the game. Don’t miss it.
PS Vita Anniversary Sale Week 2
Various Discounts
It’s week 2 of the PS Vita Anniversary Sale and the deals keep coming. To celebrate the PS Vita’s anniversary even more, pair up these discounts with the Get $10 For Every $50 Spent promo that’s on now. Remember, you’ll get $10 back for every $50 you spend throughout March. The earned credit will be sent to you on or around April 12th via email and XMB message on your PS3.
Discounts
Game Title Normal Price Sale Price Plus Price Army Corps Of Hell $39.99 $27.99 $19.59 Big Sky: Infinity (Cross Buy) $9.99 $6.99 $4.89 Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend $24.99 $17.49 $12.24 Dokuro $19.99 $9.99 $6.99 Dynasty Warriors Next $34.99 $24.49 $17.14 Knytt Underground (Cross Buy) $14.99 $10.49 $7.34 Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes $39.99 $27.99 $19.59 Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 $19.99 $13.99 $9.79 Lego Lord Of The Rings $39.99 $27.99 $19.59 Orgarhythm $19.99 $13.99 $9.79 Pure Chess $7.99 $5.49 $3.84 Retro City Rampage (Cross Buy) $14.99 $10.49 $7.34 Sine Mora $9.99 $6.99 $4.89 Spy Hunter $34.99 $24.99 $17.49 Street Fighter X Tekken PS Vita $39.99 $27.99 $19.59 Sumioni: Demon Arts $14.99 $10.49 $7.34 Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 PS Vita $39.99 $27.99 $19.59 BIT.TRIP Presents Runner2 Future Legend Of Rhythm Alien20% Discount for PS Plus Members – PSN Price: $14.99, PS Plus Price: $11.99
The BIT.TRIP series arrives to the PlayStation family this week, and what better way to welcome it than to pick up this new addition to the critically acclaimed series with a 20% release week discount. Runner2 merges rhythm-action platforming with incredible music and unique environments to run, jump, slide, and kick towards your goal. Check out the video above and also read the PS Blog article featuring Mike Roush, co-founder of Gaijin Games to hear about their additional plans to bring the series to PS Vita.
What’s your favorite content from this week’s update?
What was your favorite content from February?
What do you think of the new update format?
Remember, check back every Monday to learn when Joe Danger 2: The Movie (PS3), Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (PS Vita), Tekken 6 (PSP; Supported on PS Vita), and The Cave (PS3) are arriving to PS Plus members. You’ll also find more discounts and other exclusives that we weren’t able to detail here just yet. Remember the month preview is subject to change.
Leave us some comments on the new format, and of course, chime in with your thoughts on Spec Ops: The Line, the PS Vita Anniversary Sale, and any other PS Plus feedback you’ve got. If you’re looking to engage with more of the PS Plus community, we’ve also got the PS Plus section in the PlayStation Community Forums where you can continue chatting about PS Plus, or find other topics to contribute your thoughts to, or start one for yourself. See you in the comments!
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Davis revealed 2K insisted on the shooter having multiplayer, but the mode was far from a priority for developer Yager, and went against Davis' vision for the game. Nonetheless, the mode was greenlighted and then outsourced to Darkside Studios. Darkside is a small developer most notable for designing Borderlands' fourth add-on, "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution." Davis is clearly furious with the results.
"It sheds a negative light on all of the meaningful things we did in the single-player experience," Davis said. "The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package. It's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating."
We've reached out to 2K for comment.
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Polygon’s interview with Yager about their 2K-published shooter Spec Ops is worth a read, and not just because the lead, Corey Davis, attacks the practice of tacking on mandatory multiplayer to an ostensible single player project. He reportedly describes it as “bullshit”, and delivers this descriptive ankle-bite:
“The multiplayer game’s tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don’t even feel like it’s part of the overall package — it’s another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating.”
Blimey, er… Discuss?
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You’ve finished Spec Ops: The Line. You’ve seen its harrowing tale through from start to finish and felt the moral conflict claw its way into your gut. So then, what now? Do you go back to other shooters – which are significantly lacking in both awareness of their own problematic place in the cultural landscape and heaping mountains of sand? At one point in time, I would’ve hung my head low and sent you on your way, but now you can play in Yager’s sandy cesspit of human filth for just a little bit longer. And you can bring friends!
(more…)
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The new co-op mode is consists of four objective-based missions, "each with its own unique objectives, environments, and playable characters."
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Without divulging official numbers for Spec Ops: The Line, Friedrich said, "To be honest, it doesn't look too great."
Friedrich hosted a discussion on the emotional impact of player decisions within interactive narratives, differentiating the writing in games from other forms of media, such as film. Having a player make decisions based on deep, moral values can hold more impact than passively watching a cast of characters do the same thing, he argued.
In a few instances Friedrich wanted to have Spec Ops: The Line players make difficult decisions without receiving any in-game rewards or punishments, keeping the focus solely on the moral implications. Unfortunately, the game had achievements, effectively negating any purely emotional impact each choice could have. That was a mistake and a failure, Friedrich said.
"I really regret that we had achievements on moral choices," he said.
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(Warning: This article contains spoilers about important story beats within Spec Ops: The Line.)
A devastating, clipping drought has gripped the midwest the last few months. While driving through Illinois farm country this weekend, a store selling farm equipment propped a telling sign out front: “Do a rain dance, please!”
Many players would share a similar sentiment about video game storytelling. Whenever a not terrible game story comes along, the world lavishes it with praise. Sometimes it’s water in the desert syndrome, and sometimes it’s because a game is truly daring, provocative, or, at the very least, interesting.
Spec Ops: The Line has been at the center of this conversation since it launched last month, a shooter that most, myself included, had written off after poor press showings that suggested a promising setup that spent too many years in development, only to lose its way and be pushed out the door by a publisher hoping to recoup costs.
We were wrong, and we have, in part, Walt Williams to thank.
Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard the name Walt Williams before. Even though Williams has been a producer at 2K Games for more than seven years, it’s only with Spec Ops: The Line that 2K Games granted Williams the opportunity to take a starring role and become the game’s lead writer.
Spec Ops: The Line, easily this year’s most surprising release yet, is the first game Williams had all to himself. He’s been assigned to story development on several other 2K Games projects, everything from Civilization V to XCOM to BioShock 2, but he was given a mostly blank canvass this time.
“I’m not a guy who plays shooters terribly much, to be honest with you,” said Williams during a recent phone conversation. “When I started on the project, one of the first mindsets I had on it was, ‘How do I make a shooter that someone like me would want to play?’”
The origins of Spec Ops is much different than what we're seeing today in Spec Ops: The Line.Williams is one of the few individuals that’s been part of the Spec Ops reboot since the original conversations happened within 2K Games around five years ago. Spec Ops was originally a two-soldier focused realistic shooter series from Zombie Studios, and the first few games were published on the PC by Ripcord Games. Sequels continued and were brought to consoles (PlayStation era) by Runecraft and Take-Two Interactive (the parent company of 2K Games). The series went dormant after 2002, and while Rockstar Vancouver was assigned to begin the franchise anew, that project didn’t go anywhere, and the series stayed dark.
German independent developer Yager, a studio only known for an aerial dogfighting game with the very same name, was given the tough assignment five years ago. Williams was there on day one, too. Williams and Yager were tasked with developing a squad-based military shooter set in Dubai in the near future.
“That was it,” said Williams. “That was literally the box that we were given to play in. Outside of that, we were left to do whatever we want. I mean, the story has changed drastically over the course of the production. It’s always had the same characters and the same basic arc of where you were going, the drive of what was getting you there, but the intricacies of the story, the purpose of it, the subtext, what it was all pointing to, all of that has changed so many times over the course of this trip.”
The fact that players found Conrad dead at the end of the game, for example, was a recent change.
Even though 2K Games is based in Novato, California (previously, it was New York) Williams works out of Dallas, Texas. He was forced to leave 2K Games' headquarters for personal reasons, but 2K Games kept him on board. He regularly flies between his home in Dallas and the location of whatever developer he’s working with at the time. For Spec Ops, that was Germany. Williams had an apartment in Berlin he’d spend half the year in, typically staying in Germany for a month-and-a-half, and come back to the states for two weeks, then do it all over again.
The decision to explore the untold psychological tolls of war came from Williams’ own boredom with the shooter genre, and despite the game seeming to imply our obsession with shooters and killing is worrisome, there was never any pushback from the corporate side. Williams said it was on board since day one.
“There was always a part of me that thought, in the back of my head, that eventually the shoe is going to drop and they’re going to go ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we doing? Go back and make this thing what people are expecting out of a military game.’” he said. “But they stuck with it the entire way, and were extremely supportive of the direction that we wanted to go.”
The role of a writer varies on each project. There is no standard process, which prompted me to wonder how much influence Williams really had. It’s not uncommon for a writer to submit a script, dialogue, and other plot details early in the project, only to have most of it disappear by the time the game ships. Conversely, games often leave story to the last second, trying to jam as much context into the game after the gameplay and levels have been locked.
To ensure consistency, Williams was not just a script guy, but his fingers were everywhere: level design, voice over sessions, cut-scene and animation development, environmental storytelling, and art design.
Five years later, Williams finally stepped away from the game about two months ago.
“There’s a certain part of working on a game,” he said, “when you’ve played the game 30 times or read the script 30 times, you start to...it’s like when you write a word out and stare at it for too long, you go ‘Is that spelled right? I’m not sure anymore.’”
No one at Giant Bomb was impressed with Spec Ops the last few months, compounded by a poor showing at PAX East, in which players were played the game’s opening scenes. Nothing about the game’s shooting mechanics stood out, the game’s much talked about moral decisions were nowhere to be found, and there was an awfully Nathan Drake-sounding performance by Nolan North as Captain Walker. It wasn’t until the final disc showed up and Jeff started playing through the game. He started telling us to pay attention. A similar chorus appeared from other critics.
Williams believed people would better understand Spec Ops after playing it, where the story had room to breathe, and he was right. Much of the game’s eyebrow-raising came from being unaware of the several revelations, including the infamous white phosphorous scene, in which the player accidentally torches dozens of civilians hoping to leave the crumbling city of Dubai. This pivotal scene was almost part of the marketing campaign.
“[We] ultimately decided that would completely kill everything that we wanted to do with that moment in the game to the player,” he said.
The white phosphorus scene is where Spec Ops puts its cards on the table, and it's clear no one is coming out of this mission a better person. You technically have choices during this moment, such as fighting the opposition with your stock weapons, but respawning ammunition buckets were specifically deleted from this scene to force the player to eventually use the nearby mortar. Upon picking up the mortar, the player is transported to a scene awfully familiar to the AC-130 mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. You see a white dot, and blow it up. Unfortunately, some of those white dots were innocent men, women, and children. How were you supposed to know? You weren’t.
“We wanted the player to be stuck in that same kind of situation, even to the point of maybe hating us, as the designer, or hating the game for, in many ways, tricking them, making them feel like we had cheated the experience and forced them to do this thing,” said Williams. “They would have to decide whether or not they could choose to keep playing a game like this after this moment, or if they would be pissed to the point of putting the controller down and saying ‘No, this is too much for me, I’m done with this. *crag* this game.’”
The game lingers on this for an uncomfortably long time, letting the moment sink in.Williams knew the team was onto something when focus testers had to take a break after viewing the scene for the first time.
One theory around the office was that this scene was, at one point, a moral choice for the player that was cut due to budget constraints. Williams claimed this was not the case, arguing it would have cheapened the impact. This prompted Williams to wax philosophical about his own approach to game design.
“There’s a certain aspect to player agency that I don’t really agree with, which is the player should be able to do whatever the player wants and the world should adapt itself to the player’s desire,” he said. “That’s not the way that the world works, and with Spec Ops, since we were attempting to do something that was a bit more emotionally real for the player. [...] That’s what we were looking to do, particularly in the white phosphorous scene, is give direct proof that this is not a world that you are in control of, this world is directly in opposition to you as a game and a gamer.”
It’s this moment when it felt like Spec Ops was trolling the player, subverting traditional expectations of the designer-player relationship, especially for a game ostensibly about “choice.” This becomes especially uncomfortable as the game continues, Walker and his crew begin to unravel, the enemies become aware they’re dealing with insane, bloodthirsty soldiers, and one begins to wonder whether everything that’s happened in the past eight hours was a prelude to asking the player to consider whether they should be enjoying and celebrating this kind of video game.
Williams didn’t shy away from this idea.
“I actually consider that to be the real story of the game,” he said.
Spec Ops does not seem to make a definitive statement. It’s certainly playing devil’s advocate, but Williams doesn’t want players to come away with the impression that Yager, Williams, or 2K Games was out to advocate a particular stance. Rather, by the end, hopefully you’ve raised your own set of questions.
“Whether or not violent video games have an effect on us was not really the question that we were asking,” he continued, “but we were certainly saying ‘If we are going to say that we’re art, art has to affect us, and what does it say about us that these are the types of art that we chose to partake in? How does it really effect us to disconnect with that mentally?’ Because we have.”
Becoming self-aware can backfire, but Spec Ops does so subtly, gracefully, and effectively.One of the more surprising ways the game plays with expectations are the loading screens. “This is all your fault,” reads one. These messages are traditionally meant to convey helpful hints or reinforce game mechanics important to the situation at hand. Though Spec Ops does have that early on, as madness surrounds Walker’s crew, even the usually handy tip screens turn against you. Williams said Microsoft and Sony never raised an issue the decision to use the screens in this way, and it’s incredibly effective.
“In many ways, Spec Ops hates you, and it’s reacting to you, in the sense that, yes, we may have designed the game to work this way, but none of this would have happened, in the context of your experiencing it, if you had not put the game inside your system and played through it,” he said. “You are, within the context of you playing it, the cause of everything because you chose to play that game, and it is reacting back at you.”
The emotions weighing over the player when the credits roll are heavy, mixed, and contradictory, especially so if you experience the epilogue. I do feel bad sometimes for liking shooters, especially today’s awfully realistic ones, and Spec Ops was a useful outlet to explore these complicated questions. We know there is more at work than indulging in senseless violence, but Spec Ops forces us to ponder whether we’re pretending it’s not an issue at all.
“We shouldn’t be afraid to question our own medium,” he said. “It is ours to do with as we see fit. There is no problem in questioning what is your own and asking what it is that you want to do with it, and are we necessarily doing the right thing with it? I mean, that’s the other great thing about mediums, is that there is no right thing.”
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Yep, I’m back.
Technically, I’m still here in Chicago to help my family make some decisions, and won’t be back in the office until after my wedding. Slowly but surely I’m getting back into writing. Slowly.
I’ll probably pen something about my Dad. We’ll see.
The most difficult part of realizing I’m here for a bit is organizing a setup in my parents’ house. I’ve been going back and forth from the hardware store for the right parts to ensure the existing setup isn’t compromised, while also allowing me to play games over the next few weeks. I spent a good hour searching for a cable splitter yesterday, convinced there was one sitting around the last time I was here, but eventually gave up and decided spending $2.99 at Home Depot made more sense. I'm cheap.
Even though Worth Reading disappeared for a week, I’ve received plenty of links from you guys and gals with games and stories that needed paying attention to. Thank you for that, and thank you for this. If some of the material here is a little behind, I apologize, but Giant Bomb has never been the most timely publication in the world anyway, right?
Hey, You Should Play This
- Slender by Parsec Productions (PC/Mac, Free) -- www.slendergame.com
*crag* you, Slender. This one actually produced a jump scare from me in the middle of the day, and I can’t imagine what this awful creation would elicit from my psyche at night with headphones. In short, Slender is a first-person survival game that asks you do accomplish a seemingly simple task: collect eight pages. The catch, of course, is that Slender Man is stalking you the entire time, even if he’s often out of sight. Each page ratchets up the tension, as the music and sound effects prompt you to wonder why you aren’t just hitting escape, leaving this stupid thing behind.
(It’s awesome. Please do something more with this, Parsec.)
And You Should Read These
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Shooter by Tom Bissell for Grantland
Tom Bissell is the most frustrating writer in games because it doesn’t make sense to write about one after he’s weighed in. His take on Spec Ops: The Line is no different, in which Bissell wrestles with a question most of us ignore when it comes to enjoying our violent shooters: why do we enjoy them? Is it okay that we enjoy them? Why is that okay? Bissell’s piece is fascinating for another reason: he’s a writer on Gears of War Judgment. Who knows how much of his personal musings on the cycle of violence in games will play out in a game he’s contributing to, but make sure to have Bissell’s thoughts in the back of your head as we learn more about Judgment in the future. I will.
Shooters are obviously some kind of power fantasy, centered, as they are, upon enacting, over and over again, one of the gravest moral steps a human being can take. They're obviously a form of vicarious experience, allowing even the yellowest among us to feel a facile familiarity with combat. They're obviously tapping into a deep and possibly even evolutionarily vital part of the human mind, in which power asserted becomes advantage gained. And unlike most of humanity's previous attempts to replicate such dynamics within rule-based confines — like, say, jousting or rugby — no one gets hurt. It's quite possible that shooters reveal that somewhere inside every human being is a shadow human being, one who kills and takes and does what he or she pleases. A lot of people who love shooters play them, they say, "to blow off steam." That's not why I play shooters. I play shooters because I like the pressure, the pressure of learning what to pay attention to in a realm where the ordinary governances of human behavior have been lifted. I like shooters, I suspect, for the same reason I used to like doing hard drugs. They allow my shadow self to emerge and play. For me, shooters aren't about blowing off steam. They're about taking in steam.- "The reality of the OUYA console doesn’t match the hype: why you should be skeptical by Ben Kuchera" for The Penny Arcade Report
I don’t blame anyone for being hyped about Ouya, but some researched skepticism has been in order ever since its Kickstarter backing went into the millions of dollars, and Penny Arcade Report’s Ben Kuchera does a terrific job of outlining some of the big questions marks surrounding this project. I can’t think of anyone that wants to see Ouya fail, myself included, but do remember the number of backers currently pledging to receive an Ouya wouldn’t make for a very big install base. Kuchera addresses some huge issues that remain unanswered about Ouya, including the one that rubs me the most: why promise Minecraft as a playable game when its developer is not willing to do that? It reeks of Ouya being desperate to have a big name game to hang its hat on, and it’s merely a wild assumption.
Another problem is the fact the OUYA does little except further fragment the Android market, although I was told that’s not an issue. “There will be only one chipset for OUYA and a totally standard one at that,” I was told. “This is the best way to develop Android for TV. We will work hard to make it as standard as possible.” I’m going to be blunt: That’s a ridiculous answer, and it’s akin to claiming the Kindle Fire doesn’t count as market fragmentation as long as you only develop for the Kindle Fire.If You Click This, It Will Play
Oh, And This Other Stuff, Too
- This article quoting Mark Rein, in which he says passionate developers should be totally cool with crunch, bothers me. There's also some odd assumptions that everyone gets a bonus in the industry, too.
- Have you seen this email dump from Atari's golden age? Holy crap!
- Eurogamer is running a profile series on Hello Games, the developers of Joe Danger.
- I love these simple games. They're deceptively evil.
- God bless you, Matt Leone, for tracking down Johnny Cage.
- Valve has soundly rejected Electronic Arts' theory about huge discounts hurting IP.
- Once again, Rockstar Games reminds us that Bully has not been forgotten. Thank you.
- I haven't played this game yet, but I'm hearing good things.
- This iOS horror text adventure is supposed to be really neat. Plan to dig into it this weekend.
- There are worse ways to spend 15 minutes on than an endless platformer.
- You simply must read Tim Rogers' writeup on his experience at Grasshopper Interactive.
- What the definition of success even is as an independent developer.
- The lessons learned from releasing a game independently and failing. Hard.
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Spec Ops: The Line is one of those rare video games where the story often outshines the gameplay. Even though you might have tired of pumping bullets into sand-covered foes, it's the story in Spec Ops that will undoubtedly push many players forward.
With a story inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, our film pairing recommendation for the game is obvious: Francis Ford Coppola's iconic Apocalypse Now - a film that has also heavily influenced the Yager-developed video game.
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Spec Ops: The Line is a standard cover-based shooter with a modern military theme. You hide behind stuff, do a little blind-firing, toss a grenade or two, and shoot tons of enemy soldiers in their faces. The campaign gameplay is functional, if a bit clunky, and it has many of the features you'd expect a shooter of this type to have. It's a bit dull to play, with most of its differences coming as a result of enemies (and players) not taking too many hits to drop. But that's probably not why you should care about The Line. Because behind its generic look and feel is a storyline that puts you into some really interesting situations that put the simple act of trudging across the desert and gunning down anyone who gets in your way into a very different context than the average shooter. Add to that some interesting moral decisions and multiple endings and you've got... well, you've got a collection of really cool things that would be a lot easier to recommend if the game surrounding those things wasn't so drab.
The setup is that you're a Delta Force operator named Walker, and you, along with two squadmates, have been dropped into Dubai. Dubai has been cut off for six months due to extreme sandstorms, and a US battalion that went in to gather up and extract survivors has seemingly been swallowed up by the sand. When you head to find out what happened, you discover that a conflict between the seemingly rogue battalion and the locals has erupted. Has the 33rd battalion and its commander, John Konrad, gone crazy? Who's inciting the locals to rise up and fight? As your rescue mission quickly falls apart, you'll find the answers to these questions and others. What's more, those answers are actually quite interesting, making the back third of the game--which is where most of the moral choices and important reveals lie--a collection of fascinating sequences that make the game's displays of abject brutality more meaningful than in something like, say, Homefront. The Line is more about showing you the horrible things that come about as a result of good-intentioned people going too far.
You'll start the game as a three-man crew.It's a seemingly minor thing, but the way the game handles player and squad dialogue creates one of those headslapping moments where you wonder why it's taken so long for someone to do this. As the story escalates, your soldiers get more harried and haggard, leading to shifts in their dialogue. At the outset, they sound like soldiers, calling out targets, kills, and reloads like you'd expect from a modern military game. At a specific point in the game, they switch, getting angrier. The squadmates get shorter with each other, and the jokes cracked at beginning of the game are replaced with curse-filled tirades as they question each others' actions. Reloading dialogue gets rougher. It happens again even later in the game, and by that point things have turned so bad that Walker is just swearing at his gun every time he needs to reload it. It isn't perfect by any means--the dialogue repeats itself too frequently and you'll occasionally hear one line of "professional soldier" dialogue immediately followed by "completely unraveled" dialogue, but make a note. You'll probably see games employ this style of adaptive recurring dialogue in more games in the future.
It's a shame that these tactics didn't find their way into a better game. Spec Ops: The Line is a stock third-person shooter with its share of turret sequences and cover-vaulting mechanics. You can deliver orders to your two allies, but this consists of little more than being able to say "shoot that guy first." There's no cooperative play in there, though that probably benefits the campaign a bit by letting it remove your squad to increase tension in a couple of spots. It's also not very long, though a few spots could have used an additional checkpoint or two, as it's easy to get careless during some of the longer battles and die, forcing you to replay a bit more than you'd like.
There's also a competitive multiplayer mode, complete with all of the loadout options and perks you'd expect. It gets a little shifty by offering slight differences between the two factions and each class offers different bonuses to nearby teammates, but beyond that it's the same sort of treadmill you've gotten on a million times before. Again, this is a case where that treadmill would be a lot more palatable if the action was more satisfying. Despite colorful names like "Chaos" and "Mutiny," most of the multiplayer modes are pretty standard. The first on-screen bullet points for those two modes are just "Deathmatch" and "Team Deathmatch," which makes you wonder why they bothered to name them something different in the first place. In addition to those combat modes, there are also a few objective-based types, but the action feels really off compared to other games of this type. It feels like the players skitter around a little too much, even when the network connections appear to be good. The other twist Spec Ops puts on things is that levels are occasionally hit with a sandstorm, taking out your radar and making visibility poor for a little bit. It doesn't really add much to the experience.
There are plenty of indoor areas to explore along with the sandstorm-filled exteriors.On top of all that, the multiplayer looks pretty terrible. The textures and objects in the maps look old, like they were originally designed for a different console and hastily pumped up to something more closely resembling today's standards. The multiplayer also shows off some of the worst Unreal Engine texture pop-in I've seen in a long, long time. The single-player looks a bit better than that and offers a bit of variety that actually manages to deliver a few well-put-together areas but the whole game is rife with jumpy animation and overall, Dubai never really feels like a place. It feels like a strung-together patch of levels of varying quality.
The story in Spec Ops: The Line isn't amazing, but the way that it's told really stands out and, in many ways, saves the entire project from being a complete waste of time. But that doesn't make it easy to recommend. It delivers some interesting ideas that approach the messed-up things that often happen in war-based video games in ways that actually make sense. It gives proper weight to the potential horrors of conflict instead of just throwing them in your face for mere shock value. If that interests you, The Line is worth seeing.
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Yager/2K’s deceptively dull-named first-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line goes on sale in the UK today, having been out in the US since Tuesday. Alec crept into the heart of its ravaged Dubai, never to be heard from again – save for these blood-soaked notes. (more…)
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That's why it's disappointing, and often baffling, when Spec Ops underlines its themes with an orange crayon. The discovery of a strung-up, mutilated corpse is meant to shock, but the scene feels deflated alongside an Achievement notification that essentially says, "War is terrible. Have 10 points!"
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Spec Ops‘ handsomely bearded writing lead, Walt Williams, talks about the personalities that make up Spec Ops: The Line’s team – both player and non-player characters – in a new development diary installment, which you can see below. Williams claims that the moral choices in the game are “about holding up a mirror to yourself”, which in my case would reveal a tired-looking man with a serious head-cold and a dire need of a haircut. I am not sure what that says about my morals, but I suppose I could do with looking in a mirror once in a while.
Anyway, clickwards for what might be a bit of a spoilery dev diary. Mr Meer is playing Spec Ops: The Line RIGHT NOW for his ultimate verdict.(more…)
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After being seemingly stuck in development for years following its 2009 announcement, the team at Yager Development has finally shipped the third-person shooter. Taking place in a sandstorm ravaged Dubai, the game centers on a Delta Force team sent into the region to locate their own missing personnel.
Spec Ops: The Line is available today for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
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And not just because it seems like a billion of these things have popped up in the past week or so, either. See, a recent developer diary about Spec Ops‘ potentially uncomfortable marriage of meaty, blood-spattered fun and the grim truths of war prompted me to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t like duct-taping a cat and dog together. And while Hollywood tells us that’d lead to a heartwarming adventure of self-discovery, reality isn’t generally so kind. So along comes Spec Ops’ launch trailer, and yeah, this reeeeally doesn’t look like it’s trying to downplay the glamorous lifestyle of videogame life-ending. You know the drill: buildings, vehicles, and people get shredded into bloody confetti while caught in gooey bubbles of slow-mo. So now I’m confused.
(more…)
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We always thought it'd be interesting to visit Dubai at some point in the future, what with its indoor skiing and BMW 5 series police cars and everything, but if it's anything like the Dubai portrayed in this Spec Ops: The Line launch trailer, we'll probably pass. That haboob looks gross.
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