Spec Ops the Line Review

Spec Ops the Line Review

Evan Firestine, Staff Writer

By 2012, the video game industry was more or less through with brown tinted, military shooter games. The market had been oversaturated with them since the release of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007.

For this reason, Spec Ops the Line (SOTL), released for the Xbox 360 and PS3, was severely under-appreciated in its time and is somewhat of a cult classic today. I will avoid spoilers in this review.

While on the surface, SOTL may seem like a cookie cutter third person game, it offers far more than its contemporaries in terms of brutal gameplay and an excellent story. Those familiar with Apocalypse Now might find the setup for the game familiar. A small squad of Delta Force operatives are sent to the shattered city of Dubai after a massive sandstorm has rendered the city uninhabitable. The player takes control of Walker, the leader of the Delta squad. The mission is to locate the survivors of the 33rd Brigade led by the mysterious Colonel Konrad.

“Whether it becomes a success or failure depends entirely on the willingness of players to engage with its story to the extent that they look past its erratic mechanics and unsatisfying gameplay,” Nick Cowen of The Guardian said.

The story starts in medias res with the player manning the gun on an attack chopper. The player’s helicopter is shot down and the game cuts to the start of their journey through abandoned Dubai. The tone of the game starts out light. The squad banters with each other and laughs about the situation they are in.

As they progress through the wasteland, the squad slowly loses their minds and begin to turn on each other. The game puts a heavy emphasis on psychological horror, with Walker often having paranoid hallucinations. The game uses clever graphical effects to show these, as well as the declining mental state of the squad. The faces of enemy soldiers begin to look like the very people the player is there to protect. Did I mention this game was dark?

The game manages to pack a brutally effective anti-war message into just six short hours. It is clear that the game takes influence from America’s wars in the middle east and points out the faults in them. The game also serves as a critique of the glorification of violence in its contemporaries, such as Call of Duty and Battlefield. I mean it when I say the story will stick with you long after you put the controller down.

Note that I haven’t mentioned the game play too much. I won’t say that the game play is bad, but it only serves to keep the player mildly entertained in between major plot points. It’s standard third-person shooter fare really. If you’ve played Gears of War, you will feel right at home with the gameplay of this title. The weapons feel decent enough, enemies aren’t too stupid and your squad members actually do their jobs; there’s nothing I can really complain about on that front. It may seem counterintuitive, but this game is story first, and gameplay is more of a fun after-thought. I know some of you reading this just let out a collective groan, but listen when I say this game is well worth your time, even if you value gameplay more.

The game is now available on the PS4 and Xbox One. If you’re not faint of heart, I highly recommend giving this underrated gem a playthrough.