Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The Line is not quite the type of game I would buy based on its genre. But after having heard about its exceptional narrative, I did pick it from a Steam sale. I went into it quite skeptical, though. I tend to be wary of the popular opinion.

In Spec Ops: The Line, you play as Captain Martin Walker who has been sent with his two squad mates to find out what happened to a US Army infantry battalion, the Damned 33rd, in post-catastrophe Dubai. The mission does not go quite as planned and ends up being quite a hellish trip.

Strong narrative

SOTL emphasizes on the brutality of war and how it affects those involved. How well the game succeeds on that varies a bit, in my opinion. For instance, I have seen the white phosphorous part being mentioned as one of the most effective scenes. To me, it felt like the game was trying to shove the horrors to my face too much. I had to use the white phosphorous because I was not allowed to progress in any other way. Trying to blame me is not going to work that way.

And the revelation of there also being civilians at the back, did not really add to the situation. Dying to that nasty stuff did not seem exactly pleasant, no matter who you are. The game's story relies much on that plot point, though, and would not have worked if you could have avoided using the weapon.

One scene I particularly liked more was when Lugo, one of the squad mates, is lynched by an angry mob of locals. The mob surrounds you and will push you back if you try to get close. You have a choice of either killing them in retribution or just scare them off by shooting in the air. (The game does not tell you what you can do.) The choice does not matter in the end but I thought it neat to be able to decide if Walker still tries to hold up to some level of moral.

Characters affected by the plot

The squad members become more and more vexed along the way. Their lines related to killing targets move from professional stuff like "Tango down." to angry "Got that fucker!". And the execution moves you can do to near dead enemies change from clean headshots to ruthlessly beating their heads to bloody messes.

Walker is probably affected most by the events in the game. And he apparently was not exactly in the perfect mental health before the beginning either. Regardless, he starts occasionally seeing things that are not there. My favorite one was one of the heavy armor guys, in Lugo's character model, bursting through a door you are about to enter, accusing you of being the villain. The especially cool thing about that is if you have to reload from a checkpoint, the heavy appears as the standard model. A nice way to involve the player.

The game can be quite odd in that regard too. One of the loading screen texts actually encourages you to continue killing since the "enemies are not real and it does not matter". And the fourth wall sort of breaks when game gets to the helicopter turret section again (the game starts with it in medias res) and Walker comments "Didn't we already do this?". His squad mates of course have no idea what he is on about.

SOTL has multiple possible endings. I chose the first one since I felt that Captain Walker could no longer function as a human being and wanted to end it there. If you choose otherwise, the game continues after the credits to three more possible endings. (I watched them on YouTube afterwards.) In one of them, Walker is asked how he managed to survive in the harsh environment, to which he replies "Who says I did."

Thought-provoking but gameplay mediocre at best

Like Mass Effect 3's ending, I kept thinking about Spec Ops: The Line a couple days after I had finished it. It is definitely a thought-provoking game. Although, I would say, that the gameplay gets bit in the way of the storytelling. SOTL is a bog-standard third person cover-based shooter with absolutely zero new mechanics. In my opinion, the gameplay should be at least somewhat enjoyable.

Admittedly, part of my lack of enjoyment might have been caused by me playing on the second highest difficulty. (The last one is locked till you beat the game once.) I consider myself somewhat competent in third person shooters after having played ME3 so much. However, STOL is not the same game. The controls are slightly different and the cover system does not work quite as well as in ME3. It is more akin to ME2. And of course the lack of space magic did not help either.

If you have to reload a section multiple times, the game starts taunting you in the loading screen, saying you can change the difficult setting. But I kept the difficulty unchanged and eventually beat the game. The hardest part was very fittingly the final bit of the game. Crossing that yard with two machine guns raining fire on me was incredibly tricky. I cannot imagine how mind-wrecking it would be to be in such a situation in real life.