By Daniel Rutledge
Recently I was fortunate enough to have a few hours with Spec Ops: The Line, a very dark and violent upcoming third-person shooter.
The game is very promising with challenging gunfight gameplay, a compelling narrative and great acting – but a word of caution: players will very definitely need to have strong stomachs and parents should pay extra heed to the R18 rating.
It is very grim. It makes Call of Duty and Battlefield seem pretty light-hearted by comparison.
There’s a bit of a survival horror feel to it all, with mutilated soldiers’ bodies hanging like trophies, flies swarming around groups of dead and dying civilians and an emphasis on particularly vicious acts of violence.
The worst of these was a form of torture that I’ve never even heard of before and won’t elaborate on here except to say it involved sand and a machine gun and put me off my dinner.
I don’t mean to go on about this stuff but it had a strong effect on me – not an off-putting effect, but it really is quite different in tone than pretty much any other recent shooter.
The game takes place in Dubai after a near-future devastation of the city by unrelenting sandstorms. Players take control of Captain Martin Walker who is venturing into the city with an elite Delta Force bravo team.
Most of the population has fled Dubai but those who remain are generally living in poverty in the city’s ruins. One of the people left behind was Delta Force Colonel John Konrad, who refused to evacuate.
The Army fears that Konrad and his men are lost to the destruction of the city until a weak distress signal is picked up. That’s where you come in as the player – Uncle Sam sends you and a couple of mates in to see what’s going on with Konrad.
Your journey into Dubai from its outskirts really is a journey into hell and the fact that the game is based on Heart of Darkness is both obvious and appreciated.
The opening scene is very cinematic and exciting, flying around Dubai’s buildings in a chopper, engaged in combat with other aircraft and a few pesky RPG wielding dudes. The credits start fading in and out as you’re desperately shooting at enemies. It’s cool.
Graphically the game is not amazing. It looks good, but isn’t mind-blowing like some other recent titles though. I do really appreciate that despite the dark tone of the game, Dubai looks nice, bright and high contrast, unlike the grey/brown dullness of some other shooters.
After the helicopter intro there is a flashback cutscene before your first proper mission. Bullets hurt a lot in Spec Ops, much more than something like Call of Duty (unless you’re in hardcore mode). Using cover is a crucial part of the combat gameplay, similar to in Gears of War.
You have two squadmates that you can give basic commands to. In the preview session I played, apart from special cut-scene decisions with your squad, the commands were things like shoot that guy, go over there, throw a grenade there, throw a flashbang there etc.
We had the difficulty on the second to lowest setting but it was still quite challenging. If you don’t have the patience for cover and squad based shooters, this game is not for you. It would’ve probably been a lot easier with the snap auto-aim feature on, but that would’ve reduced the satisfaction of succeeding at it quite a lot too.
When you have incapacitated an enemy but not killed him, you can brutally execute them. There are multiple execution animations, including: putting your boot to their throat and a bullet through their head, putting your knee in their throat and twist-breaking their neck, stomping then gunbutting them in the head and so on. What make these executions more shocking than usual is the people you are carrying them out on. I don’t want to give much away, but it did seem a bit too psychotic of your character to do this stuff on who he is doing it to, when in the context of the game’s narrative.
The ultra-violence is carried from cutscenes into gameplay in other ways too, such as cutting to slow-motion briefly each time you get a headshot to emphasize the brain gore.
The dialogue between your character and two squad-mates is generally very good. It seems more natural and realistic than in many other games and contains quite a few pop culture references that are sometimes subtle and intelligently incorporated. Speaking of pop culture, there are some pretty cool musical cues from Deep Purple and the like, dynamically inserted into the gaming environment in a way that makes sense to the game (provided the characters had the song on repeat). The general soundtrack is an appropriately dark, gloomy electric guitar driven score.
I played Spec Ops: The Line for just over two hours and in the levels I was allowed to preview there were two quite major decisions which seemed to have serious impacts on the narrative and gameplay. In the first, some civilians were being brutally tortured to death and you can choose to save them and lose a vital prisoner or have them killed in order to get the prisoner (and the vital mission intel that goes with him).
I don’t think it’ll quite be a Heavy Rain type situation with over 20 possible endings, but I am very interested in just how much your decisions will alter the narrative. Rising tensions between your two comrades suggest that there may even be a point in the game where you have to choose one or the other, reducing your squad to just a pair.
There are quite a few very fun set-pieces in the game. If you enjoyed the Dubai sandstorm scene in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol you will dig the frequent sandstorms in this too. As parts of the city are buried in sand you can often shoot out glass to release it and bury your enemies alive too.
In one ambush sequence that is particularly intense, you take cover from a huge number of enemies firing on your position only to have your cover blown away by an RPG. It’s thrilling.
I also enjoyed some fun sniping sections and white phosphorus nastiness.
Overall I don’t think Spec Ops: The Line is very innovative and the strong combat gameplay similarities to Gears of War may turn huge fans of that franchise off it. But I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit and think the stark tonal difference to most shooters, the intriguing storyline and ability to alter the narrative through decisions will definitely mean I play through the single-player campaign at least once.
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