A pleasantly surprising and thought-provoking experience.
Cons: Shooting is a bit rough; Music choices are strange; A few key plot points where your hand is forced
I've been playing games for a decade and a half now. In that time, I've gotten a pretty good sense of what to expect. I can usually tell a game is going to be great, or terrible, just by viewing a bit of gameplay (for instance, I predicted the critical praise of Dishonored and Far Cry 3 long before release). This means that I rarely play a bad game, because I can spot them a mile away. But it also means that I rarely get the good surprise of a game that's significantly better than expected. Spec Ops: The Line just might be the best surprise I've played in quite a while.
On the surface, Spec Ops: The Line is just another average cover-based shooter. Hell, it even sports generic shooter box art. It's not the most polished shooter either. Aiming is imprecise, cover mechanics tend to be picky about where you can use them, and guns don't have the oomph you'd expect in your average AAA shooter.
This isn't to say that the game's shooting is bad, mind you, just less polished. Some of the encounters in the game are actually pretty thrilling in the way that they disempower you. A couple scenarios in which I was surrounded by enemies with rapidly dwindling supplies provided some of the most thrilling action I've experienced in a shooter as of late. Fights as a whole feel pretty desperate, reminding me of the original Gears of War almost (that's a good thing, since the first GoW had the best campaign as far as I'm concerned).
However, you do not get Spec Ops: The Line for it's shooting. No, you get it for the one thing you'd never expect to buy a shooter for. You get it for the one thing that only Bioshock has ever delivered on previously. You get Spec Ops: The Line for its story.
Following the tale of Captain Walker and his squad's trip through a sandstorm devastated Dubai, the story is the most gripping part of Spec Ops: The Line. What first seems to be a standard mission to rescue Commander John Konrad quickly changes into one of the most thought-provoking plots that I've ever experienced in any game in any genre. I won't spoil anything here, because the turns that the plot takes are best experienced firsthand.
The plot of Spec Ops: The Line is not merely engaging in the context of the game, however. It's actually an important statement on modern military shooters that embarrassingly few people will experience (while they play Call of Duty no less). And furthermore, even though the shooting mechanics have all been done before, and the narrative is told through standard means, it absolutely needs to be a game to convey its point.
The way that the game handles choices is to be commended in particular, since it doesn't shy away from tough decisions. You rarely are asked to choose between good and bad. No, you're asked to figure out the difference between bad and worse, hoping to do the least harm. And all the choices that you make are made without pulling up a conversation menu or choosing between buttons. Instead, you choose through in-game actions. On the flipside, however, there aren't many choices, and a couple of key plot points give you no choice, even if you clearly oppose what's going on, which breaks the illusion a bit.
Nonetheless, it's a great plot, and it's clear that the effort that didn't go into polishing the gunplay went into the presentation. For one, Dubai is stunning in this game. The bright sand-ridden wastes and the garish interiors are contrasted to nice effects, and each location is extensively detailed, not to mention varied heavily in color. The art design on the game is stunning alternately because of detail, because of grisliness, or even because of its extensive skyboxes.
The other presentation standout is the voice acting. No lines are wasted in their delivery, and the progression from confident, in-control soldiers to broken men is handled with a great deal of care and grace. Major props in particular for Nolan North, who delivers one of his best performances as Captain Walker, successfully capturing the dark emotional transformation of his character. The one area where presentation falters a bit is in the music, which just doesn't fit. I love '60s classic rock as much as the next guy, but it doesn't match the environment and time period at all. And the original music is largely forgettable and uninteresting.
Still, the haunting American national anthem on the main menu is a smart choice that basically captures the essence of why Spec Ops: The Line absolutely must be played. Spec Ops: The Line wants you to believe it's an average shooter (and it certainly fooled me), but the actual experience is far darker, smarter, and more thought provoking than you'd ever expect to find in a modern AAA game, let alone a shooter. Don't let the initial appearance or rough shooting mechanics turn you away, lest you risk missing out on one of the most intriguing surprises of 2012.