Killing for entertainment? Harmless.
Reviewer's Note: I did not so much as touch the multiplayer.
Never before have I felt truly bad for "winning" a game. Games often seek to fulfill a player's sense of accomplishment, as well they should. Even sad endings can be entertaining when they're told well. Spec Ops: The Line, however, makes you regret the things you had to do to "win" the game.
A lot of games can take you on a dark story, but even those leave you with some sense of accomplishment by the end. Spec Ops: The Line simply reminds you how bad a person you can be. Yes, despite the military shooter trappings this game is all about its story; the story of Captain Martin Walker.
It starts out simply enough with a rescue mission. Walker and his Delta unit are sent in to assess the situation in Dubai. The city's been ravaged by sandstorms and the man originally sent in to fix it has refused to come home with his men. So begins your quest to find John Konrad.
There are a lot of twists and turns throughout, and I don't want to spoil them here. It goes down a darker and darker path as the game continues, and it's reflected in Walker and his two squad mates. You'll notice a neat trick where after some major event their dialogue in combat will change to reflect their ever worsening situation. It's a very clever trick, and I really hope more action games can do this in the future. It really demonstrates that the situation affects these characters.
There are also a few worthwhile moral choices during the game. They never seem to do much that truly alters anything, but they are nonetheless some interesting moral dilemmas to throw at a player. They can get pretty messed up pretty fast.
However, at the end of the day Spec Ops is a video game. It's a pretty typical third-person cover based shooter. There's a decent enough cover system in the game, as well as some incredibly light squad control mechanics. All the weapons you'll find will just be your very typical military shooter loadout. You've got everything from pistols to sniper rifles.
None of the weapons feel particularly good, though. There's no feeling of impact outside of some brutal melee kills. The gunplay is very basic and almost underwhelming throughout the game. It's also very clear your enemies aren't exactly intelligent, and they never seem to put up too much of a fight.
There are some other elements in the game, as well. Zip lines are humorous in their lack of speed or any feeling at all. A sand mechanic is established for crushing your enemies, but it never feels very satisfying. Just find a pane of glass with some sand and your enemies will be killed. It feels like nothing more than an evolution of a red barrel. It isn't offensive or anything, just nothing to get excited about. There's also the occasional turret section, but these also underwhelm.
Animations are weak, as are the sound effects and music. They all help together, with the combat, to make Spec Ops have a very low-budget feeling.
You won't walk away from Spec Ops: The Line talking about anything to do with its combat. You definitely will walk away wondering about the story you just experienced. It's one of the rare video games with a story that feels like it could only truly be told in a video game. It takes your preconceptions as a player controlling a character, and flips them entirely on their head. It does some truly revolutionary things with its story, too bad the gameplay never matches up.
Score: 7.0 out of 10