Spec Ops: Grandpa's Leftovers.

Well, isn't this a stark contrast from my last blog? Not just in the title (in that you could probably guess what I'm going to talk about this week), but also in the games I'm covering. Remember how Valkyria Chronicles and Medal of Honor both treated war with irreverence, and they both suffered because of that? Spec Ops: The Line ain't having any of that shit. This game absolutely knows how to put the medium to use, and in this case, that use is to create some horrifying imagery of war. And damn, does it do a good job.

It all begins when a small group of soldiers get sent into Dubai. Their mission is simple enough: pick up survivors and find out what happened to the 33rd Infantry. This all changes about three chapters in. The once opulent city of Dubai has fallen into a state of utter decay, teetering on the edge of nothingness; the 33rd are revealed to be a bunch of assholes (not that you're much better); and overall, things just become weird. Really, really weird. Thus we arrive at perhaps the game's greatest strength: it's surreal nature. Sometimes, this backfires horribly, like it does with this silly shit. Fortunately, that's only a minor fraction of the experience. The rest of the time, it works beautifully. You'd think blurring the lines between fantasy and reality would make the terrors of war harder to take seriously, but the opposite happens. That otherworldly atmosphere permeating the streets of Dubai only makes the atrocities pop out more. You directly experience the toll that war takes on those experiencing it. Better still, the game never lets up. From beginning to end (whatever those are; they blend together), the game simply becomes more hideous and twisted and repulsive, like a mocking parody of itself.

And then there are the choices. They...are actually where the game starts to fall apart. I get what the game's trying to do, although that may have something to do with its lack of subtlety. Anyway, I get it: I shouldn't try to shirk off responsibility for the things I do. Everybody's constantly pinning the blame on somebody else, or placing their deeds into a better context. That last one might hold validity, but does the first one? Do I have any real ability to avoid the terrible actions in this game? Most of the scenarios presented me with three options: "Horrible Atrocity A", "Horrible Atrocity B", and "Fuck Else". You can say "just walk away" all you like, but it doesn't mean much unless I actually have the ability to walk away. I can remember quite a few situations where I tried simply walking away from something terrible, only for Spec Ops to railroad me into an awful "choice". It's not entirely fair or thought out to blame me for choices I was essentially forced into. But then that ending comes around, and man, does it fix every flaw these themes could possibly have. I know that sounds exceedingly hyperbolic, especially when I'm not going to tell you what the ending's like (spoilers), but you're just gonna have to trust me on this. It really is that good.

The only real flaw I'd see with the game is how it uses cutscenes. If not for them, I'd probably hold the game in higher regard than I already do. At times, it's almost like the game is a movie. I mean, yea, the moments when you're playing are just as important to the story (the most horrifying moments are usually the ones you directly experience), but come cutscene time, and Spec Ops feels like a completely different experience. There's staging, an acute focus on camera work, and all these other things that never happen when you're actually fighting your way through Dubai. Again, it's like a movie, which is the worst possible thing this game could be, given its message. If I feel like I'm simply watching events unfold before me (rather than like I'm actually making these events happen), I'm going to feel some distance from what's happening. Now I can safely abdicate responsibility for what I did in the game, because I didn't do it; I just watched some guy do all these horrible things. Hell, I'm only a special guest in this game. How can themes like "you always had a choice" or "you're not a hero" apply to me under those conditions, game?

Oh, that reminds me: this is a video game we're talking about. It's a shooter, which should mean you shoot bad guys until the game gives you other bad guys to shoot, and for a time, that's true. In fact, the only distinguishing trait early on is just how often you're shooting out windows to let sand rain down on your foes. But this is Spec Ops we're talking about, so of course, it's going to put a scary amount of thought into this one aspect of the game. You want to feel like you're in a hell on Earth? It doesn't matter; Spec Ops is gonna do it, anyway. You're constantly running out of ammo, bullets are so lethal that even hearing them can put you in a comatose state, and you need to issue orders to your allies intelligently if you want to succeed in a firefight. That last one might sound rather tame until you realize that about half the game is spent away from those teammates. So yea, just about every shoot-out is tense, frantic, chaotic, and a bunch of other words you'd use to describe a war zone. Overall, a fitting complement to everything else in the game.

(There are also BioShock-esque intelligence tapes to pick up every now and then. The less said about these jarring little boxes, the better.)

Actually, now that I think about it, that's a weird way to refer to Spec Ops: The Line. After all, you're not coming to this because of the shooting mechanics or anything like that. (Just ignore the multiplayer mode on the title screen. The developers certainly have.) You're coming to this game because it knows how to connect to you. And promptly stomp the ever-loving hell out of your conceptions of the world. You're coming for the haunting imagery and that feeling that things are slowly spiraling out of control, eventually reaching a crescendo of absolute carnage. It is a beautiful madness.

Review Synopsis

• Who knew that the Middle East could be such a horrible experience?
• How the game handles choice looks pretty bad at first. Then you hit the credits, and it looks pretty good.
• Oh, and you shoot things, I guess. That's in there.
• You know, I probably could've just said "Apocalypse Now: The Game", and you'd understand most of the review.

You know, this is an oddly accurate summary of Spec Ops: The Line.

This was supposed to be DEFCON. You know, so I could pair it with Spec Ops thematically. Unfortunately, several factors got in the way of that, like it being a multiplayer game and my absolute lack of skill in it. So instead, we're looking at Tiny and Big, the Turner & Hooch of video games. Probably. If ever there was a poster child for simplicity in game design, Tiny and Big would be it. The game really only has one gameplay element to fuck about with, but does that stop it from being good? Hell no! If anything, that only makes the game better, since the game can now focus on milking the hell out of this one particular mechanic.

That feature, of course, is cutting shit up. What? You couldn't gather that from the title? Grandpa's Leftovers are ropes, fire, and cutting implements. (Actually, the leftovers are underwear, but is that really any less unsettling?) You're gonna have to use every last one of them to navigate all those acrophobia inducing environments. Now, that may not sound like fun, but that's only because I haven't mentioned the very loose physics on display. This is where things get interesting. When you combine loose physics with tools that let you manipulate your environment, you transform the world into your personal playground. A sense of childlike glee will roll over your face as soon as you realize that the world only exists so that you can utterly destroy it. By that, of course, I mean you're going to feel both very, very powerful, and very, very stupid. Hell, there's even a small sense of rebellion as you defy the game's implicit orders. Yes, there's clearly a right way to get through these levels, but who gives a shit when the wrong way is clearly much more enjoyable?

Eventually, though, you're gonna have to do things the right way. As fun as it is to slice a level into ribbons, it's also a very good way to screw yourself out of any progress. You're gonna have to slow down considerably if you want to make your way through the game. Surprisingly, this only makes the game that much better. Instead of merely giving you some monuments to needlessly cut up, Tiny and Big's now testing a set of skills, and it does so relatively well. Success in the game hinges on paying careful attention to you environment and knowing all the ins and outs of your various tools. Watching it all come together leaves you with a well deserved sense of accomplishment. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that the sense of chaos from before only enhances that feeling of accomplishment. After all, you're gonna feel a lot better for solving something if you know just how badly you screwed things up beforehand. Of course, this set-up isn't entirely perfect. The frequent checkpointing robs you of at least some sense of accomplishment, and the loose physics that were so fun a while ago now introduce an unwanted element of luck into the mix. But despite these issues, the game manages to have its cake and eat it, too. Oh, and there are rocks to collect, too, and maybe a couple of other extras, but the game calls those boring, anyway, so I see no harm in skipping them over completely.

Speaking of things I'd rather ignore: the length. The game's a measly couple of hours long, and I feel like I'm left wanting more. Not because two hours is too short for a game, but because it's too short for this game. For all the game does with the idea of cutting things, I still feel like it could do more. Not much, mind you, but the game still ends just before it's exhausted every last opportunity to slice things apart like a madman. It's like the game is underdelivering on its own potential, even if it's only doing so by a marginal amount. Fortunately, though, that's not really enough to drag down the game's other accomplishments. I mean, it still somehow manages to take an idea that's completely dumb and transform it into something that's thought out. How many games can claim to do that? Without being designed by Hideo Kojima?

Review Synopsis

• This must be what it's like as a five year old.
• With the brain of a thirty five year old.
• Just keep in mind that it's only a couple hours long.
• Wait, I think I just described Akira. So yea, Tiny and Big is exactly like Akira.

Ah, Spec Ops. I wish I had an intelligent and/or insightful comment to make about it and bump this with, but I don't. It's just terrific.

Surprisingly, I disagree. I really don't like it (and that screenshot I cited is part of the reason).

@video_game_king:

Well you coulda fooled me.

@pyromagnestir:

Remember in the latest Bombin' the AM, where I asked if they changed their opinion on a review after publishing? This is what I was talking about.

@video_game_king:

Just because I'm on Giantbomb.com doesn't mean I watch the content!

Spec-Ops: The Line stuff I remember off the top of my head:

- You were heading down. A lot. Almost all of the time you were climbing down. Down. Down. Down...

- Loading screens messages were spooky.

- There are a surprising number of "alternate paths" for the "decision time" scenes they throw at you. This is something that games need to take cues from where even though it is constrained there are multiple ways to make the choice.

- Completely terrible to play and a completely miserable experience but still a fascinating game where it could be argued that the banal play and unsettling atmosphere on purpose and the point. But then if that is the case, where they too on the nose?

There was no way a game could compete with Call of Duty: Whatever Fighting Something so why not go with creating an insane game (literally and figuratively) instead? The real thing I want to know: How did they get a producer to sign off on this thing?

More like sneering and accusatory.

I remember trying that when the crowd was throwing stones at you. I knew the game wanted me to shoot them, but I said "Fuck this" and decided to walk past them. They stoned me to death. Unfortunately, I ended up killing them, only to realize sometime later that "suppressing fire" might have been a viable option. Goddamn it.

Eventually i'll have to play Spec Ops. I keep thinking about picking it up everytime it goes on sale and then remember that it is a fairly traditional shooter and that i don't particularly enjoy shooters. Or maybe the demo is just a terrible representation of how the game actually plays? After all those years and all the talks about the game i did manage to never have anything meaningful spoiled. Or no spoilers that mean anything without the context in any case.

I should probably watch Apocalypse Now too at some point. There's enough lists of greatest movies telling me i should have done that a while ago. It just never came up i guess. I'll do that tonight i think.

I think Extra Credits mentioned Spec Ops' demo representing the game poorly. Of course, this being a narrative-based game, it's hard to represent the narrative in the space of however long a demo is. Still, I wouldn't recommend it.

I remember reading something on its development a long while back, and apparently, the development team's only mandate from the higher-ups was that they were to create a modern military shooter set in Dubai. Other than that, they were given creative freedom to do what they wanted.

I listen to this song before going to bed almost every day, for unknown reasons. It's weird, I've had the game for a while and never even played it.

I want to know your reasons for sleeping mid-day.

The night is dark and full of terrors.

@video_game_king: So your blog says you like Spec Ops but you really don't like it. Make up your god damn mind king of video games and moon.

I have to say that I liked what Spec Ops was trying to be more than what it actually was. It had really interesting ideas but they weren't executed in the best way. First of all I found the actual shooting to be lackluster and the enemy design too videogamey (that's not a real word). Here is the heavy and here is the fast dude that sprints at you with just a fucking knife for some reason. It made getting through the game tedious in a couple of spots and is a bit jarring in the context of its themes. In the end it's still a game so I'm going to jude it by its gameplay (at least partially).

Secondly I agree with you that the choices kind of broke the game. The way it is set up ivolves you as the player in the bad stuff that is going on. But by giving you choices in only some moments and not in others it completely destroys that sense of involvement which leads to me, the player, not caring anymore and it makes the loading sceens even weirder. You don't need choices to tell a powerful narrative like that as shown in The Last of Us but either you go down one path or the other. The ending has a cool twist but my issues persist nontheless.

That's videogame conditioning for you. Either you shoot it or you don't, there is no inbetween.

Spec Ops is a game I want to love but feel mostly indifferent towards. Some of the "choices" made me feel like I was acting out a video game version of the movie Crash (if that makes any sense). Not to mention I found the controls so damn cumbersome.

I do love the ending though. it was worth playing through to experience that.

Which one?

I remember that, too. I remember a lot of areas I just had to fucking slog through. Sometimes, it was the heavy, sometimes, it was the knife guy. It wasn't enjoyable (at least not directly), so the game constantly taunting you for enjoying said combat comes across as flimsy.

@video_game_king: Whaaat? You didn't have anything else to say about DEFCON after your experience with it?

I don't know how the Moon handles the point-of-no-return scenario where Everybody Dies due to mutually assured destruction, but on Earth it's just a matter of strategic placement of your nuclear arsenal and fleets and killing more of the enemy than they kill of you before the Post-Apocalypse begins! That being said, I guess you didn't miss out on much.

I also loved Spec Ops' ending enough to be inspired to read Heart of Darkness. It kind of holds up? The thing is though you can kinda tell how most of everything plays out in it if you've played through Spec Ops: The Line, but still worth a read if you're into some heavy reading!

@video_game_king:

To be clear, I don't think FPS games are a great design for an "adventure game with multiple decision paths" but I thought the way Spec-Ops tried was better than many other action games where they slap on the "save the puppy/kick the puppy" morality system. Upon reflection almost anything you can try in that scenario is a "bad idea" but I give the game credit for allowing the player the freedom to try it anyway.

I can not recommend Spec-Ops: The Line to people but I do say it is one of those "demands to be seen" things. Usually a game this annoying to play would make me stop but story and themes were fascinating enough to make me keep playing on just to see how it was going to screw with things next. We laugh at how terribad the campaign is in games like CoD where this game does something...else...that seems more effective and is definitely memorable. But is it good? I can't say it is.

It wasn't much. I noticed that the game was eating up my Steam hours (I've got 90+ hours in a game I don't think I spent an hour with), and decided to bail for now.

I haven't read Heart of Darkness, but I have read some criticism of it. A lot of it points out that the text fails to properly criticize colonialism because it still uses colonialism to do that. Where am I going with this? Spec Ops: The Line falls prey to a very similar flaw. (Where Apocalypse Now lies in all this, I don't know.)

I'd dance around the subject and say it's ineffective (due in no small part to that cinematic focus I remember pointing out).

You know how my crown lets me become any video game character I want and gain full access to their powers? It also means I'm incredibly mentally unstable, since I constantly risk switching to whatever consciousness just so happens to flit into my perspective.

I'd say there's merit to the criticism in both cases of the book and the game! I actually still need to see Apocalypse Now -- I can't even believe I'm admitting to this -- so yeah I don't think I'd be able to comment on that either.

Overall, though, as opposed to the whole criticism angle, I ended up coming out both Heart of Darkness and Spec Ops: The Line with the impression that both works were overpoweringly nihilistic. There's one moment in the ending of Heart of Darkness that is especially sinister in that respect, since it turned out to be unsatisfying in the most appropriate way possible.

Have you played The Stanley Parable? That is the most sneering and accusatory game I've ever played!

You wrote this a while ago right? Why publish it as is, if your opinion has changed?

Just curious

A.) My opinions about Tiny and Big remain the same.

B.) Because Hanako deserves a better birthday present than Hacker Evolution Duality and Bomberman.

C.) I probably could've written an addendum to this blog, but spent that sweet time on the Quick Time Event blog I've been "promising" for a while.

The only part I really remember about Spec Ops is where you're going through a room with a bunch of dress forms and you're fighting one of those big dudes and the lights keep blinking on an off and every time they do the guy has switched places with one of the dress forms. That was pretty cool.

@video_game_king:

I guess that makes sense, I am looking forward to your QTE blog. Not sure an addendum would have taken any longer to commenting in the thread though...

Who is Hanako?

As quoted from Gregory Kasavin's Giant Bomb page,

Kasavin took a new position at 2K Games, working as a Publishing Producer on Spec Ops: The Line.

So yeah, approval must've been easy.

Huh. I thought you were commenting on the screenshot ballad.

@video_game_king:

I'm old and senile.

That sounds like the complaint made against similar games like Bioshock complaining that "the turn" is insulting. For some it is a neat twist for others I guess it is a slap in the face (how does a game do that anyway?).

Maybe my stance is more of a reflection of how dull I think the "campaign story" in these games has gotten. It has gotten so bad that I would rather see a game like this trying to go to uncomfortable ideas and questions than another dude-bro story where someone is dropping a "savior nuke" or a space station getting blasted out of the sky or a nuke getting blasted out of the sky by a space station or nanomachines or whatever.

The issue with Spec-Ops: The Line comes down to this: This game setups and asks "Are you really having fun (or feel anything for that matter) playing any FPS with such contrived design and contrite story?" That is a great thing to ask but to pull this off they had to make a game that was contrived and contrite. They don't get a pass just because they are insightful asking "Don't you think this is all messed up?"

Obligatory GOT THE FUCKER

Yea, probably, only much more acerbic.

I don't remember the twist in BioShock being as insulting there as it was here. I don't even remember it being insulting. Then again, I really do like BioShock. Plus there are a lot of other factors at play.

All I remember about Spec ops was that it was kind of pretty to look at and the shooting was lackluster but fun. It was basically just one of those games where I turned my brain off and shot bad guys. Which I'm okay with every once in a while.