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    Spec Ops: The Line

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Jun 26, 2012

    Spec Ops: The Line is a narrative-driven modern military third-person shooter set in Dubai during the aftermath of a series of destructive sandstorms.

    Short summary describing this game.

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    3.6 stars

    Average score of 34 user reviews

    Excellent storytelling compels familiar gameplay 4

    Spec Ops: The Line is unabashed in its Heart of Darkness influences. Joseph Conrad’s classic journey upriver through the Congo, and later Vietnam and Cambodia in Apocalypse Now, replaced with the golden sand dunes of a desolate Dubai. The once oil rich metropolis reduced to hell on earth as a series of historic and apocalyptic sandstorms ravage the Middle Eastern paradise and its towering landmarks. This is not a venue normally befitting of a modern military shooter, but then Spec Ops: The Line ...

    29 out of 30 found this review helpful.

    While seemingly generic, Spec Ops surprises in a lot of ways 2

    If you're looking for a new game to sate your thirst for something seminal, you'd surely laugh at the notion of a third-person military shooter being pushed toward you - I know I would. Yager Development's Spec Ops: The Line is a game that looks and feels like the competition, but instead of following the safe and derivative path that's usually carved out for the genre, forges its own dark and gritty route that contemporary games hardly use. If, by year's end, people still aren't talking about t...

    6 out of 6 found this review helpful.

    Expect The Unexpected In This Interesting Criticism Of Heroism 2

    *Expect Spoliers*Spec Ops: The Line is one of many games over the past few years that try to change the formula of it's genre. Many of those game have good ideas but fail to deliver, however Spec Ops delivers strongly on it's premise of a truly character driven narrative.The general gameplay in Spec Ops isn't really different in any way to other third person shooters. It handles well, feels weighty and can appear brutal at times. One nifty feature is that after each head-shot you achieve the gam...

    3 out of 3 found this review helpful.

    A Hidden Gem in its Genre 1

    Spec Ops: The Line is definitely more than meets the eye. The game is a third-person cover-based shooter set in the present day, and centred around a group of U.S. soldiers on mission in the Middle East. These surface elements and the general experience that the game provides have probably left many passing it by, thinking it’s just another CoD-like cluttering up pre-owned aisles and selling for cheap online, but it’s so much more than it seems. Dubai is in need of help.The opening of the game t...

    2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

    Cool narative elements don't excuse uninspired gameplay 1

    Spec Ops: The Line aims to be thought provoking and mature. Clearly drawing inspiration from works such as Apocalypse Now. It’s easy to turn this shooter into something pretentious. Here we have a game that takes the mass-murder we conduct in every game without much thought and puts the morality of that on center stage. The game often asks the player if it was right gunning down the rouge American soldiers and at many times questions if the main cast are the heroes or villains. There are a lot o...

    2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

    Spec Ops: The Line Review: Create Your Own Truth 0

    Spec Ops the Line is the first major title from developer Yager, and has had a rough development cycle with some significant delays during its creation. This lead to me having fairly tepid expectations for what Spec Ops The Line would offer, and its extremely generic appearance in adverts and gameplay sections that I had watched did not exactly help to make it stand out from all other modern shooting games in my mind. The major thing that Spec Ops had in its favour was that it was drawing inspir...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Now I understand why some people HATE Shutter Island 0

    Spec Ops: The Line is a game that I've been waffling over whether to buy for what feels like a year now. Every few months, usually because of someone in the press or a forum bringing it up, I get really curious about why the story is so talked about. But I've tried the demo and wasn't ever too intrigued with the actual game so it was really cool to find the game available for free this month on Playstation Plus. Let me just say that I'm really glad I wasn't asked for any money in exchange for th...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    An anti-war saga in a sea of military shooters. 0

    War is hell, if you didn't already know this. Hatred erupts into a firestorm of death, leaving behind only tears and destruction. It’s what breaks humans down into a blanket of depression for years to come. In the midst of military shooters arises a different type of story that doesn't praise war but expresses the discomfort of being in war.If you haven’t already had the story spoiled for you, you might be in for a big surprise. What starts out as a typical modern warfare scenario quickly turns ...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    My Spec Ops: The Line Review 1

    Spec Ops: The Line is actually a pretty unique game for me. I am pretty split on my feelings for it. For the most part it is a pretty standard third person cover based shooter. It runs like so many shooters before it did. That is not to say there is anything wrong with that. A lot of games take a lot of heat of playing the same way as other games of the same genera. In fact the game play is not were the majority of the problems lie, it is best said that it is the middle ground of the game, with ...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Never Cross the Lines 0

    Who are we without our humanity, and given the right circumstances will we abandon the social pre-conceived idea of humanity to survive. That phrase appears to be the idea that Spec Ops: The Line is trying to push. When faced with a difficult decision, sometimes the best decision is to just do what seems best for better or for worse. Yet those decisions can carry a heavy burden on one's conscience. As you play through Spec Ops you are given difficult decisions in an unconventional way for games...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    A call to discuss the role of the video game shooter 0

    The US 33rd Infantry Battalion, led by Colonel John Konrad arrives in Dubai to assist in the evacuation effort before giant sand storms can bury the city whole. In defiance of orders from his superiors to leave the city, Konrad and the 33rd remain behind to lead a caravan of refugees out of Dubai. The evacuation is a failure. In the storm’s aftermath, Dubai is declared a no-man's-land and the 33rd are branded as traitors.In Spec Ops: The Line, you assume the role of Captain Walker, who is ...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Spec Ops The Line is a somewhat successful attempt to deconstruct the modern warfare shooter. (Spoilers) 0

    This review contains spoilers. I believe that in order to do a thorough examination of a game I need to be able to discuss every part of it. Be warned.The SetupThe actual plot of the game concerns a “Heart of Darkness”-esque trek through Dubai six months after the city has been hit by a massive sandstorm. A Lt. Col. John Konrad (ey?) attempted an evacuation of the city as the storm hit. You are Capt. Martin Walker working alongside 1st Lt. Alphonso Adams and SSgt. Lugo to investigate the city w...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    I don't know what you're talking about, I thought it was pretty great. OH NO, OPINIONS. 0

    The RadHandles narrative better than most games of its ilk.Satisfying gunplay.Excellent voice work by Nolan North.Awesome soundtrack. The BadDifficulty spikes to a frustrating degree around the midway point.Some visual roughness.People had said that Spec Ops: The Line was well worth playing for the interesting story and narrative touches, but that the gameplay left a lot to be desired. I feel like maybe folk were just expecting too much because I went in expecting a crappy shooter and got someth...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    A Broken Man 0

    This Spec Ops is easily the best in the Spec Ops franchise. What really sets this one apart is the story. I got it cheap from an online retail website for only $4.95 (PC Download). I was very impressed. I went in with kinda low expectations but I was pleasantly surprised. The game is filled with moral choices and they're all pretty bad in a moral sense, there is no nice options, only less horrible ones. It's a slow start, but once it picks up you wont want to put it down.The game looks pretty da...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Spec Ops: The Line Review 0

    Spec Ops: The Line is one of the best shooters I’ve played this console generation… And I’m sick of shooters to be quite frank. Every other game that comes out is a shooter these days.Spec Ops: The Line is a thought-provoking game that deserves to recognized, backed by some fantastic voice-work, a gorgeous setting within the Arabian Desert, and a satisfying, gritty outlook on what war can do to the mind.Expect the worse, anticipate deathThe game starts with a rescue mission that swiftly unravel...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    A mediocre shooter with a twist that doesn't work 0

    Warning: This review contains spoilers.First of let me state that I didn't actually mind the core gameplay of Spec Ops: The Line. The shooting, while nothing new, was competently executed and reasonably fun, aside from a few cases where I ended up stuck to cover. My only real problem with it was how cartoony it would get in it's enemy placement and design. The knife wielding crazy guys that would run at you, the almost indestructible heavy enemies, the exploding crates and just the shear number ...

    1 out of 2 found this review helpful.

    "If the truth is undeniable, you create your own" 0

    One of the biggest problems most developers possess when trying to break into the industry is how to differentiate themselves from what has become the norm. How does one hope to compete with Triple A games such as Gears of War or Uncharted that have indisputably perfected and forever changed how third-person shooters are played. Instead of trying to re-invent the core mechanics, YAGER Development directs it's focus entirely on story-telling and the results are well deserving of recognition. But ...

    1 out of 2 found this review helpful.

    A glimpse in to the future potential of game narrative and story 0

    The general “gameplay” of Spec Ops: the Line is nothing special but it by far makes up for this and then some. In a traditional sense it isn’t going to blow your mind and regardless of my personal feelings towards the game it is indeed very short, around four hours and the multiplayer is utterly pointless so don’t even bother thinking about that.No what you are going to play Spec Ops for, if anything is something most video games still struggle to pull off; a very compelling narrative with well ...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Fantastic Story with a few kinks. 0

    Spec Ops: The Line kind of comes out of no where. It successfully re-establishes a dead franchise, but going a completely different route. The original series of Spec Ops games were developed as budget titles for the original PlayStation , but Spec Ops: The Line goes an almost Gears of War route, telling one of the best stories I've seen in a video game in 2012. But the game isn't without it's faults.Removing the fantastic story, Spec Ops is just another typical third-person action shooter. The ...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Do you feel like a hero yet? 0

    Do you feel like a hero yet? It’s pretty awesome seeing a message like that show up in the hint section on a loading screen. Spec Ops: The Line is a very interesting game, playing it four years after its release must skew things a bit. This definitely isn’t a 60 dollar game, especially today. Putting this in your Steam wishlist and waiting for a drop, or finding a heavily discounted copy of it for 360/PS3 and spending your weekend with it definitely pays off. Little else besides it&r...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Better Than Good 0

    The story in this game is fantastic. There is a great twist at the end that almost begs you to play it again to see if you could have a different outcome. The game play itself is a little flat. As a unreal engine third person shooter this just feels like Gears light. The weapon selections are generic and so are the enemies, but the story's originality and pacing more than make up for its shortfalls. You are given a different perspective on all the killing that you blindly do during videogames. Y...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    This game gave me PTSD too, Walker. 0

    Spec Ops: The Line came out last summer and I finally picked it up last month. The only reason I was even remotely interested in playing it was because I’d heard the story took some unique turns that set it apart from the (very crowded) modern military shooter genre. That story did not disappoint, for the most part. While I expected it to start out a little more heroically and deteriorate over time, I instead found it taking a pretty dark turn within the first half hour so. Instead of going from...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Welcome to Dubai, gentlemen. 0

    The tenth title of the Spec Ops series, and the first entry since Spec Ops: Airborne Commando in ten years, Spec Ops: The Line is an awesome adventure through Dubai. It has great graphics that accurately recreates the setting of Dubai and manages to make you feel like you're walking through a once vibrant city in ruin, and a great story about a Army squad going to look for survivors in Dubai that's been hit with a sandstorm only to find that it itself has become a war zone. The game was banned i...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Whole heartily recommend playing Spec Ops: The Line experience. 0

    This generation of gaming has sure seen its fair share of first and third-person modern military shooters. I’ve got nothing against these games; I just wish developers would change the themes and settings to something that isn’t part of this “genre standard” anymore. In all honesty, I went into 2K Games’ latest entry in the Spec Ops series with a bit of a meh attitude. I didn’t know all that much about it and because of the military setting I wasn’t expecting anything great to come out of it. I ...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    You're still a good person. 0

    Spec Ops: The Line gives many the mental image of a COD or BF game with a 1/4 the budget and nearly equal parts fun and excitement. I decided to give it a try simply based on some undertones I've been hearing about the story. After around a 6 hour campaign I can say that this game isn't that bad mechanically and is a slightly better than average shooter. That sounds bleak but the story, yes the damn story is the highlight of this FPS game. It won't be winning any best sellers but it definitely w...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    I felt sick afterwards 0

    After playing Spec Ops the Line I felt sick. But I still recommend it for the same reason I recommend the movie "Schindlers List". It most definitely is not fun to play, but there is something there that makes it worth playing and I can't easily put the why into words.One of the reasons might be that it made me think about the airplane scene out of Call of Duty Modern Warfare in a different way: Why can I exterminate hundreds of enemies in Call of Duty and still feel somewhat normal about it, wh...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    A terribly written story fails to drive a poorly designed game. 0

    I've never understood the praise that Spec Ops: The Line received for its story. (SPOILER WARNING) The sub-Call-of-Duty twist at the end of the game that a bunch of things had been in your characters head was cliched and ineffective. The progression of the game-y elements of Spec Ops turning against you, loading screens calling you a killer and a monster etc., was a cool idea that was delivered ham-fistedly. And speaking of hammy fists, the white phosphorous scene maybe sums up my problems with ...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    Spec Ops: The Line Review. 0

    Let's get one thing straight, Spec Ops: The Line is a generic third person shooter, the sort you've played to death in this generation of consoles. That's not to say it's without substance or the occasional moment of, dare I say brilliance. Don't get me wrong, it's attempts to tell an emotional story don't always work, but some credit must be given for the method of storytelling Spec Ops: The Line goes with.Spec Ops: The Line is a generic 3rd person shooter, but tells one hell of a story.There's...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Spec Ops: The Line Review - Focus on the Mission 0

    Story never seems to be the focus of a shooter. Sure it’s there, but it’s not what keeps you going through the experience. You want to shoot more stuff, because it’s fun. Spec Ops: The Line places all of its emphasis on its story. It tries to evoke emotion through difficult decisions and gruesome circumstances, but damns itself by being trapped in its own genre.You play as Walker, part of a Delta force sent into Dubai to evacuate the city after sandstorms and anarchy have turned it to ruins. Mor...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Awesome Elementals 0

    I'm really enjoying the graphics in this title. The smoke from the weapons is just as good as any new title. Environment looks realistic. I also have FUTURE SOLDIER, MAX PAYNE 3, DIRT SHOWDOWN, MW3 and Battlefield 3 but I'm spending a lot of time on Spec Ops: THE LINE. I rate a game by the level of graphics in the environmental elements like weather mist, sand mist and textures. BINARY DOMAIN is almost as good and SNIPER ELITE is not even in this class. This game definitely has my attention. rob...

    0 out of 4 found this review helpful.

    War is hell. 0

    Spec Ops is either a love it or hate it kind of game. On one hand the combat feels rough and bad for the most part while the story and events that happen are simply memorizing. I want to praise Spec Ops for doing something that no military shooter has ever done. For that matter any game really. It maked me think about what I'm doing and why I'm shooting. It shows you the horrors of war and down right blames you for everything that has happen. For the fears of spoilers I won't talk much about the...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    A glimpse of what stories for shooters should be like. 0

    It has been a long time coming for Spec Ops: The Line though through all the possible internal struggles that occurred Yager was still able to release the game and it is a game that people who wish shooters had better stories should play.The GoodSpec Ops: The Line is a look at the darker sides of war. Where other shooters put their focus on giant set pieces that are a spectacle to watch, Spec Ops delves deep into the mind of Walker, Adams andLugo to show the difficult choices that come when peop...

    0 out of 0 found this review helpful.

    Better cover shooter than Last of Us 2 0

    This game is like Gears of War without all of the goofy sci-fi stuff I can't stand. It reminds me of 50 Cent Blood on The Sand for obvious reasons. It's got the running back tuck of GOW and allows you to control squad members in a fairly simplistic and effective way. It's a cover shooter with A.I. that can be very punishing. I'm sure Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War will have some amazing on-rails scenes but truth be told games have been doing this for years and it's very much a paint-by-numbers ...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    What's "the point" 0

    At its heart, Spec Ops:The Line is a cover-based shooter. A really crummy one. The mechanics of this game are easily of lower quality than those of even the first Gears of War, which was released five years prior and had laid a clear blueprint. It's incredibly easy to become unstuck to cover, at which point your guy stands straight up like a beacon for all incoming damage. Sometimes he just will not stick to cover after pressing the button to do so. Transitioning from one piece of cover to anoth...

    1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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