Spec Ops: The Line

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.

The opening of the game takes place several months after an attempted effort by the U.S. Army to evacuate the city of Dubai. Aware that catastrophic sandstorms were going to hit the city, the army sent their 33rd Battalion to safely escort citizens to safety, but all too soon the sandstorms came and Dubai was ravaged, the area became entirely cut off from the outside world, and the 33rd disappeared. You play as Captain Martin Walker, leader of a three-man team of soldiers known as Delta Squad, who enter the city sixth months later to locate the source of the 33rd’s distress beacon, and search for survivors. However, all is not well in Dubai.

The gameplay of The Line isn’t anything special in itself. You run through levels, you can shift into cover, you shoot the enemies, and sometimes you throw a grenade, there’s not that much more to it than that. The game does set itself slightly apart from the competition in that even on lower difficulties, both you and the enemies can only take a few shots before you die, but this feels like a bit of a misstep. Seeing enemies drop in a single blast of a rifle can be quite satisfying, but it doesn’t feel worth having to hide back behind cover so often and sit there while your health recharges. The worst consequence of your vulnerability may be that it takes a split second after you’ve let go of the aim button to drop back into cover, so I encountered far too many occasions throughout the game where I died in that brief moment of Walker performing his “Hiding back behind cover” animation.

The game does however add a welcome tweak to its cover system in which you can tap the A button to enter a run mode, but holding the A button will let you run and immediately enter any piece of cover you approach. This gives you a means to move quickly through levels without being rudely and suddenly dragged into nearby objects as you may be in other cover-based shooters. Besides this there aren’t a lot of other major features; you can direct squadmates to attack specific enemies or occasionally throw flashbangs to stun enemies, but that’s about it. The game also doesn’t pull off its gameplay better than any other competing cover-based shooter out there. The aiming doesn’t feel as tight or fluid as it should be, I experienced what is probably best described as some questionable hit detection, and overall the combat just feels at best serviceable, but at worst, actively unenjoyable.

The presentation on the whole leaves something to be desired, but that’s not to say some interesting things aren't done with it. Being set in the sand-blasted Dubai, much of the game takes place across the rather bland and samey yellow dunes and abandoned buildings throughout the city. Occasionally though, you’ll enter an environment that seems truly pleasant to soak in. Many of these are the interiors of architecturally pleasing buildings, or the areas of Dubai where you have sweeping and beautiful views of the city. I wish everything looked this good, because it seems in some ways unfortunate that the game is also plagued by muddy textures and occasionally jarring texture pop. I do however, have to give a nod of approval to the character dialogue, which starts off as light-hearted and jokey but as the game progresses becomes more terse and aggressive.

Here is where things get weird though; I’ve talked about the less than spectacular graphics, the bad gunplay, and a set of features and mechanics that’s left wanting, but the game’s narrative doesn’t just work in spite of this stuff, but for a large part because of it. It’s hard to talk about the nature of The Line without giving away at least one or two of its secrets, but it can be accurately described as a bait-and-switch, for a large part because it wants you to think it's just another half-arsed Call of Duty knock-off at first, so it can pull back the curtain and surprise you with something far more intelligent. It’s trying to present you with an unpleasant modern military-themed shooter experience, partly because it’s a critique of modern military shooters, and for other reasons that become somewhat clearer later into the game.

The way that most modern military games treat their subject matter and the things that they say about war are rather worrying, particularly because the wars they are depicting are the kind that people are fighting and dying in today, and because these kinds of games have become such a huge part of the medium’s cultural identity. Most games in this vein, intentionally or unintentionally, put across the view that the hero is undoubtedly justified in what they do, that problems can be solved if you can just slaughter enough enemy combatants, that military intervention has few to no negative consequences, and that war is ultimately without moral complications and grey areas.

Even when these run-and-gun camouflage-soaked shooters try to tell you that war is hell, it’s before having you gun down helpless foreigners from an attack helicopter in the context of light-hearted fun. Even when they claim to be “dark and gritty”, they have little to no intention of really confronting the dark details of their chosen subject matter.

Spec Ops: The Line has no such problems; not only does it actually seem committed to asking questions about war and the way it’s portrayed in games, it’s not afraid of making you, the player, question yourself or your relationship with games like these. The game is also very open to toying with your perception, which is part of its appeal, but ultimately it respects the player, and I respect it for that. It leaves itself open to interpretation and often doesn’t spell out things in words of one syllable. It may not seem like such a subversive, cutting critique for a significant duration of its play time, and occasionally it may get a little hard to believe, but the things it has to say are important, and should be recognised by the games industry, press, and audience.

Outside of The Line’s single player mode there is a multiplayer mode, but it really isn’t worth playing. It contains the standard genre tropes; progression systems, loadouts, perks, and so on, but because the shabby gameplay and aesthetics in the campaign are all in aid of game’s narrative, when you take that narrative out, you’re just left with a product that feels clunky, off-putting and generally pales in quality to other games in the genre.

When it comes down to it, how much you enjoy Spec Ops: The Line will depend on to what degree you’re willing to put up with crude and frustrating gameplay in service of a story that is written cleverly and does justice to the topics it tackles. Playing The Line, I found working through much of the game an unpleasant uphill slog, and yet I’m left very glad I experienced it. The more I reflect on the game, the more praise I want to give it. If you’re the kind of person who’s just after a shooter that’s fun to play, there are much better places to look than here, but if you’re genuinely interested in a game that will make you think, and has something to say, Spec Ops: The Line is a must-have.