This game gave me PTSD too, Walker.
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 macho hero to murderous soldier, I found it more like a deterioration from murderous soldier to complete psychopath. That deterioration was indeed something to behold and made wading through the rather average shooting worthwhile. The one aspect of the story that turned me off was when Walker (the main character), reaches his goal and we realize much of what he’s been seeing along his path of destruction is not real, but is simply a creation of his clearly damaged mind. Maybe I’m off base, but ever since Fight Club, A Beautiful Mind, and other films pulled this trick (feel free to help me out with some others here), I’ve been in a “been there, done that” place whenever I see it done again. Did it surprise me? Yes. I was surprised that they were using that tired out trick. Oh well.
The environments in the game added to the experience, and while games are rife with post-nuclear blast, post-alien invasion, and generally post-apocalyptic environments, a city swallowed up in a sandstorm is a new one that figured into the actual game play in some moderately interesting ways. More than that, though, it was a lot of fun to take in the vistas of the incredible city of Dubai in such a state.
As I’d heard the reason to play this game was the story, I played the game on easy and plowed through it in about 5 hours. While there is multiplayer, reading this article over on Polygon convinced me to steer clear of that tacked-on mess. The length of the campaign makes the game a hard sale at full price, but as I paid $7.50 for it I definitely got my money’s worth.
In the after math of playing through this game in 2 sittings, I’m not overly interested in another shooter this week. Walker’s PTSD has rubbed off on me a bit too much (a testament to the power of this journey) so I’m trying to cheer myself up with Mario Galaxy this week. That’s doing the trick so far.