Spec Ops: The Line

[revlob]

I had the same problems with that part, it was really hard to know exactly what the game was expecting of me, when no mater where I ran I ended up being mown down. It gets much better after that though, stick with it.

[Smitty]

I think the slow-mo occurs when you've nailed a headshot - I used to just get dip down back into cover to make sure I wasn't wasting anymore ammo on a dead target.

It's basically for gruesome stuff - headshots and people gibbing after direct grenade hits.

I die. I realise I'm starting to sound like smitty here but this is really bad.

It's true, I'm the only person who has ever complained about an element of game ever in the history of the world.

[errollw]

Yea the helicopter bit was a bit annoying as it sucked the immersion right out of me; it's strange how bits like that get through play-testing. It does get much better afterwards and I don't think there's a similarly broken bit.

[Smitty]

I had the same problems with that part, it was really hard to know exactly what the game was expecting of me

Really? I just ran forward. A heli starts shooting at me, I run. The characters say 'run', no?

[Rudi von Starnberg]

Yeah I just ran for it as everyone was yelling to run and I got through it first time so it's really weird to hear this sort of thing.

[KriessG]

Yea I never had one tester complain to me in over a year about that section, so I don't think it's a big issue even on the higher difficulties.

[revlob]

That's the thing, I was sure that's what was expected of me, it's not like there was a lack of prompting. But, each time I tried to run straight forwards I was killed. After about the fifth time, I thought, hmm, perhaps I'm supposed to use cover or something, so I tried that; I tried stopping and starting, zig-zagging, running fast, running slow, running the wrong way, etc. None of that worked. I'm certain that when I finally did make it, I did nothing special, no different to my first attempt, but for whatever reason it just seemed to me like it was really unforgiving in the timing maybe.

It was one of only two times (the other being a section near the end where you only have a pistol and have to reach Lugo) when the game asked me if I wanted to adjust the difficulty. Glad to hear someone else had problems with it!

[KriessG]

What difficulty were you on? All I remember was as soon as prompted, run forward, then right and up, then back down then you're basically done.

[revlob]

"Combat Op" I think? I have that and the "Walk on the Beach" achievement. There are a couple of hits when searching for "spec ops helicopter run" suggesting it's not just a freak occurrence. I don't wouldn't have minded so much at the time if there wasn't an unskippable cutscene between the checkpoint and the start of the run.

[Plums]

That's the thing, I was sure that's what was expected of me, it's not like there was a lack of prompting. But, each time I tried to run straight forwards I was killed. After about the fifth time, I thought, hmm, perhaps I'm supposed to use cover or something, so I tried that; I tried stopping and starting, zig-zagging, running fast, running slow, running the wrong way, etc. None of that worked. I'm certain that when I finally did make it, I did nothing special, no different to my first attempt, but for whatever reason it just seemed to me like it was really unforgiving in the timing maybe.

Yeah this is the same thing that happened to me. Every time I ran I was killed at the bit where you turn right, until one time it let me through. I'm playing it on the second difficulty level.

I think I'm getting near the end now. It's well-executed, but I must admit it's not really done anything special for me. I think my problem with it is the insane body count sort of just makes me go into auto-pilot. It seems like the game wants me to care about what's going on but I feel zero immersion. It'll get a second playthrough though I should think.

[PK]

Yeah this is the same thing that happened to me. Every time I ran I was killed at the bit where you turn right, until one time it let me through. I'm playing it on the second difficulty level.

I think I'm getting near the end now. It's well-executed, but I must admit it's not really done anything special for me. I think my problem with it is the insane body count sort of just makes me go into auto-pilot. It seems like the game wants me to care about what's going on but I feel zero immersion. It'll get a second playthrough though I should think.

I thought something similar - there's parts that are really effective at subverting the genre, like

The civilians caught up in the phosphorous attack, the crowd that you can either shoot into or over, and the ending

but then there's long stretches where it just falls into the same shooting gallery tedium as most other military shooters. And it doesn't exaggerate anything you find in other games in the genre enough to be a particularly scathing satire of them.

I was thinking what it would be like if instead of waves upon waves of enemies who don't react to you killing their buddies, you had very sparse encounters that were all really emotionally charged - soldiers trying to surrender, freaking out when their friends get shot etc. If every encounter was really harrowing then it could have been even better (although it's a great game and everyone should play it!)

[Blu3Flame]

What a game! Shortly after finishing and reflecting on the events in the game I started a second play through. It really speaks volumes that I'm engrossed even more in the story this time around. Usually on replaying games I skip through cutscenes and story to get to get on with the gameplay.

[Shrinkfinger]

I have to thank the people on this thread for making me aware of this title, I've just finished one of best story driven shooters of this gen and its been started from scratch immediately after finishing.

[kerraig UK]

I thought something similar - there's parts that are really effective at subverting the genre, like

The civilians caught up in the phosphorous attack, the crowd that you can either shoot into or over, and the ending

but then there's long stretches where it just falls into the same shooting gallery tedium as most other military shooters. And it doesn't exaggerate anything you find in other games in the genre enough to be a particularly scathing satire of them.

I was thinking what it would be like if instead of waves upon waves of enemies who don't react to you killing their buddies, you had very sparse encounters that were all really emotionally charged - soldiers trying to surrender, freaking out when their friends get shot etc. If every encounter was really harrowing then it could have been even better (although it's a great game and everyone should play it!)

Exactly my response. I felt like they could have built some of their message into the gameplay directly. Imagine shooting soldiers who were actively throwing their guns down and putting their hands in the air...

[Plums]

Who would do that though? If the game gave you a choice then it would have had to have been very different.

Finished it this morning. The ending was nice and it does make you think a bit.

I shot Konrad in the epilogue and laid down my weapon for the troops. Can you kill them? Why would you do that?

When I play it again I'll try and get into the shooting a bit more, I feel like I only really started enjoying that side of it towards the end.

The whole way through I was thinking that I recognised Konrad's voice, it was only right at the end that I realised!

[Plums]

I really liked how they handled the Lugo scene and the decision afterwards. I didn't want to shoot the crowd but they kept closing in eventually throwing stones....then like a lightbulb going off I decided to fire into the air to disperse them. Such a simple thing in principle and something we've seen plenty of times before but without it being explicitly spelled out...I wonder how many people just mowed them down thinking they didn't have a choice.

I didn't think of shooting in the air, I meleed them.

[cavalcade]

Exactly my response. I felt like they could have built some of their message into the gameplay directly. Imagine shooting soldiers who were actively throwing their guns down and putting their hands in the air...

It depends whether you see the game as a critique of war or violence in general, or a critique of the genre of videogames where waves of soldiers coming at you is the norm. I think it's more of a dissection of the latter, which is why the enemy soldiers aren't really nuanced and are just blocks of pixels you need to shoot over and over again. I know there's a lot of argument over how sophisticated the Spec Ops designers actually set out to make the game, but the way it is works seems to make the most sense to me It has to be almost brainless and rote - it makes it seem all the more dreamlike and the times the game does question you all the more jarring. If every encounter was a morally unclear and required you to intimately engage with your choices then I don't think the message would be quite the same, or as effective.

[Padlocked]

Polygon had a great interview on this. Basically, the endless firefights and set pieces are a direct result of trying to make the game more CoD like and "intense", and was the only real deviation they had to make from their artistic vision to satisfy their publishers. That they utilised this to make the message more subversive was a good result.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3590430/dont-be-a-hero-the-full-story-behind-spec-ops-the-line

Quote:

"It's just natural in this generation for a shooter game about soldiers to be taking its cues from the most successful games in the genre," Davis said. "It may be tempting for developers to copy their formula ... attempting to replicate their massive sales success. I never wanted to do that, and neither did Yager, or 2K. We felt like there was something missing from those games, and that we had an opportunity to do something more meaningful, more mature, and more single-player focused."

Nevertheless, Yager was asked to try to close the gap between their shooter and the competition. The slow-paced gameplay was tweaked to be more intense, more approaching what consumers would expect from a modern shooter. More like Call of Duty.

"I would say that if you were to rank Spec Ops on intensity compared to a Call of Duty game," Davis said, "overall it's not as intense as a COD game. It's a little slower paced, and it lets you get closer to the characters, and that's intentional. But before [the change] it was much more that way. There were long sections of a lot of different things that were not big impact moments and so we really needed to filter down to the things that we thought were strongest and then connect those events as strongly as possible. So when you see a woman getting sand boarded, it has context behind it."

When asked if the team ever worried that shifting the intensity of Spec Ops more toward that of Call of Duty might result in players expecting one type of game, then feeling duped when they realize they've gotten another, Davis laughed.

"For me that's awesome. That's exactly what I want," he said. "Maybe I'm an asshole, but I think there are plenty of CODgames out there, and if you want one ... I'm sorry we didn't give you one, but I'm glad that some players went into [the game] and realized that it's something more.

"Seeing gamers go into the experience hoping to have a fun, shooty bro-romp through a middle eastern environment ... killing soulless, villainous enemies who are difficult to relate to (and thus easy to pull the trigger on), and then slowly finding themselves falling down the rabbit hole into a darker, more contemplative, more surreal, and character-driven experience has been amazing for me."

[Smitty]

Imagine shooting soldiers who were actively throwing their guns down and putting their hands in the air...

Imagine.The game could be a million and one things. It could be some complex RPG.

It's a shooter, designed as a critique of shooters. I'm not sure why this is so much confusion over this point.

[Smitty]

It depends whether you see the game as a critique of war or violence in general, or a critique of the genre of videogames where waves of soldiers coming at you is the norm. I think it's more of a dissection of the latter

It is absolutely the latter.

[PK]

It depends whether you see the game as a critique of war or violence in general, or a critique of the genre of videogames where waves of soldiers coming at you is the norm. I think it's more of a dissection of the latter, which is why the enemy soldiers aren't really nuanced and are just blocks of pixels you need to shoot over and over again. I know there's a lot of argument over how sophisticated the Spec Ops designers actually set out to make the game, but the way it is works seems to make the most sense to me It has to be almost brainless and rote - it makes it seem all the more dreamlike and the times the game does question you all the more jarring. If every encounter was a morally unclear and required you to intimately engage with your choices then I don't think the message would be quite the same, or as effective.

I agree with you to an extent, but there's several passages in the game that are indistinguishable from other shooters and I wonder if they could have had benefited from more exaggeration or distortion. It's been a while since I've played it but I mean bits like the shopping complex, or defending the boat, or the tedious fight leading up to the tower near the end of the game. It almost makes the critique seem a bit disingenuous when the game defaults back to gameplay like that.

"It's just natural in this generation for a shooter game about soldiers to be taking its cues from the most successful games in the genre," Davis said. "It may be tempting for developers to copy their formula ... attempting to replicate their massive sales success. I never wanted to do that, and neither did Yager, or 2K. We felt like there was something missing from those games, and that we had an opportunity to do something more meaningful, more mature, and more single-player focused."

Nevertheless, Yager was asked to try to close the gap between their shooter and the competition. The slow-paced gameplay was tweaked to be more intense, more approaching what consumers would expect from a modern shooter. More like Call of Duty.

"I would say that if you were to rank Spec Ops on intensity compared to a Call of Duty game," Davis said, "overall it's not as intense as a COD game. It's a little slower paced, and it lets you get closer to the characters, and that's intentional. But before [the change] it was much more that way. There were long sections of a lot of different things that were not big impact moments and so we really needed to filter down to the things that we thought were strongest and then connect those events as strongly as possible. So when you see a woman getting sand boarded, it has context behind it."

I think that goes some way to explain why the game's that way (to me at least!). It's all just 'what if' but I wonder how much more of an effect on players the game would have been if it had subverted your expectations of a military shooter throughout, rather than in patches.

Imagine.The game could be a million and one things. It could be some complex RPG.

It's a shooter, designed as a critique of shooters. I'm not sure why this is so much confusion over this point.

I don't think there's any confusion around that point in this thread, it's just that the game seems to almost forget it at times.

[Plums]

God smitty you're such a clown.

[Boozy The Clown]

Played through the demo last night and came away very impressed. Pretty sure I'd read some "the demo didn't do anything for me, generic shooty man cover etc... moan moan moan." on here and that put me off downloading it at the time.

I'll try picking it up this week to see what all the fuss is about for sure.

[feltmonkey]

i finished this last night. i played it until past 1am (which is way past my bedtime,) watched the credits (and listened to the magnificent 1983..) to the end then looked up the other endings on youtube. this morning, i have read through an entire thread about it on The Society of Gamesplaying Gentlemen and Womenfolk forum for a second time, watched the Zero Punctuation review (in which i think he missed the point very slightly - it's not a game about the horrors of war - The Line bears no resemblance to actual war - it's a game about war games) and spent the morning and early afternoon thinking about the game.

it is a masterpiece of the medium, certainly. the fact that mechanically it is very much a standard military shooter ends up adding to the game. i'm sure it wasn't completely a deliberate choice - no doubt the use of the Unreal engine was primarily a financial/practical choice, but it ends up being a positive thing, as it helps "disguise" Spec Ops as just another war shooter. in order to tear down the genre from within, it is necessary to position ones self within the genre. it is then elevated beyond the average by the art, the plot, and particularly the theme.

by the art, i mean the setting, the striking visuals, and the soundtrack. i personally feel that these alone elevate the game to make it well worth playing. some of the sights are beautiful, many horrifying, and some both at once. there's something a bit JG Ballard about some of the imagery. the soundtrack fits the action, and even comments on it at times, as well as containing some cracking tunes. the plot, and delivery of it, stand up well on their own. it works even if you choose to ignore the fourth wall breaking moments and meta-narrative, as an emotionally-involving story of Walker's descent into insanity. it works as a sad tale of how Walker, by trying to help, makes the situation much much worse. it even works if you're reading it as Walker reliving it from purgatory, although i don't like that interpretation - i hate the introduction of metaphysics into any story, as i feel it automatically invalidates any commentary on reality. that might be just me being a hardline atheist though, and i can see how the interpretation is valid as the narrative stands, but i feel it changes the overall response to the plot from "...fuck." to "aaaaah...<smug>"

but it's the theme that's truly groundbreaking. it's resolutely a game that has something to say. and it's saying something about games themselves. it's about videogame violence, about the representation of war and violence in games. it's made me look at games differently through the time i've been playing it, certainly. i don't know if the excessive murdering in Uncharted: Golden Abyss would have stood out as much as it has for me if i hadn't been playing The Line in the evenings. i've been playing Skyrim, and the morality in that game has stood out more. although to be fair, Skyrim has a remarkably nuanced approach to morality, on the quiet.

some people have objected to what they see as the game hectoring them for carrying out atrocities they had no choice but to commit. that's not really the point. it's more that we commit these atrocities in games and then don't think about them. Walker lies to himself about what he's done, and justifies it to himself - Konrad made him do it. he had no choice. he's just following his "mission" through to the end. and we're making the same justifications. but it's not saying we're evil for killing those civilians with white phosphorous, it's not saying "for shame!" - it's just suggesting we think more about what we do, and are forced to do, to proceed in these sort of games. don't worry, you're not being criticised as much as as the developers of CoD or Rainbow Six. if there is any criticism of gamers, it's that we enjoy the killing. and we do - i definitely find shooters fun. a bang-bang-bang sequence of headshots is inherently satisfying in these games.

the way the game presents the themes is intelligent, subtle, but insistent. it's largely been covered elsewhere - your AI teammates explicitly criticising the player, the loading screens, the dialogue of the enemies, and Konrad's monologue at the end - "you came here wanting to be a hero", "you just kept marching on" - being delivered to the player, not so much to Walker. i like that second line - it's what we do in these kind of games - we keep pushing on to the next bit, following the story.

ok, really big plot spoilers incoming - only read if you have completed the game.

i'm going to keep pushing on through this mammoth post to discuss individual moments and the choices i made. for the white phosphorous bit, i first tried to avoid using it. i tried to attack the army using conventional weapons, but died repeatedly. eventually, i decided to use the phosphorous, for the reasons i mentioned - to push on through to the next bit. i realised i "had to" do it, to progress the story. at least i deserve some credit for not wanting to, i suppose. then, sort of lost in the mechanical trickiness of using the stuff, working out what the game wanted me to target and suchlike, i realised that i had, accidentally of course, showered a bunch of civilians with the stuff in a rebound off a humvee. i wonder - did everyone realise this in the moment, or did it come as a shock when you walked into that area? my reaction was to reload the game and keep trying to do it without killing the civilians. in the end i had to go back to what i had done. partly because i knew it was what the game "wanted" me to do, and partly because it was what i had done.

i saved the civilians rather than Gould, shot Riggs, and tried to save both the hanged men by shooting the snipers (i killed the snipers, but of course both men died.) Walker justified it by saying we were refusing to play his game. as for the crowd scene after Lugo's death, that's a pretty incredible moment, it's up there with any moment in gaming history, i feel. it blows my mind that so many people snapped and gunned the crowd down! what an achievement by Yager to drive people to that state! others of us froze, some paniced, others still seem to have seen it as a puzzle, which is weird. i sort of froze, before shooting the ground in front of the crowd. Adams shot into the air (i think,) the crowd scattered, and i ran for it. i didn't even stop to check if we had killed any of them. we might have. from what others have said elsewhere, it seems the more elegant solution would have been to chuck a flashbang, but i wasn't thinking that clearly. in the end, i "let Konrad shoot me" as it just seemed right. i had felt in conflict with Walker for much of the game. the ending made me feel much more complicit in his actions. i had been going along with the idea that perhaps i wasn't so much playing the part of Walker, as of the last remnant of his conscience, watching him carry out these atrocities but helpless to stop him. Konrad kind of pointed out that in fact i had been controlling Walker, of course. i had pulled the trigger. (incidentally, i put "let Konrad shoot me" in quotation marks because of course Walker shoots himself. i mention this because of an incredible youtube comment i saw -

shit ending.. you get killed by someone who is already dead.. FAIL

magnificent.)

the games The Line reminded me of most were Bioshock for the examination of player choice, and Shadow of the Colossus for the sense of unease, and the way it portrays the way evil deeds are generally carried out by people who think they're doing the right thing. those are two of my favorite games of all time. Spec Ops: The Line joins them.

[Captain Kelsten]

This is £4.99 on PC from Gamefly at the moment

http://www.gamefly.co.uk/download-games/browse/?ids=5002573,5001072,5001024,5001290,5001480,5001021,5001390,5004057,5003458,5004746&page=0&sort=Bestselling#.URoBZKU2YxM

And you get a further 20% off with the code GFDFEB20UK

Thanks to Marzipan Travolta for the initial spot in the Steam thread.

[robdood]

Great post feltmonkey

Just had a thought, doesn't Liquid Snake berate the player in a similar way (albeit only briefly) at the end of MGS?

"you enjoy all the killing, that's why!"

[Captain Kelsten]

Finished this this morning, which is pretty much the highest level of praise I can give a game these days. Much has already been said on the subject of story and gameplay but my thoughts on it are simple: the story was interesting but tried too hard and the gameplay was serviceable but repetitive, particularly towards the end.

[Clipper]

(Holds fingers in ears) LALALALALA (Doesnt look at any posts in thread) LALALALALALA

Just picked this up and have blundered my way to erm oh hang on (rest of post in spoiler to avoid any spoilage as I dont know that much plot)

beginning of chapter 6 or 7 I think just about to "save" Gould.

Now I obviously know there is a "twist" that lifts the story to a different level as I read that before I got this, its the reason I got it as the premise is a bit hackneyed and the action is fairly basic but polished pretty well.

So question is... so far there have been some twists and turns between CIA and 33rd and another faction of 33rd. Can I assume that the twist that takes this to the next level hasn't happened yet?

Cos if it has I am not impressed, I had heard it was only a few chapters in you see so kinda expected it by now. Impatient I know but I dont want to play rest of game and be disappointed by lack of twist (for me).

you can simply reply with a one word answer of NO if I havent got to the good part yet

[robdood]

Come back once you've finished, then read the whole thread. Then you will see.

I'm not saying anything else.

[Clipper]

Come back once you've finished, then read the whole thread. Then you will see.

I'm not saying anything else.

see now I was afraid of this. My gaming time is precious, my pile of shame high. I am only putting up with what is an above average spectacle-based 3rd person shooter because I hear good things about story and plot.

But this is videogames writing so I still have nagging doubt I'll just say "oh dear is that it"

OK... grumble grumble... I'll go enjoy it if I must To be honest the shooting is pretty polished so it isnt too much of an onerous task.