The unique setting of Dubai is horribly underutilised and amounts to nothing more than "theres a machine gunner, shoot the wall behind him so sand falls on him." In the pre-release stuff they talked it up big that it would be almost it's own character, and the ever present sand would be a huge gameplay element that would be used in loads of unique and interesting ways.
As others have said, the game itself is a terribly bland 3rd person cover based shooter. Nothing new or interesting is done with the gameplay, and the general flow of the game is "walk into an arena -> waves of enemies spawn -> walk down corridor -> enter next arena." There doesn't seem to be a decent balance to the combat, and they throw too many enemies at you in each arena, which means you'll get tired of it pretty quickly. It doesn't help that enemies dropped weapons despawn
really quickly, like the first wave of enemies guns and ammo will be gone by the time you beat the second wave. Combine this with the game basically forcing you to stay in cover the entire time enemies are around, and you'll be running out of ammo constantly.
Don't worry though, because enemies are braindead. More than a few times I noticed enemies running to pre-determined cover points regardless of what me or my squad were doing. Enemies will leave cover and advance up stretches of empty terrain for no reason (and I'm not talking about he knife dudes who are meant to do that)
And then we come to the plot, which is basically the only thing the game has going for it. I've seen a lot of game reviewers talking about how it's this deep meaningfull experience that makes them feel terrible about themselves or someshit. One of the critical plot points in the game has allready been mentioned in the thread:
When you get the white phospherous mortar. The problem with this section is that it's established like 20 minutes before that white phospherous is this horrible weapon that only inhumane monsters use. Then you get to this situation where one squadmate suggests you use it, and the other one says no, only inhumne monsters use it, and your chracter says "sometimes you have no choice" (I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the sentiment was similar). Your agency as the player is completely removed at this point so the game developer can force you down this path. While you are using it you're being reminded it's a horrible thing to do, and it becomes apparent that there are civilians down there... but you can't not shell them. You literally have to do it to progress. Afterwards the game makes a huge point about what a monster you've become, the horrors of war, how dare you (the player) commit these horrible acts, etc.
The problem is that there's no choice involved, and the game doesn't really present a compelling reason for why you have to do this. Before this point in the game your characters have been presented as untouchable murder machines, wading through hundreds of enemy soldiers unscathed. But now, because the game want's to make you feel bad, it removes all your control over your character to make him do something, and then try and punish you as the player for the characters actions. The gameplay is completely disconnected from the narrative at this point. This is a technique that would've worked in a movie (and the game so very much wants to be a movie) because in a movie you're not saying "I am the character, his decisions are mine" so you can get away with having them do stupid or thoughtless things. In a game
you are your character you control their actions, experience directly what they do, and the consequences of their decisions are yours to deal with. Except that by taking away your control the game is severing that link. From this point on your character isn't you, so the game fails horribly with its aim of "make the player feel terrible about what they do." You didn't do these things, some guy on the screen did. This is entirely counter productive to the obvious aims of the game.
The game wanting to be a movie is something I generally hate on principals, because it nearly always is a sacrifice of gameplay and player agency in the service of narrative. It misuses the defining and most important feature of video game, player interaction, and all you get out of it is a badly written story. There are plenty of other instances of this throughout the game, that's just the most obvious and immersion shattering one.
The part of the game I'm upto now (I pretty much just gave up on the game at this point) was another example.
You zipline down into a building where an enemy guard is waiting, and use the execute ability to take him out, bashing his brains in with your rifle. Your squad mates arrive and act with barely disguised horror at what you have done, expressing concern at your mental state. Ok that's the setup, here's the punchline: early in the game the tutorial explicitly tells you to execute fallen enemies so they don't get back up. I'd been doing this since the first fight. Exact same animation, exact same levels of violence. Only the plot pretends that didn't happen. Noone comments when you did it 2 hours ago, or that you've been doing it as a matter of course after every firefight is over. Suddenly now it's a horrible symptom of your mental breakdown, but you've been doing it the whole time.
There are also major problems with the game wanting you to feel bad about everyone you kill.
The american soldiers are presented as being torturers, using white phospherous to murder people tied to chairs, executing their own, murdering their command staff when they tried to stop the madness... But then constantly tries to make you feel bad for shooting them, even though nearly every combat is the game is you defending yourself. I don't know if this is because they're American soldiers, and killing them is somehow in of itself a horrible evil act? But I'm from the UK, so it's the same as mowing down hundreds of Russians or Germans to me. The whole "Feel bad you killed americans!" thing just didn't work when you have to walk slowly through a room of decaying rotting corpses and read a piece of intel about how they all tortured each other because it made them tougher or something. Maybe I'm missing some critical plot point that comes in at the end of the game, but bloody hell they really hammer you over the head with this pretty much from the getgo and it's just not really supported in the gameplay at all.
So to wrap up this rather lengthy post: The game is a medicore shooter that has a narrative completely disconnected from the actual actions in the game. You're given choices only when they don't matter. The emotional manipulation is so forced that the game will literally take your control away from you so it can call you a monster for the terrible things it made you do. The setting is just any other generic 3rd person shooter with sand everywhere. While the plot isn't really bad in of itself, it's a movie plot that's been copy/pasted over video game mechanics and falls flat becuase movies and games are hugely different in terms of narrative structure (well, they should be anyway). You can go watch Apocalypse Now or Platoon or any other "war is hell" movie and get a far far better experience than playing this game.
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Topic: Spec Ops: The Line (Read 4184 times)