Spec Ops: The Line Review

Posted By Johnny Maloney about 10 months, 2 weeks ago

Spec Ops: The Line Review

There are a lot of lines in life. There’s the line at the ladies’ washroom, there’s the line at the bank, there’s the line I drew in the sand, there’s the line that everybody wonders whose is it anyways, the conga, the one that maverick-play-by-their-own-rules cops are out of, power lines, the ones on telephones, the ones that professional drivers take around corners, subway lines, fishing lines, there are even punch lines. So when Spec Ops: The Line was booting up for me, naturally I assumed it was a game about a conga dancing power cable turned rogue cop undercover at an improv television event who desperately needs to go to the bathroom with a snappy pun delivery at the end of it all. I’ve since learned to stop assuming things.

Imagine my surprise when Spec Ops: The Line was about a Delta Force detail delving deep into a desolate and derelict Dubai. I suppose that’s what I get for paying too much attention to the SUB-title and not enough to the MAIN title. You follow captain Martin North, I mean Nolan Walker, I mean Martin Walker and his two squad mates Lugo and Adams as they press into a Dubai that’s been devastated by powerfully destructive sandstorms in search of the 33rd, an M.I.A. Battalion, and its hero commander, Colonel John Konrad. Having volunteered the services of the 33rd to aid in the evacuation of Dubai, Konrad’s efforts are revealed to have failed at the beginning of the game, killing many, and it becomes your duty to find and bring them home.

This would hardly be any kind of military action game if everything went according to plan (else it might be called Spec Ops: Look, There They Are!), so as you can imagine, after your arrival in Dubai some people decide you might look better with a few more holes in you. Suddenly, you find the three of you beset by enemies on all sides, with very little idea as to whether or not you have any friends in the entire city, or if it’s even possible to complete your mission anymore.

Raindrops keep falling on my head… and burning holes in my flesh…

Contemporary military shooters are in a pissing contest. It’s obvious that story has become more important to them in the past few years, with single player campaigns continually raising the stakes and dragging more dire Hollywood blockbuster-esque situations out of the writers’ room. Franchise A has a nuke! Well, Franchise B has two nukes! Franchise A responds with a nuke and a biological warfare attack! Franchise B counters with an invasion on American soil! Franchise C appears and goes for the gold with mass graves that get blown up BY nukes, spreading biological toxins EVERYWHERE ON AMERICAN SOIL! Coming next year: Biological bombs! Techno-terrorism! Dub-step nukes that explode more than once and go WUB WUB WUB WUB! Exploding corn chips in your grocery store, killing AMERICAN MOMS! AMERICAN MOMS, INVADING AMERICA WITH BOMBS PSHEWW! BANG! RAT-A-TAT-TAT! WUB WUB WUB! KERBLOOIE!

These situations are certainly dire, but there comes a point where they lose all sense of proportion. It’s practically impossible for a human being to truly comprehend the total effect of a nuclear explosion. Our feelings of “Wow, that’s bad,” hit a limit and we get on with the shooting of bad guys. Spec Ops: The Line strays far away from this formula and focuses more deeply on a personal story. The single player campaign picks apart the role of the soldier, the importance of his mission in increasingly heinous situations, and keeps a very tightly knit cast between the three operatives, and the people they come across during their assignment. When things go bad, they go bad in a very relate-able way, never aspiring to bring more disaster to the situation than you can comprehensibly grasp.

I told him he was using too much lighter fluid. Now the chicken will be dry.

Yager Development has been very forthright in admitting that they borrowed heavily from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when penning the plot for Spec Ops: The Line, and that relationship doesn’t shy away in its presentation. You can expect a lot of psychological issues rearing their heads during the plot, and very tastefully so. But don’t be fooled by the marketing, as though publicity for the game appears to be very fond of the word “choices,” there aren’t that many actual story affecting dilemmas you’ll find yourself confronted with. Some choices are there, but they’re mostly underwhelming and take a back seat to the extremely strong and compelling narrative. This isn’t bad though, as it gives the chance for an excellently crafted tale to shine without having to account for choices-for-the-sake-of-choices in the plot. Even the music used (I squealed once in delighted recognition when Mogwai’s “Glasgow Mega-Snake” started blaring during a firefight) is chosen and placed expertly, keeping the mood sufficiently tense and gripping, never substituting spectacle in place of substance.

Spec Ops: The Line Review

By Johnny Maloney

While reviewing Spec Ops: The Line, the normally civilized Johnny submitted some insane ramblings about a snail on a razor's edge, and something about "growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate." We cleaned it up a bit before publishing.

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