Poll: Is Spec Ops: the Line overrated?

[CityofTreez]

I think it gets so much praise only because people hate on Call of Duty and instantly like anything that's different. The game is not bad, not even close, It's quite good. The thing is that it gets elevated only because it shares the same genre as those "dude bro" games that people love to hate.

 

[Nomanslander]

Honestly - within the entire gaming community as a whole - I'd say it's underrated. Massively underrated. Sure, there's people here on the Escapist that will praise it in a thread or two (and you'll have Yahtzee calling it his game of the year), but this site is very niche, and so is the community here and its opinions.

Outside of the escapist, I really have not been hearing much buzz about the game at all. Last years sleeper hits were considered to be Farcry 3 and The Walking Dead: The Game, and for most people here, those games might as well be mainstream.

Most mainstream gaming websites considered the game as nothing more than a 2nd rate Gears cover shooter in Modern Warfare skin, rarely will you even hear them mention that the story was any good. Within the gaming community at large, I don't think anyone has even heard of it.

Underrated is the word.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Yes it is.

It claims to be a deconstruction of Moder War games when it itself is a modern war game. It claims to lambast the player for engaging in war crimes (and I could do a whole separate rant on why I think the very idea of war crimes is stupid) and then FORCES the player to do horrible things. You do not get to claim to be a satire or deconstruction or whatever if you're not going to do anything with it. It targets the consumer when it should be aiming itself at developers or the publishers that mandate what they create. The consumer has very little say about what goes in these games. They're essentially picking on the intern when they should be focusing on the CEO.

I liked the soundtrack and there were a few sequences where the atmosphere, the music and the gameplay come together (my favorite being the water dome level with Glasgo Mega-Snake playing in the background.). Say what you will about The Radioman, the dude has good taste in prog rock. Which brings me to another issue: tone. It's too dark! I know that's a silly thing to say, but it is! It has the same problem as Warhammer 40000, in that its so bleak that it's impossible to take seriously. Things get so dark and so gritty, it almost becomes a black comedy, or hell, it does become a black comedy whenever The Radioman opens his fat gob.

Finally, the whole concept, the whole being of the game is utterly paradoxical: the story is meant to make players question why they play games, players want the game to be fun, the game can't be fun or the players won't question, but if the game isn't fun, then the players fuck off and play something that is, so to try and make them stay, the game tries to be both fun and not fun, and features lots of exploding heads and slo-mo giblets. You see? It's hypocritical to have your game be wall-to-wall violence and have an ultimately anti-violence message.

Having an awesome and subversive story means absolutely dick when your gameplay is crap. There are certain rules you have to abide in this medium, certain inviolable rules, and Spec Ops broke them.

Finally, trying to use killing to shock a seasoned videogame player is like trying to put out a chemical fire with a garden hose. It tales a lot more than just "These people died, AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!!!!11one!" to get a reaction other than a maniacal grin from me. For example, Far Cry 3 managed to gut punch me when it is heavily implied, if not out right confirmed, that your friend Keith was being buggered nightly by a randy Australian. That sent an unpleasant shiver down my spine.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

[Spoilers for Bioshock below]

I understand what they were going for with that scene among others. However personally I found it just didn't have any impact. Had the mortar been presented as an option that you could use to make the fight easier rather than being forced to use it would have made the events that occur after its use more personal and impactful.

There's one obvious flaw with your suggestion; if Spec Ops gave you a choice whether or not to use the white phosphorus and kill a bunch of civilians, no-one would use it. And without that scene, the rest of the plot doesn't make sense - Walker has no reason to go insane and start hallucinating Konrad's voice, the team has no reason to question his decisions, and the civilians have no reason to hate him.

Your "choice" isn't really a choice, because it's reduced to "Do you want to be a hero or a mass murderer?" It's so ludicrously black-and-white that I can't imagine anyone sincerely choosing to use the WP once they know what the consequence is. They'd just not use it, or use it to see what happens then reload and choose the other option.

In my opinion, that completely destroys the impact of the scene. It gives you the option to just dodge the punch. Not only does the plot fall apart, it wouldn't say anything important about responsibility for your choices because the good choice has no consequences. There's no downside. A harder gunfight? That's really intimidating for people who can't reload a save and try again infinity times over.

Every other "moral" choice in Spec Ops has no clear good option. Some of them are revealed to not even be choices - the hanging men, for example. The option to not use the WP is a very clear good option, and it would be completely out of place with the tone of the series. That's why the game doesn't give you a choice.

I mean, when I hear people say "But the game didn't give me a choice!" about the WP scene, I just think that it's like complaining about having to beat Andrew Ryan to death in Bioshock. "But I didn't have a choice!" No, you didn't. That's the point. The game's not making a commentary on bearing responsibility for your choices. It's saying that in war, there sometimes isn't a choice; mistakes are inevitable, atrocities are necessary, no-one has a clear idea what's going on and there's no golden ending. Walker's trapped in a double bind, and the only solution - to drop his gun and leave Dubai - doesn't even occur to him, the same way it doesn't occur to the player that they can choose to turn the game off and not play it.

 

[Savo]

Couple thoughts here.

(1) Yes, if this game were a film, its story wouldn't have been as highly praised, BUT that's missing the point. This story draws a lot of its power from the fact that its a game. Placing you in Walker's shoes is where the game's brilliance shines. You're the one who happily killed all those soldiers with phosphorus, blissfully unaware of the consequences. You're the one who is controlling Walker as he walks amongst the aftermath and hears the screams of the dying. The game may be twisting your arm into doing these things, but it's still pretty damn effective as far as immersion goes.

Take away the immersion factor of being a video-game and you'd rob the story of much of its power. It doesn't mean the story is necessarily weak though. Many films would make extremely poor books, and vice versa. Doesn't mean that the story is bad, rather that it was built for a particular medium.

Does Spec-Ops prove video-games are better than movies? Not by a long shot, but it serves as an exemplary example of where video-games are at and where they are heading. I judge all my fiction by the same standards (aka, I don't believe in lowering my standards for video-game stories or the like), and I'd rank it right up there with a great film in the impact it had on me.

(2) The characters are generic, but it didn't take too much away from the overall story for me. They could've used some more character development, particularly on Walker (flashbacks to their lives before Dubai perhaps?), but the story didn't suffer too badly as a result. The dialogue is still fantastic, so you do get to grow at least somewhat fond of these characters.

(3) I seem to be somewhat alone in this, but I liked the gameplay. There are several fantastic moments, such as when Walker fights the re-appearing Heavy or when he falls off a building and has to survive without his squad for several minutes that really impressed me. Wasn't amazing, but didn't bring down the story too much.

 

[Lazy]

It claims to be a deconstruction of Modern War games when it itself is a modern war game.

Yeah, what a silly concept right? Reminds me of that movie Unforgiven, which claimed to be a deconstruction of westerns when it itself is a western. How stupid!

 

[ShinyCharizard]

snip

You're reading too far into my statement. When I say I want more of a choice throughout the campaign I don't mean that I want every decision to be either heroic or evil. I would like to keep the theme of the despair and atrocities that war brings but allow more player input.

To give a basic example for the WP mortar scene. A more effective solution would be to, as I said, have the mortar as an optional tool. But if you choose not to use it something else would occur, like a squadmate being killed or maimed, or something along those lines. If the game gave the player more choices like this then I believe it would have more of an emotional impact. As it stands the fact that these decisions are forced on the player robs them of any possible feelings of guilt as they were simply doing what the game made them do.

Also to suggest that players should consider turning the game off and stop playing is ludicrous and would mean a fundamental failure in game design on the developers part.

 

[Lazy]

Spoiler

[Spoilers for Bioshock below]

I understand what they were going for with that scene among others. However personally I found it just didn't have any impact. Had the mortar been presented as an option that you could use to make the fight easier rather than being forced to use it would have made the events that occur after its use more personal and impactful.

There's one obvious flaw with your suggestion; if Spec Ops gave you a choice whether or not to use the white phosphorus and kill a bunch of civilians, no-one would use it. And without that scene, the rest of the plot doesn't make sense - Walker has no reason to go insane and start hallucinating Konrad's voice, the team has no reason to question his decisions, and the civilians have no reason to hate him.

Your "choice" isn't really a choice, because it's reduced to "Do you want to be a hero or a mass murderer?" It's so ludicrously black-and-white that I can't imagine anyone sincerely choosing to use the WP once they know what the consequence is. They'd just not use it, or use it to see what happens then reload and choose the other option.

In my opinion, that completely destroys the impact of the scene. It gives you the option to just dodge the punch. Not only does the plot fall apart, it wouldn't say anything important about responsibility for your choices because the good choice has no consequences. There's no downside. A harder gunfight? That's really intimidating for people who can't reload a save and try again infinity times over.

Every other "moral" choice in Spec Ops has no clear good option. Some of them are revealed to not even be choices - the hanging men, for example. The option to not use the WP is a very clear good option, and it would be completely out of place with the tone of the series. That's why the game doesn't give you a choice.

I mean, when I hear people say "But the game didn't give me a choice!" about the WP scene, I just think that it's like complaining about having to beat Andrew Ryan to death in Bioshock. "But I didn't have a choice!" No, you didn't. That's the point. The game's not making a commentary on bearing responsibility for your choices. It's saying that in war, there sometimes isn't a choice; mistakes are inevitable, atrocities are necessary, no-one has a clear idea what's going on and there's no golden ending. Walker's trapped in a double bind, and the only solution - to drop his gun and leave Dubai - doesn't even occur to him, the same way it doesn't occur to the player that they can choose to turn the game off and not play it.

Also can I simply say "all of this, a million times this?"

What's that? I can't? Oh, well then, uh... Overrated is a stupid term anyway and people should stop throwing it around.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Totally overrated.

The key difference between between Spec Ops and the Walking Dead, is that actual gameplay makes up a significantly larger portion of the former than the latter.


Yes, Spec Ops may be subversive (I personally thought it was pretentious as fuck), but it was so fucking boring. If 'de-constructing the genre' means making a tedious 5 hour slog through shooting gallery after shooting gallery, then please, give me more Call of Duty, because at least that game isn't so far up its own arse that it forgot to be game.



inb4 someone tells me I 'just didn't get it' with absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever.

I appreciate that a lot of people do like it, but whenever I say I don't, someone always tells me that 'you just didn't get it'. Unironically. Seriously.

I thought that shit only happened in comics with hipster stereotypes.

 

[adamsaccount]

Its very overrated, but its still great.

The gameplay and shooting didnt feel very responsive to me, but on the flip side I cant think of another game that subverted the GI Joe shooting terr'rist formula and makes you think about the atrocities that happen in wars, and the ending was fantastic

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

Not exactly, it's only praiseworthy because it made a good statement during times when militaristic shooters flood the industry. I think it has the right amount of praise going for it. It's story telling only seems sophisticated because we haven't had a truly good story in a while. Just my two cents anyway...

 

[Pink Gregory]

Not exactly, it's only praiseworthy because it made a good statement during times when militaristic shooters flood the industry. I think it has the right amount of praise going for it. It's story telling only seems sophisticated because we haven't had a truly good story in a while. Just my two cents anyway...

Exactly, it's timely; and with stuff like this that can be very important. That it actually got a physical release (and on consoles) is important to note as well, of course, we can only hope that it had an effect on the AAA military shooters market and the consumers who go for that sort of thing; but frankly I'm sure half of them who bought it probably went "WTF IS THIS NOOB SHIT?!" or something and went back to CoD.

I still remain unconvinced, but it's an important release; thing with overrating is (if it happens at all) it happens very quickly because of a vague majority of people that have had a great experience with it, and that just sounds like positive reviews to me.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

If a game is going to stand on its narrative, I prefer that that narrative not work only because the protagonist is an enormous god damn idiot. Well, unless you're doing Flowers for Algernon or something.

It was neatt and interesting and had a great aesthetic, but yeah, gets too much praise sometimes.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

Not exactly, it's only praiseworthy because it made a good statement during times when militaristic shooters flood the industry. I think it has the right amount of praise going for it. It's story telling only seems sophisticated because we haven't had a truly good story in a while. Just my two cents anyway...

Exactly, it's timely; and with stuff like this that can be very important. That it actually got a physical release (and on consoles) is important to note as well, of course, we can only hope that it had an effect on the AAA military shooters market and the consumers who go for that sort of thing; but frankly I'm sure half of them who bought it probably went "WTF IS THIS NOOB SHIT?!" or something and went back to CoD.

I still remain unconvinced, but it's an important release; thing with overrating is (if it happens at all) it happens very quickly because of a vague majority of people that have had a great experience with it, and that just sounds like positive reviews to me.

Well it's different and that's all that matters, also the message the developers wanted to send def. came through so I think it worked out pretty well, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.

 

[Dryk]

If you had the choice to just turn away from that situation and go home, that would undermine the game's efforts to show us just how psychotic the average shooter protagonist really is.

I find that one of the best parts of the game is that it makes you consider (and inevitably disagree with) something that has NEVER even crossed your mind before it calls you out on it. You CAN just turn away and go home. Alt+F4. If you/Walker decide to rationalise it as someone else's fault and press on more power to you and in that sense it is identical to every other war game instead of the one fundamental difference of it calling you out on it instead of fist bumping you afterwards

I find it fascinating that nobody questions this stuff in any game that doesn't try to ask them to sit down and think about what they've done.

I also feel that trying to have standout and interesting gameplay would probably undermine the message unless it was handled masterfully. As for the argument that if it was a movie it wouldn't be praised, no shit. Movies are 80+ years older than games, and they didn't start hitting their stride for a looooong time.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I find that one of the best parts of the game is that it makes you consider (and inevitably disagree with) something that has NEVER even crossed your mind before it calls you out on it. You CAN just turn away and go home. Alt+F4. If you/Walker decide to rationalise it as someone else's fault and press on more power to you and in that sense it is identical to every other war game instead of the one fundamental difference of it calling you out on it instead of fist bumping you afterwards

I find it fascinating that nobody questions this stuff in any game that doesn't try to ask them to sit down and think about what they've done.

Why do people praise this game by saying it makes you want to quit playing it? How is that a good thing?

Please just think about it for a moment. If that is the case then the developers have designed a game that sends the message that they do not want you to play this game. In that case perhaps they are doing something wrong and should find a different industry to work in.

 

[Rawne1980]

Totally overrated.

The key difference between between Spec Ops and the Walking Dead, is that actual gameplay makes up a significantly larger portion of the former than the latter.


Yes, Spec Ops may be subversive (I personally thought it was pretentious as fuck), but it was so fucking boring. If 'de-constructing the genre' means making a tedious 5 hour slog through shooting gallery after shooting gallery, then please, give me more Call of Duty, because at least that game isn't so far up its own arse that it forgot to be game.



inb4 someone tells me I 'just didn't get it' with absolutely no sarcasm whatsoever.

I appreciate that a lot of people do like it, but whenever I say I don't, someone always tells me that 'you just didn't get it'. Unironically. Seriously.

I thought that shit only happened in comics with hipster stereotypes.

Oh Daystar, you just didn't get it.

On Topic....

It's not as good as people make out, not by a long shot.

As games go it's just an average 3rd person shooter that's held up by a semi decent plot.

In fact, to call it average is an insult to average TPS. Yes we know that's "the point" but knowing that doesn't make it any less of a shit shooter.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

You're reading too far into my statement. When I say I want more of a choice throughout the campaign I don't mean that I want every decision to be either heroic or evil. I would like to keep the theme of the despair and atrocities that war brings but allow more player input.

I wasn't saying that you were all in favour of binary black-and-white choices. I was saying that in this specific instance, with the white phosphorus, there is no feasible way to introduce an alternative that is worse than using the white phosphorus. Adding literally any other option to that scene would create a black-and-white moral dilemma, simply because the WP choice is so horrifically black that any other option looks white in comparison.

You'd have to either remove the white phosphorus, or add an alternative that is just as bad. If you did the former, you're cutting the most pivotal and creatively inspired scene in the game and creating a huge plot hole. If you did the latter, you're not really adding a "choice" because the player is still forced to do something terrible.

Also to suggest that players should consider turning the game off and stop playing is ludicrous and would mean a fundamental failure in game design on the developers part.

Why is it so ludicrous? The whole point of Spec Ops is that we shouldn't be playing these types of games. If you don't want to be a party to Walker's actions...don't play. That's their answer. Turn the game off. You can do it at any time.

Can't you?

 

[felbot]

the game is less stable than fallout new vegas and so far i haven't heard a single person talk about any of the glitches, and fallout got blasted from the inside out for being unstable.

yes it is overrated.