But it doesn't. The gameplay is a Gears of War style TPS with sand physics. Sure the story is a more "realistic" take on the Modern War story. If you want to deconstruct or satirize a genre, don't be exactly like it.
Machine Man 1992 said:
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.
As Konrad says in the heavily fourth-wall-breaking ending scene, "none of this would have happened if you just stopped. But on you marched. And for what?" - this game is HEAVY on the fourth wall. Both Walker and the player thought "This is really wrong, but it's kind of what I'm supposed to do, right? I don't have a choice, I have to continue" when they could have just stopped.
The loading screens are also full of stuff like "To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your country is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless" or "The US military doesn't condone violence against unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?"
I see fourth wall breaking as a flaw, not a virtue. If you can't communicate your message without talking directly to the audience, then the problem lies in the shitty writing, not in the audience. The loading screen inanity is shit I already know, because like most people I can tell the difference between real and simulated violence.
Marik Bentusi said:
Machine Man 1992 said:
It targets the consumer when it should be aiming itself at developers or the publishers that mandate what they create.
It targets players on purpose. Those that want this puerile power fantasy, this romanticization of war, they want to feel like heroes for mindlessly killing whatever the game throws in front of them.
The game explicitly condemns these players for shutting their brain off. It wants to switch on their brains again and make them think about what they're doing, be critical of what they're doing.
"Do you feel like a hero yet?"
"You're here because you wanted to feel like someone you're not: A hero"
Again, these are themes that go with the players as well as with Walker, who from the beginning wanted to reach the heroism of the idol described in the opening narration: Konrad. Even as his psyche turns the guy into a scapegoat, Walker continues until the end because the believes he is (or can be) the hero, the guy that solves everything by killing the bad dude, the one that can save Dubai.
And players want pats on the shoulder as well, be it because they gain points or because of a flashing VICTORY screen or because they win against impossible odds as the good guys in a good VS evil war as frequently depicted by shooters.
Except the player isn't Walker. The game goes out of it's way to try and alienate the player. This isn't the player's fault, all I am is an angry little id that takes over for the combat, so I feel the blame the game tries to lay at my feet is undeserved. The game hasn't earned the right to lay any guilt on me, because it hasn't done anything to make me part of the game.
Marik Bentusi said:
Machine Man 1992 said:
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.
It starts off with Lugo making piss-poor jokes and Adams laughing at them. Radioman, as you've already stated, later serves as the middleground with stuff like "Where does all this violence come from! Is it the videogames? I bet it's the videogames!". After his death, you're well into hell by now, so jokes just seem completely misplaced when Lugo attempts a heroic sacrifice, goes missing some time later and ends up hanged. Inserting a joke there just would have been terrible taste. There's also not a whole lot of room for anyone to breathe after the water is lost.
Can't comment on 40k because I find its over-the-top-ness cheesy and hilarious, and believe it's done on purpose to some degree.
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.
If Spec Ops makes you switch off the game because you've decided you can no longer justify all the amoral stuff you're doing in it with "for entertainment!", then it's achieved one of its prime goals. It means Spec Ops made the player criticize his own behavior and change it - maybe that's even the devs' best case scenario for what players could take from this game.
I think the slow-mo gibbing heads can be interpreted differently. Yahtzee came to one conclusion, I think it's supposed to break the action on purpose so you have a moment to think about what you've just done. Spec Ops does like lingering on the bad stuff you do, most prominently the WP scene, so it doesn't seem out of line for its design.
"Just stop playing" is a bullshit argument. It has to be a legitimate choice from within the game itself. Turning off the game is a choice made outside of the game, and therefore NOT part of the game.
And there's a line (see what I did there?) between lingering on the bad stuff you do (which I remind you, you have no option not to do) and grindhouse style gratuitous exploitation. Spec Ops crosses this line and keeps going. In attempting to show you the horrible stuff the game made you do, it ultimately undermines it's own point while doing so.
Marik Bentusi said:
Machine Man 1992 said:
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.
There's plenty of popular (as "objective" as we're ever going to get to "good") games with weak gameplay and great other aspects like narrative. People usually agree that Morrowind is a pretty good game with great atmosphere and world-crafting for example, even if the main mechanic, combat, is pretty terrible.
There's also more gameplay to Spec Ops than cover-based TPS. Frequently a single shot, or lack therof, makes for the most impactful decisions you get to make. Try to think of Spec Ops as a bit less of a game and a bit more of a message and critique told as it could only be told in an interactive medium with a post-modern audience filled to the brink with cod clones.
I can't comment on Morrowind, or Oblivion for that matter, because Skyrim was the only TES game I've ever played, but I will say that there's more to an RPG's gameplay than combat. A TPS like Spec Ops' gameplay is combat. If the combat is utterly pedestrian, then it's a crappy TPS, end of story.
Marik Bentusi said:
Machine Man 1992 said:
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.
If stuff like the WP scene didn't shock you, it's not the game that's broken. But it's part of what Spec Ops criticizes actually, that we've become so dulled by violent entertainment we don't think about it anymore and don't feel bad about it anymore. And I'm glad I've had that little eye-opener, because it made me feel utterly, utterly disgusted at playing the flamethrower level in FarCry 3. It's almost a comical counter-part to Spec Ops, what with two chars having a massive gun boner for the flamethrower, reggae WUB WUB ad nauseum, drugs, red barrels and waves of masked mooks as far as the eye could see.
Far Cry 3 is also fun. Remember that, Fun? What we used to have before it became to mainstream? And if we've become so dulled by constant violence, then wouldn't it behoove the game to try and broach it's message in a way that we aren't numb to?
Spec Ops is praised for doing something different. you're thinking of it in a linear, gameplay/narrative quality sense, which was never the developers intent. the gameplay is generic and stale for a very good reason: its not that they couldnt make it better, its that the whole freakin point of the game is to make you question the true value of all the other generic and stale shooters you play. to put it bluntly: you're not supposed to enjoy it. the game was made to deconstruct a genre, not provide a good example of it. Yager wanted to communicate something with their game, and they communicated that message very well, something few games have done, and for that they should be praised.
you cant think of it in an X out of 10 kind of way. it had a message, and it delivered it well. a refreshing change of pace from games simply trying to out-gore each other, dont you think?
Every single game in existence, and every game that will come in the future, are all both underrated and overrated.
Because people have different goddamn opinions.
Maybe what bothered me was the phosphorous situation.
I actually like the way you were forced to use the white phosphorous and tried to shoot my way through at least two times before I decided to use it because I had seen what the stuff did. When I started using it I shot the rpgs, snipers and cars then when I was supposed to shoot the car on the bridge I saw that there were people beneath it and thought: "These guys look unarmed and since they are just standing still I guess they must be captives." Sure we can say that's not I that make the choices but Walker (which is a crappy way to handle choice in an interactive medium) but if I can detect that some of the dots on the computer screen are civilians surely Walker a trained soldier could as well.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Yahtzee's extra punctuation really hit the nail on the head, what I took away from it was during the white phosphorus scene was that games had trained me to fire away at clusters of enemies, games rarely let you damage innocent/teammates, and if you do the game usually gives you a game over. What made this sequence different was not only did you not get stopped for doing the wrong thing, the game makes you progress through your mistake, seeing the results of your actions, the burning bodies, screams, etc.
I liken this sequence to what some of the scientists felt when they created the atomic bomb. Kenneth Bainbridge famously said "Now we are all sons of bitches" when he saw the massive explosion he helped create. I enjoy that kind of message, the what have I done! moment. That is an aspect that is prevalent in human life, people make mistakes and in hindsight think What have I done? This is a phenomenon rarely put into games because usually your game ends when you make a mistake.
Another thing that makes the game great is how it turns from the Gear of War style manshow of violence into a depressing story of having to follow your leader, the support characters want to stop but they are required to follow their leader's command. There is a great line when after the squad realizes they killed innocent people, Lugo exclaims that "He turned us in to murderers," the voice acting for this line was very well directed, Lugo's inflection really helps show his character, he has been shooting people for the entire game but when they burned innocent people he realizes that this is the point he became a murderer. It brings up the debate as to whether or not soldiers are seen as murderers, a hot topic no matter what your stance.
Also, the ending reminds me of the ending to Braid, the ending is ambiguous and requires discussion, not to the extent Braid's ending did but it does warrant discussion.
The game isn't without it's faults, unless you are playing it for the story aspect it isn't that good, the gameplay is linear and stale. But the game is meant for it's story, The Line of right and wrong and how it can be crossed.
Everyone who considers themself to be a gamer should play this game, its not for people who play socially amongst friends, but it is a great solo experience gamers should try. Plus if you own a PC its like 5-10 dollars on Amazon, although the PC port has some issues, primarily that all the onscreen context buttons are based on controller UI, such as when you want to take cover it will tell you to press X, which isn't the X key but the X button from a controller.
Overrated? Perhaps,but I would emphasize more on overhyped by people who finished it and we have ourselves to blame.
Outside this site of avid,well-informed gaming wise,internet users the mainstream has no idea what this is,because it's not CoD and doesn't seem to really represent CoD.
I do not think the game is overrated. I do think however though that there is a bit of a knee jerk reaction to how people perceive the game compared to how it is talked about. I personally really enjoyed the story and the way the game play out. Its not flawless, it has its issues, and sometimes its frustratingly bad, but for me I found that the good aspects of the game (the story, how the interactions made me think, and how the dialogue plays on itself) out weighed the bad parts.
When compared to other games SPEC OPS: The Line is the single greatest FPS I have played since Bioshock. A ride for the century. Because I seriously doubt we will see many others like this.
The Line is a game where choice is mostly hidden and not intuitive, a game that has evoked more emotions than say Walking Dead (a game where choice is commercially advocated to you, and yet always made irrelevant).
Nothing in The Walking Dead can be "discussed", nothing in this game besides a minute or two of episode 5 caused any feels at all, and they were all contrived, and predictable as all hell. You see Clems cap on the street, check the cardboards, and BOOM ZOMBIE!
Spec Ops: The Line has no commercially advocated or marketed choices and yet it allows you to make the most profoundly relevant and different choices I have seen for a long time. How to disperse a crowd of angry civvies, do you shoot the CIA agent begging for relief after he is trapped underneath a burning truck? What do you do, and what does it mean for you?
Personally I shot Konrad, and I surrendered my weapon. It made sense to get out of this elaborate purgatory. I came, I saw, I chose, and it was good. The fact that you can shoot these guys that come to fetch you and stay is amazing. The fact that Walker / the player can decided that he should pay the price of his actions in suicide is amazing. There is even a theory that Konrad is the guy inventing up a Captain Walker persona to escape his own guilt (supported by the fact that captain Walker is wearing Konrads clothes when they come to get him).
This game is not mainstream. This game is not overrated, and yet it is. This game is not fun, and yet it is compelling, interesting, engaging, profoundly awesome when compared with every other game of 2012.
The Line has set itself apart. It is the only game of 2012 that will remain relevant for many years to come, and those who can appreciate it sometimes only have the vocabulary to express that they feel it is better than. It is the first real attempt at being different. It is the only compelling argument of video games as art made in 2012.
This, even though I still believe it's not overrated.
You might be genuinely thinking to yourself, after finishing the game: "Wow, this game blew me away, I wonder if other people liked it as much as I did.."
Then you're on a crusade filled with back-patting and circle-jerking (I don't mean this in a negative way). That's when the game "feels" overrated, even though it might not be at all. I wouldn't call the game humble, but it kept both feet on the ground.
Spec Ops is praised for doing something different. you're thinking of it in a linear, gameplay/narrative quality sense, which was never the developers intent. the gameplay is generic and stale for a very good reason: its not that they couldnt make it better, its that the whole freakin point of the game is to make you question the true value of all the other generic and stale shooters you play. to put it bluntly: you're not supposed to enjoy it. the game was made to deconstruct a genre, not provide a good example of it. Yager wanted to communicate something with their game, and they communicated that message very well, something few games have done, and for that they should be praised.
you cant think of it in an X out of 10 kind of way. it had a message, and it delivered it well. a refreshing change of pace from games simply trying to out-gore each other, dont you think?
Spec Ops is praised for doing something different. you're thinking of it in a linear, gameplay/narrative quality sense, which was never the developers intent. the gameplay is generic and stale for a very good reason: its not that they couldnt make it better, its that the whole freakin point of the game is to make you question the true value of all the other generic and stale shooters you play. to put it bluntly: you're not supposed to enjoy it. the game was made to deconstruct a genre, not provide a good example of it. Yager wanted to communicate something with their game, and they communicated that message very well, something few games have done, and for that they should be praised.
you cant think of it in an X out of 10 kind of way. it had a message, and it delivered it well. a refreshing change of pace from games simply trying to out-gore each other, dont you think?
I feel kind of like this is very reductive, like the old-school film critics condemning "Bonnie and Clyde" for being violent and ugly, assuming up-front that all films were supposed to be was sequences of pretty images. If something in a work is the way it is to get across a point, and it succeeds in doing so, it's successful. I feel as though Spec Ops' gameplay being deliberately like the works it is critiquing got across its point.
As for whether or not Spec Ops is overrated, I'm inclined to say no. It is acclaimed for its acerbic and unsentimental plot, themes and writing, and those things are as good as people say they are. To pretend that people considered it the complete package - graphics, gameplay, lifespan, all that - is to misrepresent why it's been praised. It excels in an area where very few other games do - complex, layered and metatextual writing - and thus it stands out. People have figured out how to make games into enjoyable little tasks for a long time, but the quality of the story in Spec Ops: The Line is something new, and that makes it significant in a way that very little else was this year. Its good parts are exactly as good as people say they are, its average parts are widely acknowledged to be average and its failures are minimal. It meets its praise fairly well in my opinion.
*Puts on flame suit, hides behind bullet proof glass*
Okay, I liked Spec Ops. It was good, some of the time. However, every time it pops up on these forums people call it "A SHOW OF HOW OUR MEDIUM IS ART AND BETTER THAN MOVIES!!!!" I felt like the game was hindered by all the delays and a lower budget than it deserved. The gameplay was ok, just not standout.
I would have put it "A show of how our medium can be better than movies"
Because the end of the game really was all it was cracked up to be, acclaim wise.
It wasn't some binary moral choice system. It looked like one, up until the Civilian vs the Military officer.
You have to shoot one of them so: Is stealing justified to save a life? or Is murder justified to promote order? Simple enough. But that's not the decision they're asking you to make because you get the same achievement no matter which one you shoot (And achievements are a mechanic)
The thing you have to choose is do you do what the radio (Voice in your head) tells you, or do you do what's right and try to save them both by shooting the snipers.
The choice you have to make at the end is also more complex than it first seems. It's basically asking you how much responsibility you want to take for your actions. Once you realize what you've done and that it's literally all on you do you deserve death, or do you risk punishment to try and undo some of your wrongs?
Not exactly simple.
This is where I'll get controversial. The STORY IS NOT THE BEST. In fact, if it was a film, I think it wouldn't be praised. The twist at the end felt like the bad Twilight Zone episodes
If you get right down to it it's the same twist at the end of Fight Club. Almost to a Tee.
You've been using something that only exists in your imagination to justify all the bad things you've done over the course of the game. But not all of it, Konrad didn't tell you to use the white phosphorus, Konrad didn't tell you to shoot up the refuges. So how many of your actions are you willing to put on the imaginary Konrad? Any of it?
At least that was going through my head when I was staring him down in the mirror. Because if it was all him then you're lost, and might as well let him shoot you. If all of it, some of it, any of it was you then you might still atone.
Most games don't make you think about that. How much of it did you do because the voice in your head, or the objective marker on your hud told you to? Because if all you're doing is following the orders of the little objective markers you're as good as lost.
and the "emotional" moments were good, but not "more effective than Schindler's List" (which I was told)
Schindler's List? The Oscar winning Steven Spielberg movie? About the Holocaust?
Most movies don't want to be compared to Schindler's List, let alone a video game.
And if you're comparing video games to movies you're already wrong
Movies and video games present narrative very differently by necessity. Books are all tell, movies are show don't tell, and video games are do don't show. (To quote Extra Credits) But that's where the problem lies with games. There has to be so much to "Do" that if you're not giving the player control over the narrative you have to punch it up with a near constant barrage of action. Making down time break the rule of story telling in gaming.
Think about something like Uncharted. (Does that have a good story? I think it's fine maybe 7/10 fine but for sake of argument I'll call it "Good") It's a strictly non player controlled narrative. So there are a crap ton of shoot outs in that game. Even though the story telling in Uncharted is strictly taking place during the cut scenes.
But there's a rub. Is Nathan Drake characterized as a killer? It's all self defense but still, he's killing LOTS of people. Does it effect him? Not really. He seems unfazed by the hundreds of people he's shot dead, but is he characterized as the kind of person who wouldn't give two thoughts to shooting someone in the head? No, plain and simple no. This is a clean cut example of a "Ludo narrative dissonance" The character you're playing is different from the character you're watching in the cutscenes.
Back to Spec Ops, Walker is a Ranking officer in the Military you don't get there without being able to kill people, but when he kills innocent people it eats away at him, and you can see that clearly, even when his actions indirectly lead to someone's death.
So Spec Ops has all the Do it needs, being set in a war zone. and the tell justifies the characters actions to himself, up until the point where that doesn't satisfy him any more then it's left up to you the player to decide how much responsibility Walker is going to take for everything he did to Dubai.
THe characters just felt generic even near the end, when they were supposed to be all crazy, except Walker. I also had a creeping feeling they were trying to make Konrad like Andrew Ryan in the sense you talk to him and never see him, which didn't do much for me.
Generic... Hmmm well at this point it would be relative.
Lugo starts coming out of his shell just in time go get killed off. And Adams is a bit generic through and through. The Radio Man was cracked by the horror's he'd seen, Konrad was a figment of Walker's imagination. and Riggs an old man who thought murdering an entire city state was a better alternative that letting anyone find out that a dead American wasn't as honorable as he seemed.
The only character who struck me as particularly generic was Adams and that falls under the "Video games can't write good black characters" umbrella. But what did you want from them they're military men with a job to do. Most people under fire don't express the meaningful quirks that reveal the truths of the deepest recesses of their souls.
Lugo was like Comic relief up until he snapped. Like it was a defense mechanism, the more real things got the less jokes he cracked he broke down to the point where he strait up murdered the radio man. He couldn't blame himself because he was just following Walker's orders and the Radio man was forcing Walker's hand. That seems like a pretty deep character to me. Unwilling to stand up to his own chain of command but harboring enough resentment to take out his anger on a tangentially related third party.
If you pick up all the Intel the Radio man has a pretty good arc.
Riggs was set in his ways and patriotic to a damn fault, a character you've seen before but well executed. (No pun intended)
The game's satire isn't exactly the video game Animal Farm
I'm not sure Spec Ops was supposed to be satire for anything.
This isn't Bioshock sand edition, this is a character drama in a military setting. I think the focus of this game is to tell a story with the mechanics of player action, making a more allegorical statement about gaming it's self instead of a satirical one. Also Animal Farm was really blunt and beating you over the head with the points it was trying to make. Also the point Animal Farm was trying to make was really one sided.
and I felt if you sort of cut out the white phosphorous stuff and the lynching, it just could have been another generic shooter.
You'd have to take out the end section where you choose whether you shoot Konrad or let him shoot you, then the Epilog.
That would take away all the meaningful retrospection, because other than that it's a binary moral choice system.
And still leaving it as it is, if the game made the decision for you based on your previous choices that would push it down from great game to slightly above average game.
You'd have to take out a lot more to bump it down to generic. You have to give credit to how well written and acted it was, the shooting sections were average, sometimes even tedious. The brown was brown and the grey was grey. but some of the interior levels were worth looking at. The weapon placement was a bit too on the nose, but ammo was scarce enough to keep you cycling through weapons for the most part. I can't tell you how many times I just held on to my empty M4A1 until I found one of those ammo boxes.
But the sheer quality of the story telling, and the story that was told was masterful (especially for video games, not that that's relevant, since games and movies have radically different approaches to story telling)
The fact that Spec Ops has an engaging lead character with no Ludo Narrative Dissonance is unbelievable all on it's own.
I think I'm way too harsh, but maybe we were too easy.
I don't really think you're being too harsh, I just think you were judging it on the wrong criteria.
Thinking narratively acclaimed games need to stand up against narratively acclaimed movies was your first mistake, and thinking all narratively acclaimed games need to stand on the same legs as Bioshock was your second.
If this game is so eye-opening, then where are all the ex-COD dudebros renouncing their brown people murder simulating ways?
Spec Ops is being praised by people who already hate the genre (thus are ecstatic to see their bias confirmed in all its narrow moral myopic glory) and critics eager to have another "games are art" talking point. Everyone agrees the gameplay is mediocre, some even going as far as to call it intentionally unenjoyable. Thus, what we're left with is people gladly paying 60 dollars for 6 hours of tedious gameplay for the sake or criticizing others for spending that amount on games they considered FUN with robust competitive online adding even more value.
How shrewd you all are.
You're like the fans of ME3 condemning Gears of War: judgmental against the product you're playing a pale imitation of for the story. I hate FPSes as much as the next asocial reject, but I don't need to pretend my taste is moral outrage.
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