So, I'm currently in the process of playing through Spec Ops: The Line and I must say I am rather disappointed.
Don't get me wrong, the graphics are very pretty with characters changing in response to the environment (sweating, blood stains and wounds, clothing being torn from the main character's body, etc.) and the mechanics are as nice as you can expect from a 3rd person over-the-shoulder military shooter, though grenades acting as smoke grenades when used in the sand is a nice touch.
No, what I'm disappointed about is that the game claims to force you to make difficult choices throughout the game, and yet since it is so ridiculously linear, the hardest, most wide-reaching decisions are already made for you.
First choice I was allowed to make: Whether to shoot a soldier I had just rescued from torture or let him escape down a hole. The soldier clearly didn't seem interested in thanking his rescuers and was verily passive-aggressive towards us. You would think after going down he'd tell all his buddies "Hey! There's some soldiers who saved my ass from the CIA guys! Let's greet them cautiously but optimistically!". Nope! I was instead greeted by bullets and grenades.
The next choice was between rescuing a CIA agent Gould who could tell me what the hell was going on, or two civilians. After a dozen attempts at rescuing Gould, including the first mandatory fight against a Heavy, the bastard dies anyway because of sand in his lungs, even though I shot his torturers before they began sandboarding him. Fantastic. Treated to a lovely cutscene where my two followers get into a fight over letting Gould die and the horrible situation we're in.
After getting to the next section at The Gate, I thought, if Gould dies anyway, I might as well save the civvies and it might change the situation up ahead, maybe make my character be less of a twat. Reloaded and let the bad guy kill Gould, stealthed my way around with the most piss-easy stealth section, rescued the Civvies. Got a small thank you from them, got the map off Gould the same as before, treated to the same lovely cutscene where my two followers etc. etc. You know what changed? The two civvies got to live, and I still had to shell a base of soldiers doing manly things and civilians cowering in a hole with phosphorous.
Oh yeah, that's the big moral issue. You have to get through an army base at the Gate and to do so you shell them with white phosphorous. If you leave the last humvee alone so the shell doesn't kill the civvies in the hole, you die instantly. If you attack the army base, you get killed almost immediately and you can't kill all the armor anyway, not that you can carry enough weapons/ammo to wipe out the base anyway.
When you zipline into the radio tower and land on an enemy soldiers who slowly pulls a deagle on you, you have a choice of: not do anything and die; execute him with rifle butts to the head (not unlike the 8723456897234 other wounded soldiers you could execute just like that earlier in the game); shoot him in the face. Option 1 is death, option 2 your friends freak out. When I reloaded and shot him in the face instead, the Radioman mentions me beating his head in with a rifle...since when?
Speaking of the Radioman, even after he helps you set up the city-wide broadcast and is not aggressive in the slightest, being quite friendly...he gets shot in the face in cutscene. Yup, that's moral choice for you of course. But hey, at least you get to coordinate the city-wide evacuation now, yeah? Nope "We'll save you all! But first we'll just go kill the leader!" and then strafe the tower, demolishing the only way of communicating to the entire city and cutting off any mass-coordination method.
The next two decisions are: whether to execute a criminal or the soldier who killed civilians and whether to put the man who screwed the city and almost got everyone killed out of his misery or let him burn.
That's as far as I'm up to so I can't comment on the ending yet, but considering the game touts that it's about hard choices, I'm betting it'll be a choice that screws the city either way.
It's also very forgettable, with missions passing quickly and simply, even on hard difficulty (which only seems to reduce your health by a little and increase the health of the Heavies by 5 billion) and, quite frankly, I found myself forgetting the main character's name at times, especially since even after introducing yourself to the city, enemies still end up calling you Delta Squad, then just Delta.
Final comment for the producers: the "horrors of war" aspect where you do closeups of horrific wounds, injuries and maimed bodies...only really works if your textures and models are near-lifelike. The graphics and textures, though good-looking from a distance, really don't hold up when the camera really zooms in on a half-burnt face and the burns end up looking like bad make-up. A better option, especially when you KNOW that the camera will be zoomed into a mangled face, is to go for the near-realistic graphics and hit up the uncanny valley effect. It works a lot better for shock and horror than any amount of melting civlians.
Overall so far, I'd give it a 4/10. It looks nice and plays well enough, but far too linear. It tries to do what others have done better and it forces you into a storyline that, although interesting, is not enough to save it. Hopefully the ending will make up for it.
Don't get me wrong, the graphics are very pretty with characters changing in response to the environment (sweating, blood stains and wounds, clothing being torn from the main character's body, etc.) and the mechanics are as nice as you can expect from a 3rd person over-the-shoulder military shooter, though grenades acting as smoke grenades when used in the sand is a nice touch.
No, what I'm disappointed about is that the game claims to force you to make difficult choices throughout the game, and yet since it is so ridiculously linear, the hardest, most wide-reaching decisions are already made for you.
First choice I was allowed to make: Whether to shoot a soldier I had just rescued from torture or let him escape down a hole. The soldier clearly didn't seem interested in thanking his rescuers and was verily passive-aggressive towards us. You would think after going down he'd tell all his buddies "Hey! There's some soldiers who saved my ass from the CIA guys! Let's greet them cautiously but optimistically!". Nope! I was instead greeted by bullets and grenades.
The next choice was between rescuing a CIA agent Gould who could tell me what the hell was going on, or two civilians. After a dozen attempts at rescuing Gould, including the first mandatory fight against a Heavy, the bastard dies anyway because of sand in his lungs, even though I shot his torturers before they began sandboarding him. Fantastic. Treated to a lovely cutscene where my two followers get into a fight over letting Gould die and the horrible situation we're in.
After getting to the next section at The Gate, I thought, if Gould dies anyway, I might as well save the civvies and it might change the situation up ahead, maybe make my character be less of a twat. Reloaded and let the bad guy kill Gould, stealthed my way around with the most piss-easy stealth section, rescued the Civvies. Got a small thank you from them, got the map off Gould the same as before, treated to the same lovely cutscene where my two followers etc. etc. You know what changed? The two civvies got to live, and I still had to shell a base of soldiers doing manly things and civilians cowering in a hole with phosphorous.
Oh yeah, that's the big moral issue. You have to get through an army base at the Gate and to do so you shell them with white phosphorous. If you leave the last humvee alone so the shell doesn't kill the civvies in the hole, you die instantly. If you attack the army base, you get killed almost immediately and you can't kill all the armor anyway, not that you can carry enough weapons/ammo to wipe out the base anyway.
When you zipline into the radio tower and land on an enemy soldiers who slowly pulls a deagle on you, you have a choice of: not do anything and die; execute him with rifle butts to the head (not unlike the 8723456897234 other wounded soldiers you could execute just like that earlier in the game); shoot him in the face. Option 1 is death, option 2 your friends freak out. When I reloaded and shot him in the face instead, the Radioman mentions me beating his head in with a rifle...since when?
Speaking of the Radioman, even after he helps you set up the city-wide broadcast and is not aggressive in the slightest, being quite friendly...he gets shot in the face in cutscene. Yup, that's moral choice for you of course. But hey, at least you get to coordinate the city-wide evacuation now, yeah? Nope "We'll save you all! But first we'll just go kill the leader!" and then strafe the tower, demolishing the only way of communicating to the entire city and cutting off any mass-coordination method.
The next two decisions are: whether to execute a criminal or the soldier who killed civilians and whether to put the man who screwed the city and almost got everyone killed out of his misery or let him burn.
That's as far as I'm up to so I can't comment on the ending yet, but considering the game touts that it's about hard choices, I'm betting it'll be a choice that screws the city either way.
It's also very forgettable, with missions passing quickly and simply, even on hard difficulty (which only seems to reduce your health by a little and increase the health of the Heavies by 5 billion) and, quite frankly, I found myself forgetting the main character's name at times, especially since even after introducing yourself to the city, enemies still end up calling you Delta Squad, then just Delta.
Final comment for the producers: the "horrors of war" aspect where you do closeups of horrific wounds, injuries and maimed bodies...only really works if your textures and models are near-lifelike. The graphics and textures, though good-looking from a distance, really don't hold up when the camera really zooms in on a half-burnt face and the burns end up looking like bad make-up. A better option, especially when you KNOW that the camera will be zoomed into a mangled face, is to go for the near-realistic graphics and hit up the uncanny valley effect. It works a lot better for shock and horror than any amount of melting civlians.
Overall so far, I'd give it a 4/10. It looks nice and plays well enough, but far too linear. It tries to do what others have done better and it forces you into a storyline that, although interesting, is not enough to save it. Hopefully the ending will make up for it.
