Spec Ops The Line Review

Inspired by the classic Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, Yager's Spec Ops seeks to encapsulate the darkness of man's heart and at which point the line of morality is at last crossed. Set in a modern Dubai where apocalyptic sandstorms have engulfed the city and rendered transport impassable, The Line pits three members of Delta Force-Walker, Adams and Lugo against well-armed assailants within the ruined city. 

Very soon it appears that Colonel John Konrad (a reference to Joseph Conrad, the writer of Heart of Darkness) and the 33rd Battalion of the US Army have gone rogue after being unable to cope with Dubai's inhabitants. Having crossed the line, they are slaughtering all before them.

It is now the role of the Delta operatives to stop Konrad's rogue soldiers, and they do so in spectacular fashion. It never ceases to amaze me how by the end of The Line three men have managed to wipe out the entire Battalion and countless inhabitants of Dubai.

In terms of gameplay and innovation, it ticks all the basic boxes of a third-person shooter. It has big tough men with big tough guns, mountains of cover, a variety of guns, basic movements like vaulting and lastly lots, and lots, and lots of bad guys to exterminate. Being a shooter, it also has the obligatory helicopter, mounted gun, melee executions and slow-motion headshots.

Its nothing we've never seen before, but the addition of shooting from zip-lines, drowning your enemies in sand and fighting in sand-storms are interesting, if short-lived gimmicks. Now, once you get past the by-the-book mechanics, the real highlight of the game stands out, and in a shooter this is truly special; the story takes front and centre. Chances are, if you are interested in war movies you would have watched Apocalypse Now and looked into its spiritual ancestor, Heart of Darkness. If you have, you'll be expecting a similar ending, but in The Line there is quite a twist, which could be seen as either M. Night Shyamalan-worthy or downright cliché.

But enough about the ending. Throughout the game, you are reminded time and time again how much life sucks. From the sand-filled hotels strewn with abandoned briefcases to grim, shattered skyscrapers and corpse-filled vehicles sitting silent along long highways, the stark message of the game comes through powerfully. Throughout the game you are reminded of the plight of Dubai's few remaining citizens, and scraps of intelligence throughout the game open other windows into the hellish world of ruined Dubai. In certain situations you as Walker may make crucial decisions as to the fate of several individuals. They make some impact on the game, and in a departure from shooter norm there are several endings, a trend which seems to be continued with other titles such as Black Ops II.

I would say more about the multiplayer, if I got a chance to play it. On PC, no matter how long I waited I could not find a single match. For someone who had pre-ordered the game to get the "special" FUBAR pack, it's a bummer.  Maybe it's different on the consoles, but sadly on PC I couldn't try it out, a shame because I was looking forward to the faction-specific classes, zipline combat and wide variety of buffs and customisation, similar though undoubtedly more streamlined and polished than Bethesda's inherently broken Brink.

Yager made one mistake when marketing this game. They went from the angle of an ordinary, third-person shooter, and without enough innovation the game couldn't survive in such a hostile AAA environment. It certainly didn't get enough press for the story-led game it is, and surprisingly it managed to stay under the radar of mainstream media, even for its violent and often depressing scenes of death and devastation. If Yager marketed their game as a harrowing story-based shooter, I'm sure it would be seen in a lot better light. All in all, its an average-to-good game, run-of-the-mill mechanics made slightly better with its "deeper" storyline.

7/10.