Spec Ops: The Line Review

[Halcyon.]

I don’t know if there could have been a more appropriate main theme for Spec Ops: The Line than Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Exactly as the free falling course of its story, Hendrix’s composition is a deformed and “dirty” version of the United States’ national anthem that emphasizes (in analogy with the game’s events) the perversion of some very noble principles.
Principles embodied by the character we control, Captain Martin Walker, sent in Dubai to recover a certain John Konrad, a colonel who violated his orders to get an entire military division in the city in the hopes of evacuating those who were still alive after a series of truly apocalyptic sandstorms.

Initially, Walker has a very idealistic attitude, believing that the mission could be done without any major complications. He intends to localize Konrad and let the real evacuation teams do their job in regard to civilians. But the situation takes a major turn when he realizes that the 33rd division might not actually want to leave Dubai.
And so, finding Konrad is now even more important, as much as this was even possible. But there is another major detail we initially learn from a loading screen: some time ago, Konrad saved Walker’s life, so maybe finding the former is a vital objective for the latter, with the potential to transform itself into an obsession.
I was immediately grateful to the story for evading the cliche of Americans who travel all over the world to spred democracy. Although the first soldiers you meet have a clear Middle Eastern allure, we immediately get an American vs. American scenario, with the afferent confusion of friendly-fire situations.
I also thought I could be grateful for the lack of cinematic sequences, because very shortly after the start we come to a hostile exchange of bullets accompanied by one of the many classics on the soundtrack, a moment when it could be said that The Line becomes too fancy for its own good, apparently trying to force the atmosphere without a sufficient technical base.
And there’s nothing wrong with this type of scene-setting, on the contrary, but the game does not excel from a mechanical perspective, and the artificial intelligence is sometimes a disaster, problems that strongly sabotages the grandiosity of the respective scenes.

For those who’ve seen Apocalypse Now, the scene will immediately remind them of it, not exactly surprising seeing as how both of them are inspired by Heart of Darkness. No, the cinematic sequences are not lacking and are numerically on par with other action games, but are also as professional as in other titles.
And with this we’ve come to one of The Line’s biggest deficiencies: the fact that as a 3rd person shooter it is completely standard, mediocre even, with an AI that would be better strongly restricted or scripted than free to jump right in your face when you bring down enemies with a turret or incapable of any reaction when you are sometimes three meters distance from a hostile soldier with no obstacle between the two of you.
Besides Martin Walker, your team is comprised of two more soldiers that you can order to attack an enemy and also, while in some fights, give contextual commands for using a certain type of grenade. When one of them is down, you can rush over to him for resuscitation or you can order the other one to do it.
Sadly, their AI is in a perfect symbiosis with that of the enemy, a fact painfully and comically observed when you are attacked by adversaries that rush you with only a knife. Yes, we have a hostile that rushes in your direction, amidst the gun bursts, with a knife. I think I understand what was intended here, maybe the designers wanted a ninja type soldier, very fast and lethal at close range.
And it would have probably worked if he was put in situations where he could unexpectedly jump behind your back, but not when you see him run towards you from a 10 meter distance. And what do your teammates do when they see him? They yell at you to be careful. No shooting, no coming at your side to protect you, just a friendly warning.

The cover mechanics are good, but they could have been much better very easily. It takes some time until you get used to it, because it’s not immediately clear when exactly you switch between two objects that offer cover and the vaulting key is mandatory the same as the melee attack one (thank you console controllers), with the priority of the two functions not being perfect by any measure.
But these are not the things that generated the hype on which the marketing campaign relied on before launch. It was the story, or more exactly, its refusal to spare the idealistic expectations with which most games have accustomed us, where the bad guys are only bad, just like the good and innocent cannot be anything else.
The starting vista is almost surreal. We are somewhere on a highway, filled with cars buried in sand. In the far off we see Dubai at the opposite extreme of what it currently represents, a monument of opulence, but also of technological and architectural achievements, buried under sand dunes that sometimes swallow entire buildings. And surrounding everything is the desert, as far as the eye can see.
Although it’s ultimately only the space where the hostilities take place, the attention and detail with which Dubai has been reconstructed and destroyed made me regret that I could not truly explore it, being obligated to manage with the classical, completely linear structure of a shooter.
And maybe a city won’t be able to express itself as clear as a human character, but there are moments when its decrepitude and architectural devastation speak more loudly than anything else, when Dubai become as striking as Walker and his fellow soldiers. In any case, you’ll remember it much more profoundly than the anonymous mass of 33rd soldiers.
But to the game's praise, The One in Which I've invested the most emotional attachment Also the center around Which is ambiguous Every choice on the way revolves. As I've Said Walker starts the year with mission very confident and apparently clear goal, That of finding Konrad as fast as Possible. But the apocalyptic Almost That state has gotten into Dubai Something else has Prepared For Him and the others captive there, Moments That Will Test Him - and implicitly others, soldiers and civilians alike - Far Beyond the Limits of Their Ideals own.
Walker's transformation from idealistic year into the pragmatist of survival starts Slowly, but surely, and after A Certain Becomes Very Clear That moment puts you to the test first, as observer of the events year. The change does not only reflect in the results of His choices - Which ultimately define us, the ones controlling HIM - but Also in the changing visual aspect of the three team members and in the superbly directed Interactions Between Them.
All of Them is engulfed in dust and scars Slowly, Walker made himself getting burned half of his tag somewhere after the second half of the story. But one of phenomenons for Which I truly appreciated the way the transformation of the team is represented is the Fact That You'll come to a point Where You Can Trust Him anymore, although He is ultimately your avatar in this world.If, at the start, Walker is very coherent and frequently insists with what must be done, on the way to the end he slowly loses his clarity, appearing dismayed and silent when confronted with the results of his choices. How many games have the courage to treat you like this?
Even more, everything that he decides in the campaign is not exempted from the judgment of the rest of his team and with this comes another major achievement. Although the choices he has to make range from tough to „I never thought I could do this”, you’ll be judged in an absolute way only by your own conscience.
Yes, the opinions of the others are absolute judgments for them, but the game will confront you with the “valid” and painful arguments of other perspectives; you only need to make up whatever excuses you think make you look better in the respective situations.
On the other hand, the choices won’t change anything essential in the story. In certain moments it’s not even clear if you can make some other choice besides the obvious one, other times the result is the same. There are multiple endings to see, but The Line’s merits come primarily from the courage of offering us such a brutal setting in which to test our principles.
It could be said that the producers are actually… toying with us on many levels. Not only that the events and choices are hard to swallow, but the game uses other means to force you to question yourself. First, it’s hard not to feel a bit… uncomfortable when orders like “Obey!” and “Run God Damn It!” are slammed on the screen, but one of the most evident of these ways comes through the loading screens, where toward the end you get many messages that act almost as a voice of consciousness. You are asked, plain and simple, if you feel like a hero yet and you’re told, in such a gratuitous way that it’s hard not to feel mocked, that you still are a good person.
We could also call these methods gratuitous, but I think it’s worth asking ourselves again how many games have the courage to pass over their own interactive and narrative line to first question us, the ones that actually make the decisions and not some fictitious character from a virtual world.
And although The Line is less about impersonal crowds and legions of anonymous soldiers you could barely care about, but more about the personal dramas and painful transformation of a few characters, the game is undermined, mechanically and conceptually, by its genre and the problems of the AI.

MINOR SPOILER START
In a sequence that starts very promising, with a group of civilians shouting and throwing rocks at a convoy of trucks carrying water, the AI and the bunch of soldiers that literally throw themselves at you without any care, as well as the awkward way Walker’s grenade launcher dismembers them only serve to disconnect you from the rest of the story, turning all its gravity from before and after at 180 degrees.
MINOR SPOILER END
On one side, we have the story that’s supposed to make you question a lot of things you believe and on the other, the sequences where you need to shoot tens of enemies with which there’s no other way of “negotiating”. You have to care about Walker’s tormented transformation and question your own decisions and then enter into a state in which you’re capable of sweeping a few series of characterless individuals with no remorse.

A bit relaxation could be found in multiplayer, if there were any players around. In more than half of my connecting attempts to online matches I had complete bad luck, having to wait for other players in the lobby. I don’t know if the situation if better on consoles, but it’s not completely surprising, seeing as The Line clearly insisted on its single-player campaign as the highlight. Even so, the multiplayer is surprisingly elaborated, miles above what I was expecting from a game that continuously insisted how great its story is.
We have two opposing teams with mostly negligible differences, like the ability to gain more experience from melee attacks, an exclusive class for each team – from five – and a consistent arsenal, all this sustained by a considerable collection of perks. From the six online modes, High Value Target is probably the most interesting because it offers the most possibilities for cooperation, the classes also being designed first for the synergy between them and second for Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch.
High Value Target has some Rush (Battlefield) elements because it implies the progressive destruction of several objectives culminating with a final one that marks the victory of the match. If you have enough teammates with varied specializations, the chances for winning are upped thanks to the classes that offer localized advantages if you’re close enough to the respective soldier: medics will increase the health regeneration rate, the sniper will offer better accuracy etc.
But even the classic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes get a bit more variety thanks to the sandstorms that start periodically in the exterior of the maps and in which, if caught, you won’t be able to sprint and your radar gets blocked. Moreover, the campaign and multiplayer maps come with certain zones where you can destroy parts of the structures (glass, walls), trapping those underneath in a sand dune.
With all this said, it’s clear the multiplayer won’t astonish anyone more than any other standard shooter. It is really consistent, decent in its mechanics and of course held up by human intelligences that can do considerably more then the artificial one that plagues the campaign, but that’s it.

Even with all the morbid ambiguity of the campaign, I still consider that the stance to take when confronted with Spec Ops: The Line is pretty simple. We are in an era when YouTube can sometimes save us from spending money, especially when we are more interested in the story of a game and are less willing to support a defective or unattractive mechanic and an AI that could just as well be nonexistent.
And this is ultimately the breaking point of The Line (pun intended). It truly deserves applause for the courage to confront us so harshly with our own character, even if our choices sometimes seem forced or useless. But if it could have found another way, less tiresome and monotonous, to let us get to them, it would have had substantial chances to become a classic.