Spec Ops: The Line

I’ve played some terrible games in my time. Honestly and truly, this wasn’t one of them. But it was perhaps the game I’ve enjoyed playing the least. I’ve resented playing a game before, but never before have I had a game resent me playing.

When setting out at the beginning, I didn’t know why a friend had lent me this game (or, in fact, lent me someone else’s copy...!) – this isn’t the kind of game I play. I don’t like macho war games. I’ve never played Call of Duty or Medal of Honor or any of their ilk. I just don’t engage with the characters or find them fun. So what was I doing here?

About halfway through, I got it. This is a military video game that plays with the concept of military video games. I’d expressed admiration for Bioshock and how it played with free will and being impelled to do something because that’s the only way to continue a game, and something similar happens here. But the way this game does it is incredibly irritating, frustrating and smug. First, it pretends you actually have a choice, leading me to waste far too much time attempting an impossible different choice for Walker. But secondly, after it becomes completely foregrounded that you’re playing a game whose main character made the wrong choice and backed the psycho who decided the best course of action was to kill everyone, the game begins beating you over the head with it to a ridiculous degree. ‘Do you feel like a hero yet?’ it asks you in the loading screen, smugness dripping from the words. ‘If you were a better person you wouldn’t be here.’ The only way to win at this game is not to play it. Which is absurd, because having made a purchase (or borrowing from someone who has!) the last thing I want is for game writers to start taunting me for engaging with their product.

This isn’t dark subversion of expectations. I don’t think I’d feel it to be even had I been a big fan of these games anyway. I don’t feel I need a morality lesson from a game, on how I need to stop to think whether killing men made of polygons is right, even if they’re meant to be MURRICANS. I don’t feel I need to feel terrible about having played through a pre-set scenario just because it turns out destructive. When Bioshock did it, I was amused because while I felt manipulated, it was a clever twist and once revealed, it was left to one side. Here, I felt manipulated but it was signposted far too heavily (‘There’s always a choice!’) and once it was revealed I was beaten over the head with it for the rest of the game.

And that’s not even mentioning how completely ridiculous it is that Walker has been hallucinating all the way through.

The story is a pretty snappy one. Three elite soldiers are sent to look for survivors in Dubai after it is devastated by massive sandstorms, a previous entire battalion sent there having vanished. When they arrive, they find that this battalion has taken over the remains of the city, apparently following a coup – and the CIA are now in conflict with them. After having to fight for their lives, Captain Walker and his two men Lt. Walker and Staff Sgt Lugo decide they need to take down this dug-in militia. Which, as I’ve already spoiled, turns out to be incredibly destructive.

The story overall isn’t terrible, other than the smugness towards the end – but I was also made to cringe a lot by how the whole thing is supposed to be a tribute to Heart of Darkness, culminating slightly embarrassingly in the Kurtz substitute being called ‘Konrad’. While darker than many such games, of course, you get to do all sorts of fun things like fire a minigun from a helicopter, shoot everything from RPGs to shotguns and zipline between huge Dubai skyscrapers.

Graphically, it is also good, with locations lovingly rendered. Unfortunately, the characters themselves are a little lacking in this department, especially in the way they move, which is clunky.

All the game’s flaws could have been forgiven if it were really good. If it had been solid fun to play, that would have come first. Unfortunately, it’s pretty terrible. The very basics are fine – the general aiming and shooting is good, the variety of weapons is admirable and the convenient way the terrain always gives you somewhere to hide is good. Unfortunately, there are certain things that ruin it. First, the awful mechanic for taking cover, which is absolutely crucial. I played on the hardest setting available at the start, and if you don’t take cover you die in seconds – and have to suffer looong loading times to respawn, which is something that definitely shouldn’t happen anyway. Unfortunately, once you take cover things get incredibly clunky – getting up again to escape from a grenade takes too long and often you end up facing the wrong way. The prompt to swap from one piece of cover to another often just doesn’t show up. If you’re running for cover from a heavy (a rather absurd idea in and of themselves), woe betide you if you take cover on the side of something, because you won’t be able to slip around the corner. Other things inexplicably won’t let you take cover, and still more you can’t shoot over despite how obviously feasible it is. This, more than anything else, made the game incredibly frustrating.

Several mandatory scenarios are also ridiculously tricky. There was one part where I had to shoot out big windows, and it seemed to take several minutes to do it. At another point, you’re chased by a helicopter and survival is pure luck.

I desperately wanted the game to end 2-3 hours before it did. But I was damned if I was gonna quit before finishing.