I wish to say long-winded and generally unkind things about Spec Ops:The Line.

[Specter Von Baren]

I think the problem I'm seeing with the whole element of choice making someone feel guilty or not is that the game gives you the ability to take a better option in other scenes but in this particular scene it makes it impossible to avoid.

I've seen a few people talk about how they fired into the air instead of shooting the crowd and being surprised and glad that it worked. This is a time where the game rewarded people for looking for another option. So when they get to the white phosphorus incident and try to find another way, and then find that the game has decided that they don't get a choice for this scene, it doesn't cause the same effect.

Having a game where players can make choices or one where the game is linear can both work for this kind of thing depending on how you do it, but when you put both of them together then it can cause problems.

At least I hope that makes sense. Keep in mind that I haven't played the game so this is all just based on what I've seen everyone else say.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

To be fair the whole "we don't know this guy, therefore it's hard to empathise when he goes insane" argument can be aimed at Apocalypse Now: we know that Captain Willard is a bit unstable, but we barely know anything about him too.

The reason why we don't know much about these characters(ie, Heart of Darkness adaptations) is because they are very general metaphors: Captain Walker's slow descent into insanity shows an extreme of PTSD that modern day soldiers go through, adding in more details to his personality would've diminished what he represents, Captain Willard's ambivalence towards the things that happen down the river shows how scarred he is that he barely registers anything that happens(as would a lot of soldiers during the war, a sort of quiet acceptance), even when he is in Kurtz's "temple".

I still think that the "you could just turn it off" argument holds water; if the game was boring you or you didn't like it, you could always just turn it off, much like how Walker could've just killed himself in the game because he could not advance.

There is also a lot of metaphor there too: the decisions Walker makes are spurred on by the player, and both the set pieces and the cutscenes are the culminations of the player spurring him on to keep advancing. Sgt Lugo and Adams both represent the last slivers of sanity and consciousness that Walker has left in him; the points at which he gets separated from them are the points at which he begins hallucinating or feels truly weak.

I can understand if people didn't like it; it was aimed at a very specific mindset and it requires a big emotional investment in order for some of the "horrors of war" bits to get through, but if you do, then it is truly great.

But there is one thing that a lot of people ignore in these types of threads; no one ever argues that there was any dissonance between the mechanics and the story, and that is why I truly love this game: everything that is in the game serves to reinforce the story, not one element of the campaign was vestigial or an after thought: everything gels together brilliantly. It cannot be argued that the mechanics were not in sync with the plot.

It's okay that you didn't like it Zhukhov, I don't mind, and I don't think anyone else should really.

 

[Grace_Omega]

I have to admit, I'm also in the camp that wasn't impressed with this game. I'm of the opinion that the post-Modern Warfare military FPS genre needs to be heavily criticised more often, but I don't think the way to do that is to just make yet another gritty war story where sweaty dudes with guns shoot truckloads of foreigners and then pull a last-minute "gotcha". Plus the game gets into ideas of audience culpability, which I've always found really tiresome.

On top of all that the game was just boring and repetitive, with really basic, dull shooting mechanics that came across as Gears of War-lite. I can overlook not-great gameplay in service of an interesting message in a short game, but not something I'm expected to put serious time into.

Spec Ops has some genuinely good ideas behind it (I love how the game starts getting more and more surreal without really drawing attention to it) but it would have worked better as either a short downloadable game of a similar length to Journey or Dear Esther, or if it had just straight up not been a shooter in the traditional sense. It really felt like the developers weren't actually all that interested in the moment-to-moment shooting mechanics but were forced or felt compelled to put them in anyway.

 

[NeutralDrow]

I think part of it was that message, but also how easy it was to get caught up in that type of stuff. Even some of the most adamantly pacifistic people in real-life got swept up in Walker's crusade against the 33rd. Probably one of the biggest things about the game was that it kept tying you into Walker's experience, and that you were choosing to do what he does for the same reasons as he does. At some points, I'm disgusted with myself, at others, even later in the game, I just got lot in the violence, but I kept going, regardless. Thats one of the main points of the game - you (ideally) decided to keep going, even though you weren't forced to. You could've stopped, at any time, just like Martin Walker, but you didn't.

What pissed me off is that I wasn't disgusted with myself, but the game clearly thought I was. The only thing I did that made me feel unalterably guilty was when I accidentally shot a civilian running my way in a dark corridor (and apparently I "missed the point" by reloading at that). Even the white phosphorus incident was just kind of a sick shock. I did try to avoid it (and met the magical respawning snipers), but once that failed, I figured dead was dead and used it. The civilians dying in the attack was just unexpected, since I thought that group had died already, despite Lugo suddenly screaming about how I had turned them into killers...because if there's something a special forces sniper and demolition expert never do, it's kill people.

And that was the problem. Walker was clearly angsting his brains out and second-guessing himself, and I couldn't really sympathize. That wouldn't have been a bad thing, and I probably could have come to it after a while, if the game could have just shut the hell up for one loading screen. All those "do you even remember why you came here" and "you're still a good person" got on my nerves after a while, because it was like arguing with a troll who thinks they're making a point (but won't listen to any counterarguments). And when Walker chooses to give up, leaving both Adams and me screaming "WHY?!"...granted, getting to the very end and learning that the personal crusade was only in Walker's head and ultimately meaningless changed everything.

...wait, no, it changed nothing.

None of my actions became any less justified. Except for sending Lugo back some time before we hit the point of no return (which would have been a good idea regardless of what happened later), there was nothing I did that I would have changed by knowing the extent of Walker's PTSD. If anything, taking out the 33rd was more urgent than I'd realized, because they were actually a headless, thrashing organization perpetuated solely by their own insanity. And naturally, they had to get in their parting shot of "it takes a big man to deny what's right in front of him," just to rub it in that I'd sat through five hours of fourth wall-breaking sarcasm for nothing.

And that was when I got that quote at all. I didn't find out until the day after I beat the game that that particular scene had a choice in it, which was a nice, special "fuck you" from the devs to me.

- Why did they only send three guys on foot to find out what was going on in Dubai? I guess this can be put down to plot necessity, but still...

Can't send the air force or armour, and sending in light vehicles like humvees would look like an act of war. Infantry can travel all terrain though, and three infantry can be very discrete. Their mission was to observe and report back if they found any survivors - they're not even tasked with making contact with any survivors. What do you think would happen if you sent an entire company of infantry to a devastated city that may be full of scared, starving civilians? It seems like a very reasonable option.

It would look like a humanitarian assignment. My question is still why that wouldn't be done in reverse, once it became obvious that the sandstorm was no longer strong enough to prevent all passage, but anyway.

The point of the three guys wasn't discreteness, since the UAE had already abandoned Dubai, and it was common knowledge that a US battalion was lost in the sandstorms. They were making sure a rescue mission wouldn't be wasted resources by confirming the presence of survivors. And the fact that the CIA had already confirmed that (and not bothered to inform Delta Force, despite the two organizations' close link) meant that some communication somewhere went horribly wrong.

 

[Sectan]

I would compare Spec Ops The Line to "Don't shoot the Puppy" where even moving the mouse kills the puppy and the game will constantly trick you into moving the mouse. Except this game turns around and starts yelling at you "WHY DID YOU KILL THE PUPPY? EVIL PERSON! EVIL! HORRIBLE PERSON! You should have just stopped playing the game you paid money for. That was the whole message."

The game tells you to drop WP on people. Most people will make the realization that they don't know who the fuck they're going to drop the WP and will hesitate until the game punishes them. It's opening a door and telling someone to go through it. If they refuse you hit them with a cattle prod and tell them to go through. Once they do you turn around and tell them how horrible they are for doing it. "Why did you go through the door? You should have kept standing there until I eventually killed you. Monster."

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I think Yahtzee summed up what Spec Ops was trying to do (and for me, did do) with the killing of civilians. I play the Call of Duty games. That AC 130 mission in Modern Warfare was a blast to play, and I still enjoy playing it to this day. When I see a group of enemies together, I try to fry them all with one shot because "Hot Damn!" It's the thrill of snuffing those guys out with such overwhelming firepower that they didn't even know what hit them. I get a rush when I hit a truck and all the soldiers inside are toast before they can even pile out. Taking out large forces like that is a thrill for me, and I know it's a thrill for a lot of other people.

So when I was using the mortar in Spec Ops, I was getting that same rush. I saw vehicles and I blew the crap out of them, and groups of soldiers I wasted without a second thought. When I saw that mass at the end, I thought, "Oh man, this is going to save me a lot of trouble storming those gates," or maybe I just thought, "Lots of points there." I don't remember. The point is, I was feeling the same rush I got when I was playing Modern Warfare.
Then they made me walk through what I had done. Hear the screams of enemies who, moments before I had wanted to kill without mercy for what they had done, as they burned to death. Soldiers crawling on the ground in agony as they slowly died. And I felt rather uneasy about how happy I had been moments before. So I made sure I shot every soldier who was still alive to put them out of their misery. And then I got to the end and I literally felt sick. Spec Ops is playing off of the feeling gamers get when they kill countless people in the blink of an eye and they enjoy it. They were going for that feeling that many people get, that rush of the thrill, and giving it to you so that you could understand just how wrong that feeling should be. That's my take on it.

As for the plot hole, or at least the one where Walker didn't call in to his commanding officers, the game literally calls itself on that one. "You were never meant to come here." As soon as Walker found those survivors, he was supposed to turn around and head out. But he didn't because he went to save those U.S. soldiers. When that first soldier died, he got a mission to save the next soldier. When he got there, that U.S. soldier turned hostile, and Walker had to find out why--and he felt it was his duty to protect the civilians that the U.S. soldiers were killing. So he went looking for Conrad. A simple recon mission changed to a rescue mission, to a protection mission, to a quest for answers, to downright revenge, to...hell, Walker doesn't even know at the end of the game, but the change in the mission parameters is so subtle that it makes sense for Walker and the others to keep going.
At least that's how I see it.

As for why they still followed him, part of it is chain of command. Another part is Walker is their friend and they're not about to leave him alone like that. Also, they were all in that mess together, and going off alone was probably a good way to get killed real quick. As for the walkie, I don't think those two knew it was broken. Walker held it in his hand and only he saw the back when he picked it up. They probably thought he was just talking to Conrad and Conrad wasn't responding. Now, the hanging choice? Yeah, I too wonder why Lugo didn't shake him and go, "Captain, what are you doing? There's nothing there."

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Then they made me walk through what I had done. Hear the screams of enemies who, moments before I had wanted to kill without mercy for what they had done, as they burned to death. Soldiers crawling on the ground in agony as they slowly died. And I felt rather uneasy about how happy I had been moments before. So I made sure I shot every soldier who was still alive to put them out of their misery. And then I got to the end and I literally felt sick. Spec Ops is playing off of the feeling gamers get when they kill countless people in the blink of an eye and they enjoy it. They were going for that feeling that many people get, that rush of the thrill, and giving it to you so that you could understand just how wrong that feeling should be. That's my take on it.

Problem with this.

"Spec Ops is playing off of the feeling gamers get when they kill countless people in the blink of an eye and they enjoy it."

You are not killing actual people. This argument only works if the gamer sees the enemies in the game as having the same worth as people in real life. When a gamer shoots down several soldiers, is the person seeing them as people or as enemy AI in a video-game? There is no problem with killing people in a video-game, there is only a problem if you think mowing down dozens upon dozes of people in real life is just as easy or "fun" or desirable.

Some people go to a video game with the intent to be immersed in its world and story. Others go into a game purely for the gameplay and doing well at it. Someone that' in it for the gameplay wouldn't even see the enemies as being actual people to begin with and thus not likely to confuse the two, and someone that's in it for the world would likely treat people as their moral compass already dictates.

Sorry if this post is rambly or doesn't make sense, I'm really tired and about to go to bed.

 

[Zeldias]

Then they made me walk through what I had done. Hear the screams of enemies who, moments before I had wanted to kill without mercy for what they had done, as they burned to death. Soldiers crawling on the ground in agony as they slowly died. And I felt rather uneasy about how happy I had been moments before. So I made sure I shot every soldier who was still alive to put them out of their misery. And then I got to the end and I literally felt sick. Spec Ops is playing off of the feeling gamers get when they kill countless people in the blink of an eye and they enjoy it. They were going for that feeling that many people get, that rush of the thrill, and giving it to you so that you could understand just how wrong that feeling should be. That's my take on it.

Problem with this.

"Spec Ops is playing off of the feeling gamers get when they kill countless people in the blink of an eye and they enjoy it."

You are not killing actual people. This argument only works if the gamer sees the enemies in the game as having the same worth as people in real life. When a gamer shoots down several soldiers, is the person seeing them as people or as enemy AI in a video-game? There is no problem with killing people in a video-game, there is only a problem if you think mowing down dozens upon dozes of people in real life is just as easy or "fun" or desirable.

Some people go to a video game with the intent to be immersed in its world and story. Others go into a game purely for the gameplay and doing well at it. Someone that' in it for the gameplay wouldn't even see the enemies as being actual people to begin with and thus not likely to confuse the two, and someone that's in it for the world would likely treat people as their moral compass already dictates.

Sorry if this post is rambly or doesn't make sense, I'm really tired and about to go to bed.

Think the point here is that games (basically most things with a narrative) is a call to empathize to some degree. It's not that the NPCs are actually people or that gamers will think it's fun to actually go out and kill. I took it as a demand for increased empathy in game storytelling, a demand for increased weight. I mean, comparatively (and I hate to use this example for a good amount of reasons), how much murder actually occurs in canonical literature? Or, to say it another way, is there any piece of literature that has the amount of actual killing that a single CoD game does?

More importantly, the difference here is that most literature is a spectator genre (Steve Tomasula has done some cool things with interactive lit, though, especially with TOC). One would think that a genre that actually allows the spectator to become a performer would be in a better position to work with the empathy and suspension of disbelief that good fiction brings us. Instead, it's a shooting gallery with targets that are made to shuffle and cry out like actual people. In that light, it's sick, and Spec Ops rightly criticizes it.

As a person that is interested in art, I like what Spec Ops does, and as a person who dislikes almost all shooters, I don't really understand the mechanics complaints I've read (the shooting sucks? How? Point the gun and click, people die). My main beef with it is that Lugo and Adams didn't say anything when Walker was clearly crazy. I mean, not even stop him or anything but at least go "WTF, man, no one is hanging there."

 

[LetalisK]

- Why the hell does does Walker not contact his superiors once he starts exchanging fire with American soldiers? This is clearly outside the parameters of his original mission. I realise they say something about the "storm wall" blocking radio transmissions, but if that's the case then they should have turned around and walked back out to make a report, not kept killing their way forwards. Besides, at one point Walker mentions "calling for evac" as something they can do, so they apparently have comms of some kind. I guess this could be put down to Walker's obsession. but that just leads me to my next one.

If memory serves, your squadmates tell you several times that they should back off and radio for help, but Walker insists that they are needed right now and that there's no time for backup, like a bad police drama. Basically, it comes down to Walker wanting to be the hero disguised as a sense of honor and empathy, which is the central theme of the game.

Edit: Quoted wrong paragraph, derp!

 

[Zetatrain]

Can I complain about something here as well? What's with all the people who say that the story is amazing but the gameplay is utter shite? It's a mechanically solid third person shooter, gameplay wise better than most.

Well the thing is people tend to use generic and shit interchangeably.

Spec Ops: The Line gameplay is, IMO, as generic as third person shooters come. It functions properly and all but is pretty much bare bones compared to other third person shooters. One of my friends couldn't even get pass the third level because the gameplay was so boring to him.

 

[ryan_cs]

Hey, am I the only one after doing the white phosphorus scene thought to myself in game, "well let's see, I've killed dozens to hundreds of people before this, everyone wants to kill us now, and It's too late to change everything, let's do several more horrible things, I want to see where this goes," or is it just me?

I think the problem is that I don't really care about killing the civilians, I killed a lot of people already who are just doing their jobs, I already chose to use the white phosphorus despite knowing what it does. So after everything I've done in game I choose to kill the civilians surrounding Walker even after I know shooting up in the air works, in fact after I tried that I still shot them.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The big argument supporters of the game make though that cracks me up is this "Oh but you have the choice to stop playing the game". Because yeah.......... when I buy a game for 60+ dollars that's what I'm looking for.

That is ultimately what the game is about though. You (well I atleast) kept playing, because you wanted to see the end, and whether or not there might be some positive outcome to all of it. Something worth salvaging. The further I got the worse the situation got, but the more I wanted to see how it would end. Only to get to the end and find out I should've just quit. Literally just quit playing.

When I got to that point I won't deny it had some effect in the moment, but it was very much a one-trick pony. And that one trick was already sorta spoiled for me before I even started playing it. The whole hook of the game is supposed to be 'Bet you thought I was just another military shooter, huh', and then finding out that it isn't. But when you go into the game already knowing it isn't there's really very little it has to show for itself.

It also didn't help that the game lacked the necessary characterisation to pull off its own drama.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I don't see how that was the hook of the game at all. Since as early as 2010 it was always said to be a modern interpretation of Apocalypse Now.

It seems most of the praise it got came from that mindset though. People expecting just another CoD game, but getting something a little bit more confronting.

And nearly every military shooter for the past 7 years tried to advertize itself as serious fare. I remember-... Christ, I can't even remember the name. It was some FPS with guys in yellow helmets, and super soldier juice or whatever. Anyway, that game had that whole pre-release talk of having a challenging story to cover up the fact it was just another mediocre shooter. So with Spec Ops I really wasn't expecting it to walk the walk either.

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

I'm with the OP on this one, I left the game thoroughly unimpressed. In fact, I was downright bored. Beyond the numerous plot holes, I couldn't fathom anyone's motivations by the end.
I started getting pissed at the game when we started shooting Americans, because there was just no good reason for anyone to be shooting anyone. These idiots just walked into Dubai like it was nothing, it calls into question why nobody else did the same with maybe some medkits, or why nobody just walked out of Dubai since you can get pretty much everywhere on foot.
The Americans have absolutely zero reason to fire on the rescue team, I refuse to believe that several hundred men all went murderously insane all at once.
You gun down more legions of men before the White Phosphorus scene than you kill with it, I don't buy into the whole "we can't shoot our way in" excuse. Hell, they're three guys, if you can't shoot your way in you could always sneak around/through the camp. IIRC, I had a silencer on at least one of my weapons, it would have been trivial to cloak and dagger my way through the camp. Not only am I forced to take the lazy, dishonorable path, but I'm forced to kill the civilians. You can't progress without systematically murdering all of the soldiers, and you can't progress without taking that one last shot that melts all the civilians.
That scene calls a lot of things about your "enemy" into question as well, since it seems like the Americans were at least trying to help civilians, or something. I couldn't really engage in the scene like I was "supposed" to, since I never had any choice. The half-melted soldier that tries to ask you why, I shrugged and thought "I dunno man, don't look at me. I voted to go around. Hell, I never wanted to shoot any of you in the first place. Now, the devs wouldn't let me progress until I melted all of you. You certainly aren't going to guilt-trip me because it wasn't my decision; but I'm right there with you, this protagonist is a complete bastard."
From there it only gets worse. The Americans have endless supplies of helicopters, elite troops, and even a doom fortress, but none of that makes any damn sense. If they have all the helicopters, and hundreds of highly trained men, why the hell was it so hard for them to establish martial law, or evacuate all the citizens? Why did any of them stay, when they could have flown literally anywhere else? Why do the protagonists stay? If I remember correctly, you get into a helicopter and pull some strafing runs at one point. Why don't you just fly away? You aren't staying for the citizens, the insane army guys are a lost cause, the whole city's gone to shit, technically just knowing any/all of that completes your mission and is enough to return to base with, why would you hang around? At that point, you don't even have to turn around and walk out, you can fly back to base and make much better time.
I expected the final boss guy to bring some sort of explanation to the table, but no dice there. He was dead, or crazy, or both, and I stopped caring long before that. The "you were crazy the whole time" reveal created more questions and answered none. Not to mention, the whole thing was so tortuously drawn out I wanted to jump off a building just to make it stop. It even caps the game off with a binary choice where both choices are wrong, a la Army of Two: The 40th Day.

What I really liked about the game was the unfiltered look at what military hardware can do to a person. I'd like to see it extend even further in games, not out of some twisted gore fetish, but in order to bring a sense of weight to your actions in games. What I'd really like to see is a hybrid between SpecOps and Call of Duty 4, with the finger-wagging of the former stripped out, and the latter's improbable number of explosions scaled back a little. The result would ideally be a game in which you take a guided tour of awful, realistic war zones. The most haunting scenes are the ones that come and go without any warning, and with no interference. When you drop from a vent in Max Payne 3 and surprise a guard in a server room, he's something like the 3000th person you've killed. However, what makes that section stand out in my mind long after I stopped playing was the fact that I had to sit there and watch him die. The euphoria physics caused him to flail and attempt to get up over and over again, while his blood loss caused those attempts to slowly become more and more feeble. You can literally watch him fade away before your eyes, which was unsettling. Call of Duty 4's nuke section turned heads because it gave you that feeling of helplessness and hopelessness that until that point was alien to gamers. It certainly wasn't something that happened very often, if ever, in games until that point. In SpecOps, the white phosphorus scene wasn't the only scene that gave me pause, but the game constantly undercut itself. Every time I stopped to say "whoah", the game wrested control from me and forced me through all these setpieces where the game goes "WHOAH LOOK AT THIS, YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY A MONSTER. FEEL BAD NOW." Following those scripted scenes, the game would go right back to funneling me into giant, improbable gunfights and I'd turn my brain off again. I'd like to see a game that combines the unsettling elements of all of the above with none of the overt messaging. Good films do it all the time, they present an awful, unpleasant reality and then just leave it there. You don't need a message, you've likely already got one in your head. This isn't 300, where the point is to shout about honor and valor and then spill oceans of blood. Games with the goal of making people feel bad about war should just show war as it is. It's not fun, and it's not pretty. You can streamline the experience because it's an entertainment product, but all it really takes is just showing people the brutal reality of war to make them uncomfortable and prove a point.

 

[wulf3n]

Firstly, I cannot help but feel that the whole subversive message business is rather poorly aimed. My reaction to most of it was a great big, "Yeah, no shit." What's that you say Spec Ops? Violent fantasies of martial heroism are a bit pathetic? Ya don't say! Oh, those scenes where you bombard and kill helpless enemies from the complete safety of a distant weapons platform are pretty damn creepy? Yup, well done champ.

"But!" You might tell me, "Those messages weren't aimed at a handsome, intelligent and brilliantly insightful individual such as yourself! They were directed at the people who get a kick out of military shooters. That's why the game started off all safe and familiar with Whitey McBuzzcut and his Yankee pals shooting Foreign-speaking brown people in a desert."

Thing is, are such folks really going to care what the game has to say? Especially when the game's moment-to-moment gameplay is basically indistinguishable from the games it's trying to critique. If they're just there for the big phallic guns, headshots and military lingo then the game unironically provides that in ample quantities.

Not all MMS fans are red neck, weekend warrior wannabes. There are numerous people that would have been caught on the back foot by this.

Secondly, I found the attempts to make the player feel guilty to be rather inept. The game very clearly wanted me to feel bad about the whole white phosphorus incident and the general murder and mayhem. However, it never gave me any choice in the matter. I cannot be made to feel guilty about an action that wasn't of my doing. That's like saying, "That guy over there killed a kitten! Therefore you are a monster!" You need to make me choose to do it, or at least make me want to do it, then you can happily go about guilt-tripping me inside out.

(Oh, and please don't even bother with the, "Well, you had the choice to turn off the game", argument. Just... don't. If nothing else, doing so would have prevented the game from delivering to me its much vaunted message and thus it would have failed in its purpose.)

"But!" You might say, "It wasn't about you the player being guilty. It was about Captain Walker's descent into madness and his guilt."

If that's the case then they failed to establish what kind of person he was and what he was like before he went nuts. If you want me to appreciate a good old fashioned descent into madness then you must first show me the what the madman was like when he was sane. As it is, Walker is a borderline blank slate and his delusions (the broken radio, the hanging corpses etc) are presented to the player as Walker sees them, which leads me to believe that the player is intended to project onto Walker rather than observe him from a detached perspective.

I've always found this to be a misinterpretation. I mean only the most ridiculously empathetic people are going to feel "guilty" for killing a bunch of 1s and 0s. What I believe the theme of the scene to be is consequence.

Most if not all MMS are very "disneyfied" in their representation of war, you shoot at a person they fall down. There may be a little bit of blood splatter but that's it. You don't see the enemy soldier crying in agony, you don't see their guts spilled out over the ground, you don't see the empty cavity of their head with chunks of brains splayed out all over the place. You don't smell the blood, piss, and shit.

It was there to be shocking, in essence saying "This is war, not the other stuff!". It's the difference between Saving Private Ryan and say Kelly's Heroes. Whether or not it did that is still hit and miss, I don't know if the graphics were real enough to really hammer home the message.

I think the biggest problem Spec Ops: The line had was the "Critical Response" that spoiled it. The game was supposed to catch the player off guard, if you went into it knowing what it was trying to do then you were already well aware of the message it was trying to convey.

 

[Dandark]

I'll say right now before I post that I haven't played the game and don't know the plot just that it apparently speaks out against military fantasies such as Cod and has you kill civilians and stuff.

From what I have heard though it sounds like the studio had a game they wanted to make but they were forced to try and make a COD clone maybe by the publisher or for some other reason. So they made the COD clone but then decided to try and put their message in it anyway.

Or they made it how they want and it is suppose to play just like a Cod clone. I dunno.
It sounds fun though so I might rent it sometime but I doubt I would buy it. I already don't buy military shooters because they are boring so I can't see myself getting this game just to see it parody them.