Is there any point in playing Spec Ops: the Line now?

[ThatDarnCoyote]

(dont forget that the player bought the game expecting another modern shooter where the hero kills them all and wins the war). Just dropping the hint that the player still has control over the deep the story goes even if the game doesnt let him quit by its own terms.

I kind of get where the devs were coming from but it isnt something that can be entirely agreeable because it lacked more context.

Did anyone really buy it thinking that, though? I mean, look at this trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUWrQf79-mg]. Or this one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1_GmSLmMWM&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dq1_GmSLmMWM&has_verified=1], which makes it clear the antagonists are Americans. Does that really scream "rah-rah heroic war for the red, white and blue"?

I played the demo, and the parallels to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now were immediately obvious. This is no brilliance on my part - anyone the slightest bit familiar with those stories is going to see it. Here is a video [http://www.military.com/video/off-duty/games/cory-davis-talks-spec-ops-the-line/1677058215001/] from E3, where the game's lead designer explicitly says his game is different from Battlefield or Call of Duty (which he calls "great shooters"), and talks about the story being "darker" and that players will "get their hands dirty with some of the decisions". That this was going to be a different sort of story was obvious from the beginning.

And that's why "you could have turned it off" is a lame argument. Because they try to lay guilt on the player for the decision to use the WP, when in the game it really isn't a decision, at least not for the player. (For Walker it is, and the story works on that level.) And when they got called on it, the developers lamely tried to rationalize that, no, it really was a decision, that you totally made, you awful person.

It's a shame, because there's a perfectly good counter-point: one of the themes that runs through Spec Ops: The Line is the idea that when you do something horrible because you have to, that doesn't make it any less horrible or any easier to live with. That's the thing that causes many of the characters in the story to break.

But instead of saying that, they decided to give a condescending non-answer to the people who bought their game, but who questioned an element of the game's theme. It's just disappointing.

Still a really good game though.

 

[ThatDarnCoyote]

You do end up killing a lot of Americans in Modern Warfare 2, as soldiers of the United Kingdon, I should mention. Modern Warfare 2, arguably the dumbest of the "big dumb modern military shooter" genre, had you killing Americans, some in pretty damn awful ways. These were like evil guys either, they were just guys following orders.

True, which is one of the reasons I laugh when people characterize Modern Warfare (and games like it) as just a 'Murica power fantasy about killin' them brown people. Still, they didn't point out in the trailers that you would be killing Americans.

Oh, and if I had to pick, I would nominate Modern Warfare 3 as the dumbest of the "big dumb modern military shooter" genre. MW2 didn't really go off the rails until the third act.

Here is a video[/url] from E3, where the game's lead designer explicitly says his game is different from Battlefield or Call of Duty (which he calls "great shooters"), and talks about the story being "darker" and that players will "get their hands dirty with some of the decisions". That this was going to be a different sort of story was obvious from the beginning.

I'm just gonna add the developers of Modern Warfare, Black Ops, Black Ops II, and Battlefield 4 all said the same thing. It was hard to take it seriously when a developer said that before Spec Ops: The Line, let alone now years after.

The video I posted isn't from years after, it was recorded before Spec Ops' release. Probably 2011 or 2012.

I honestly can't recall any of the CoD/Battlefield developers promising a "darker" story or any sort of moral murk - they mostly seem to talk about rockin' multiplayer and FISH! MOVING OUT OF THE WAY!!!

Anyway, what I'm objecting to is the theory many people seem to have, that Spec Ops was deliberately designed to entrap fans of modern military shooters into having their minds blown by the evil of modern military shooters. That strikes me as wishful thinking on the part of the sort of people who say "spunkgargleweewee" unironically. There was no shortage of evidence that Spec Ops wasn't Call of Duty. And it seems to me that a developer specifically saying his game would be different from CoD/Battlefield is a poor basis for expecting it to be exactly the same, no matter how cynical one might understandably be about developer hype.

I mean, I know it's a popular view on this site that military shooter fans are idiots, but come on. One might not know exactly how grim the story was going to get, but it was plain as day that this game was going to be more Full Metal Jacket than The Sands of Iwo Jima.

I think it works for the fact that Walker's intentions and the player's intentions are one in the same. Walker wants to feel like a hero, and so does the player. Walker doesn't walk away because he wants to be a big hero, and the same goes for the player.

I don't agree. Walker wants to be a hero. The player wants to advance the story. And it's poor form for the storyteller to pretend that's somehow immoral.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

(dont forget that the player bought the game expecting another modern shooter where the hero kills them all and wins the war). Just dropping the hint that the player still has control over the deep the story goes even if the game doesnt let him quit by its own terms.

I kind of get where the devs were coming from but it isnt something that can be entirely agreeable because it lacked more context.

Did anyone really buy it thinking that, though? I mean, look at this trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUWrQf79-mg]. Or this one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1_GmSLmMWM&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dq1_GmSLmMWM&has_verified=1], which makes it clear the antagonists are Americans. Does that really scream "rah-rah heroic war for the red, white and blue"?

I played the demo, and the parallels to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now were immediately obvious. This is no brilliance on my part - anyone the slightest bit familiar with those stories is going to see it. Here is a video [http://www.military.com/video/off-duty/games/cory-davis-talks-spec-ops-the-line/1677058215001/] from E3, where the game's lead designer explicitly says his game is different from Battlefield or Call of Duty (which he calls "great shooters"), and talks about the story being "darker" and that players will "get their hands dirty with some of the decisions". That this was going to be a different sort of story was obvious from the beginning.

I guess it wouldn't trick most people. at least not at the start, but you know the game never really did fly off the shelves. I imagine there are tons of copies just sitting in gamestops at deep discounts just waiting for someone less informed. I mean it's not like every gammer knows about it.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

So what's the point of playing anything if you can go look up what happens online? Because spoilers exist and you know the ending of something, you would dismiss the idea of the experience entirely? I mean, that's exactly what gaming is - it's an experience. You interact with it. I know people love to watch LPs on YouTube, but if all you do is watch someone else play a game, I personally feel you're only getting half the experience. I knew exactly what Spec Ops: The Line was going to do - that at some point I'd probably end up killing a bunch of civilians - but I played it anyway, and I gotta say, the White Phosphorous is just ONE of the hooks in that game. There was another that disturbed me even more.

Sure, you KNOW Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, but if you don't watch the movie or engage it in anyway, do you really care? No, you'll care only if you watch the movie and see it for yourself. That said, spoilers are a big problem on the internet these days - forget about pop culture - go to any song on YouTube that was featured in a game and people will spoil stuff in the comments like crazy.

Here's a good example; I had the ending for Red Dead Redemption spoiled for me. It sucked and I was pissed, but I kept going. Knowing it happens was different than seeing it unfold with my own eyes. I played through to the end, knowing full well what the outcome would be, and I gotta tell you, I've never been more glad I finished a Rockstar game. If I had quit just because I already knew, I would have missed out big time.

So yes, play Spec Ops: The Line. It's inexpensive, short, still decent for gameplay, and plus... c'mon, dude. Bruce Boxleitner is in it.

 

[Catfood220]

Your allies have a tendency of ignoring cover and running into enemy fire which you have to save them from.

Which is really annoying when you are playing on the harder difficulties. Especially the mounted turret in the shopping mall where instead of waiting for me to take out the enemies, they will just walk into the heavy gunfire. That was frustrating.

Anyway, I quite liked the game, even though it was quite manipulative at times, I would actually say that it was worth buying now that it is dirt cheap.

On a related note, if turning off the game before you have to use the whiskey pete is the right thing to do. Am I a bad person for my repeated play throughs to get the platinum trophy?

 

[Mike Richards]

There's no choice because the protagonist doesn't believe he has a choice. He says it isn't his fault because he firmly believes there is no other option. So there's no other option. You're basically saying exactly what he did. 'I am not responsible for my actions because I had no other choice, so what if I did horrible things, I had to'.

"What happened here was out of my control!"
"Was it?"

I don't know that it necessarily buy the 'you can turn the game off' argument, but it's irrelevant. It's a tragedy, a downward spiral. We can't choose to make that better, that defeats the point.

My problem with the game isn't so much that horrible things happen courtesy of the player; but that the developers basically absolve themselves from any responsibility for making the game the way it was.

There's plenty of works of fiction where horrible things happen, but Spec-Ops: The Line is one of the few I can think of that wants to blame its audience (and ONLY its audience) for what it is. It's a violent game that condems violent games while laying the blame for the fact that blames everyone and everything else for that fact that it too, is a violent game.

Just to be clear: I don't hate the game. I actually admire what it set out to do. The idea of a shooter game that criticizes the way shooters simplify complex situations to provide easy catharsis is great. But when it comes down to it, it remains a game where you gun down hordes of enemy soldiers, but instead of the narrative telling you you're the world's greatest badass it tells you that you're a horrible person. In a way, the game is every bit as one-sided, manipulative and devoid of nuance as the games it so viciously mocks. It just has the opposite message.

(wow: that turned out longer than expected)

I never really got the feeling it was trying to criticize violent games in general but the trivialization of violence. It's not about whether or not you mow down hundreds of people in your way, but how much the game recognizes and forces you to recognize that you just mowed down hundreds of people. It is pretty heavy handed and one-sided in that, but it's a heavy subject and it's facing enough opposition or at least lack of recognition of it's subject matter that I think a bit of slapping you in the face is justified.

It blames you if you can't see through the act of playing a game and what others in the genre are like enough to understand what's really happening. If you can, then you've already distanced yourself enough from the character and intellectualized the story enough that you can just watch it as an engaging and insightful tragedy. It's really only blaming you if you aren't aware enough of your actions to separate yourself from Walker's actions.

That being said, I honestly don't know where I fall on the point about it being manipulative. It's something I see thrown around a lot when discussing this or the intro to The Last of Us or similar things. But I can't help but feel like the point of stories /is/ to be manipulative, they're designed to convince us to feel things. Maybe there are degrees of transparency in that, after all execution is everything, but no one complains when a comedy makes them laugh because it was clearly trying to make them laugh. It's a comedy, what did you expect? So I don't know.

 

[cikame]

I actually only just played it a few weeks ago, if you like 3rd person shooters it fits the bill. I also played it on PC, 60+ fps improves any game experience.

I too had the issue of knowing about the certain story parts, and there is no way to avoid them despite being in control, but the game is strong enough otherwise to keep your attention.

If you want a 3rd person shooter with a bit more of a unique feel, i recommend Binary Domain.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

It blames you if you can't see through the act of playing a game and what others in the genre are like enough to understand what's really happening. If you can, then you've already distanced yourself enough from the character and intellectualized the story enough that you can just watch it as an engaging and insightful tragedy. It's really only blaming you if you aren't aware enough of your actions to separate yourself from Walker's actions.

I understood that the actions of the player (to keep playing) are meant to parallel the actions of Walker (to keep pushing on). Walker is an avatar of the player, I understood that. He - and the player, by proxy - gets chewed out for it, yet the developers completely refuse to acknowledge the part they had to play. Or you could also say, going by the story's last big reveal, that the developers basically absolve themselves of making the game while laying all the blame at the player's feet.

I found an interesting article that critiques the game in a similar fashion by comparing it to Bioshock.

Spoiler

If BioShock's protagonist is the avatar of the player, then Ryan and Atlas are the avatars of the developer, the architects whose hands created the chaos of Rapture. Not only are they the game's antagonists, but their ?Would you kindly? acknowledges that the player's violence is a consequence of the developer's choices.

Spec Ops, by contrast, pushes this idea aside. The architect turns out to be an illusion; there is no villain other than the player.

....

BioShock admits, and Spec Ops retreats from, the complicity of the designer in the glorification of and lust for violence.

For the full article. See:
http://ludo.mwclarkson.com/2012/07/the-invisible-hands/

That being said, I honestly don't know where I fall on the point about it being manipulative. It's something I see thrown around a lot when discussing this or the intro to The Last of Us or similar things. But I can't help but feel like the point of stories /is/ to be manipulative, they're designed to convince us to feel things. Maybe there are degrees of transparency in that, after all execution is everything, but no one complains when a comedy makes them laugh because it was clearly trying to make them laugh. It's a comedy, what did you expect? So I don't know.

I would argue that works of entertainment are by definition manipulative. But some are more cynically so than others. Some earn your emotional reactions, some conspire to drag them out of you. Besides, how many comedies try to make their audience feel guilty for laughing at their jokes?

 

[Reaper195]

You can choose to turn off the game and do something else. I think the game kind of considers that a valid option. Basically turning off the game is equivalent to completing your mission.

Wasn't there a loading screen, where the 'tips' start getting more and more weird and somewhat real world relevant, which said 'You can turn it off and walk away if you want.'?

 

[Signa]

Personally, I felt I was playing the game to get to the phosphorous scene, and when I got to it, I was pretty underwhelmed. Maybe, because I knew a dreadful scene was coming up, I was taking more care in not doing anything monstrous, but once I got to that part, I was kinda pissed off by the design of it. I could tell I was attacking non-combatants, even though the game wasn't being entirely forthcoming with that info until after the cutscene ended. It was designed to be a suckerpunch to the player, and while I appreciate it, it made little sense to me, and I only walked into it because the game wouldn't let me finish what I was doing until I kill everyone.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

You can choose to turn off the game and do something else. I think the game kind of considers that a valid option. Basically turning off the game is equivalent to completing your mission.

Wasn't there a loading screen, where the 'tips' start getting more and more weird and somewhat real world relevant, which said 'You can turn it off and walk away if you want.'?

I think so, but I'm not 100% sure. Also your different sidekicks tell you to give up and walk away a lot.

 

[Weaver]

I hated it. I only got it because the story was "OMG SO GOOD" but in reality, it was pretty shit.

Are you someone who doesn't play "gunbro" games and knows that being a genocidal, war mongering lunatic is wrong? Then this game has nothing to teach you.

 

[Matthew Jabour]

I loved the story, the shooting and gameplay was kind of rough, but I also played with a cheap off-brand controller so I had troubles with that too.

But the story is one of the best in a while. It may not be the best, but it delivered a really deep story. I think it's worth a re-play down the road somewhere.

 

[Bravo Company]

I hated it. I only got it because the story was "OMG SO GOOD" but in reality, it was pretty shit.

Are you someone who doesn't play "gunbro" games and knows that being a genocidal, war mongering lunatic is wrong? Then this game has nothing to teach you.

I feel similar to this. While I didn't hate Spec Ops (I rather enjoyed it) I didn't really get the impact of the whole "guilt trip for playing shooters" that everyone seems to be getting from it. I went into Spec Ops not knowing anything about the game other than the story was "OMG SO GOOD" and left it going "huh, didn't see that coming"

I didn't feel as if the game was "making me aware" of all the "terrible killings" I've laid waste to in any other shooter I've played. Primarily because I recognize games as what they are, games. Me killing pixels in the most brutal ways doesn't make me a brutal or bad person. I don't get some power struggle from games, I don't look at games or movies to "be the hero." I just play games to experience the story and play games.


Then we had the dumb death screen phrases such as "why are you still playing" or "do you even know why you're here?" Yes game, you've made me interested in what happens, why are you going to hate on me for that?


TLDR: Yes, its still worth playing even if you know about the white phosphorus part.

 

[Bocaj2000]

A game is an interactive medium just like a movie is an audio-visual medium. For the optimal experience, you must interact with an interactive medium, and see & hear an audio-visual medium. Reading about it is COMPLETELY different.

 

[Fox12]

Everyone has heard of Spec Ops: the Line by now. It's clever subversion of FPS tropes and how it forces you to think about the trouble you cause in your attempts to play hero. But my question is this: is there any point in playing it now, since I know it's going to try and guilt trip me?

Since I know using the white phosphorus will hurt innocent people, can I opt out of it? If not, can I still say that it's my fault? Will I be forced to take actions I know are a bad idea, and then still be guilt tripped for it? Are my actions still my fault if I can't avoid doing them?

This is the problem with this kind of twist in any medium. At one time, it may have been the surprise of the century that Darth Vader was Luke's father; now, thanks to pop culture ubiquity, that's probably the first thing anyone knows about Star Wars.

Opinions?

It's worth playing, certainly. I knew what would happen, but I was still able to appreciate how well delivered the experience was. It's seriously a unique experiance worth trying, if you're interested in survival horror. And make no mistake, this is a survival horror game.

It's kind of like Silent Hill 2. Did knowing the ending ruin it for me? No, because I could appreciate the characters, and how well designed the game and its themes were. That said, the only down side is that I didn't feel personally responsible for civilian deaths, because it was mandatory. The scene was still incredibly well done, though, and was essential to the plot. The game has so much more going for it then one small plot twist half way through, and it has a lot to say. Play it as soon as possible.

 

[gargantual]

There's no choice because the protagonist doesn't believe he has a choice. He says it isn't his fault because he firmly believes there is no other option. So there's no other option. You're basically saying exactly what he did. 'I am not responsible for my actions because I had no other choice, so what if I did horrible things, I had to'.

"What happened here was out of my control!"
"Was it?"

I don't know that it necessarily buy the 'you can turn the game off' argument, but it's irrelevant. It's a tragedy, a downward spiral. We can't choose to make that better, that defeats the point.

My problem with the game isn't so much that horrible things happen courtesy of the player; but that the developers basically absolve themselves from any responsibility for making the game the way it was.

There's plenty of works of fiction where horrible things happen, but Spec-Ops: The Line is one of the few I can think of that wants to blame its audience (and ONLY its audience) for what it is. It's a violent game that condems violent games while laying the blame for the fact that blames everyone and everything else for that fact that it too, is a violent game.

Just to be clear: I don't hate the game. I actually admire what it set out to do. The idea of a shooter game that criticizes the way shooters simplify complex situations to provide easy catharsis is great. But when it comes down to it, it remains a game where you gun down hordes of enemy soldiers, but instead of the narrative telling you you're the world's greatest badass it tells you that you're a horrible person. In a way, the game is every bit as one-sided, manipulative and devoid of nuance as the games it so viciously mocks. It just has the opposite message.

(wow: that turned out longer than expected)

Heh heh. Especially considering what Spec Ops did through chastising mechanics, Liquid Snake summed up in a sentence (that was completely unexpected) and The Sorrow did in a single awkward boss battle in MGS1 and MGS3. I know those latter two aren't being as serious and direct but I think the way Kojima wakes up the player from war fantasy by jokingly reminding you, you are not slaughtering foxhound troops and ex soliders, you are playing a video game, is a slightly more effective means of breaking the 'hero' illusion, or disconnecting the player, if not with the same emotional concerns, and intended self-introspection about the true face of war.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

It's a game that preaches to the choir.

The subversion and message it's trying to tell isn't really relevant, because the kind of people it's criticising haven't played that game.

'Do you feel like a hero yet?'

Well, no, I never do, because I'm not some gun-bro frat boy who thinks I just bought Call of Battle Field 10, I wanted to hear your message, but apparently you couldn't do it without curbstomping me with your bullshit rhetoric that clearly isn't aimed at me.