Spec Ops: The Line

So I just finished this and it only took about 6 hours on Easy. Bought it with Bioshock 1 and 2 for $20. Played it on Easy because my only interest is in the story, after all the talk. So the whole throwing it in my face that I'm entertaining myself by shooting dudes doesn't really fly.

I applaud the attempt to do something different in a shooter. I think it's great to try for some emotion other than "America, fuck yeah!" I was just constantly frustrated by being told I was doing bad things and making horrible choices when there was no choice.

The real bummer is that this didn't sell well at all, so no one else is going to greenlight this sort of thing on a triple A scale.

Spoilers ahead.

I think saying "I couldn't figure out where to go to save civvies instead of Gould" is just you being bad at videogames, and you can certainly kill the snipers at the hanging men scene. But I think there is an underlying theme to the game of "if you want to proceed, there is only one way to do it".

Here's a commenter from the Verge article I posted earlier:

I think offering a choice of "do something immoral or stop playing" is a valid option for developers. When Prince of Persia (2007) came out there was a post-credits scene where you revived your dead partner at the cost of unleashing the evil boss you just contained. The credit roll ended and you were just standing there, looking at the plinth where you would lay your partner to start the ritual. Would you really undo a game's worth of work to revive your partner / continue the videogame's story? (You could argue PoP's choice coming at the end of the game is very different to Spec Ops', but I feel it's a difference of degree, not kind.)

It's quite possible, because I do suck at videogames. Has anyone killed the snipers at the hanging men? I've looked for a youtube video of it, but can't find one. It seems as though once I killed one of the guys, the snipers just disappeared, so I figured they were scripted and unkillable.

I actually loved that ending of PoP, though I seem to recall the entire credits was you carrying the unconscious Princess away as the world turned to shit behind you if you chose her over the world. I remember not only looking at the thing to start the ritual, but actually doing the ritual and letting the world burn. I know I definitely chose love over the world, figuring (in my own romantic way) that I could certainly save the world again if I had my princess back.

It is absolutely possible to kill the snipers without shooting the hanging guys.

Yeah, I did in my playthrough.

EDIT: PS, the PoP ending is one of the greatest videogame endings of all time.

So what happened? Did you cut the two guys down and they ran away? How does that reconcile with the "true" version?

Also the Steam achievements for this game are just as cryptic after you earn them as before. Again, I may be doing something wrong, but isn't there usually an explanation of what you did that got you that achievement?

For instance, I got the "A Line, Held" achievement because I "chose restraint." I have no idea what that's referring to. Also does it change anything in the end?

And Konrad tells you at the end how many innocents you killed. My number was 47. Did other people get other numbers?

The hanging men were shot before I could kill all the snipers.

I think it's safe to say the achievements were added under duress.

No in-game choices branch the story. (Well, not beyond the immediate scene.)

Can we use spoiler tags, some of us are still playing and the "skip random text" game is something even QT3 stopped playing.

You shouldn't even be reading this thread if you haven't completed the game since the gameplay is nothing to write home about and the plot is the thing worth discussing.

You know how you find out that others feel that way too? By reading the thread about the game.

I don't mind the thread becoming the spoiler thread, but I'd like to run across a few tags first so that I know, rather than an easily missed one-liner.

Might want to amend your Walking Dead post then since you break your own rule.

I disagree. It says the group changes (but doesn't say in what fashion) and new people join. I don't consider that over the line.

There's a line men like us have to cross.

Just finished this game. Easily worth the ten bucks I paid for it. Took me about six hours on easy.

I liked the kooky Dubai setting. Dubai's such a crazy, fake city of excess anyway, it was interesting to be trapped in a crazy, fake situation of excess in the middle of it all. Though...

Overall I really enjoyed it. I loved the fact that as shit starts falling apart your guy goes from shouting, "Tango down!" and "Cover me on my three!" to "I killed the motherfucker!" and "Fucking kill that guy!" I like how absolutely messed up Walker and Adams look by the end. Given when you discover in the end certain things don't make a ton of sense, but I think that there's plenty of unreality to go around. Despite my earlier comments about the setting, I loved the craziness of walking through a giant aquarium or through million dollar hotel lobbies while my guy is a complete mess.

I was the tiniest bit disappointed that they made a big deal out of 'using the sand to your advantage', but there's only like three places where you do that.

I don't expect to ever see Spec Ops The Line 2 : Walker's Revenge or anything, but if I found out this team was making another game like this, I'd definitely be on board.

Just started this tonight. It has a nice feel to it - very post-apoc and the music early adds some style.

I really want to replay Spec Ops someday, because I'd like to try those other directions and see other things that could happen from other choices.

I really don't think I have it in me, because...well. I think that says it all for anyone who's finished.

Yeah, my feelings exactly Zekedms. I was so wrought out by the end that the idea of going back again just doesn't appeal. My game of the year 2012 for sure.

Unfortunately it forgot it needed to have an interesting game component to go along with the story. The shooting is so fucking mind-numbing.

The shooting mechanics are fine to good, Quitch just hates fun and/or kittens.

It's not a mechanics issue, it's a level, weapons and enemy design issue. There's no variation to the combat at all. You've seen everything the game has to offer by the end of the tutorial. That wouldn't be a problem if there was some depth to it, but there's not.

A level issue? Man, complain about the weapons, sure, there's only a few. There's not a lot of enemies either, though I have no issues with that. It's a realistic-ish military shooter, and that limits the kinds of enemies you'll run into, and the idea is that you'll run into weapons that would be brought in by the military (grenade launchers, SCAR, etc.), or just commonly owned in the area (AK-47). That tends to limit the guns and by its nature, but I can understand if disagree with the complaint.

But dude, level issue? I thought the level design was actually one of the strongest points of the game. They managed to make a series of arenas and whatever the term for "keep fucking moving" is that were both realistic and provided varying options and layouts. There wasn't an area that didn't fit in with a post-apocalyptic dubai, most of the time was spent in ruins of structures that were unreal to begin with.

The levels and story went hand in hand to pull me along even when the shooting mechanics were thoroughly average.

Played the game on Easy and still found the combat annoying.

I liked Walker's 'voyage', but I thought the game's back story was not very well explained: a semi-permanent sandstorm? a US Army division all going AWOL? no international relief/rescue effort?

It felt as though there had been some sort of graphic novel/ webisodes that I'd missed out on that would've explained the setting.

There's also the 'forcing the player' problem that was present in Far Cry 3:

The level design is tedious because it's very funnel based. You push forward, then forward, then forward some more. It's rare that the enemy did much more than come full on into you. You would generally sit back and kill everyone, and the enemies didn't have a lot of ways of handling that because the level design didn't let them.

And realistic is never an excuse for making shitty decisions around my entertainment. I am going to mow down hundreds or thousands of enemies. You left realistic behind when you decided it would be a cover shooter, so it can't be used to excuse other things.

In relation to just stopping playing the game-

Easy for him to say, he's already got my money. Do I get a refund for the unplayed portion?

That's a Bad Way to think about game value.

Agreed - I was mostly joking about the refund thing.

One more thing.

I noticed that whenever I scored a headshot the game would suddenly drop into slow motion for a fraction of a second. The game never referenced this in any way, either as a tutorial or in interstitial title text. I could never figure out if it was a game mechanic I was supposed to use (the slow motion never lasted long enough for me to do anything with it) or what the deal was. It was just very weird.

I'm guessing it's giving you a little bullet time for getting a head shot. I'm playing through this one but it's not doing much for me. I'm on Chapter 11 and I keep hoping that the chapters go by quickly so I can get it over with. I really don't like the choices you get. It seems to be constantly Wrong Decision A or Wrong Decision B.

That's....kind of the point.

Well, yeah, I figured. I could just never understand why. Given the game's attempts at making things meaningful, it kind of stands out.

You shouldn't! They're all terrible!

It is! They are!

My favorite of the deliberately horrible ending options:

I'm glad I picked it up during the steam sale.

During the game of the year deliberations the Giant Bomb crew seemed convinced that you couldn't actually win that.

Oh, I know. That's why I thought it was funny.

Hell, winning that scenario provides what's probably the real, and certainly the most fucked up, ending.

Is there a site somewhere that documents all the possible endings (or the results from various decision points along the way)? I finished this a few days ago, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to play it again to see the results of different choices I could have made.

Actually...

I don't think that's correct based on how my game played out.