Spec Ops: The Line

Just curious, anybody pick this up yet? I enjoyed the demo, wondering how the final game was... thanks

Spec Ops: The Line on Steam

 

Doesn't seem to be too much interest on here about this game, but if anyone is on the fence, I have found a deal that was good enough for me to purchase it... game ended up being $33 through GreenManGaming and redeems on Steam. Should get a little time this evening to try it out. And for those curious, there is a demo on Steam as well.

Discount Thread:
Guys who wants SO: The Line @ 24% off discount? - Steam Users' Forums

26% off @ GMG (Steam redeemable) + use GESTU-REOFT-HANKS at checkout to get an additional 10%

Total for me in the US was $33 and got the Steam code instantly.

I'll report in on gameplay in the next day or two but so far reviews have been positive overall, and as mentioned I really enjoyed the demo.

 

How is it in your opinion, apart from those reviews?

 

So far I'm still enjoying it! I haven't finished the campaign yet, work and then the Steam summer sale got me totally sidetracked on a whole pile of distractions, but definitely look forward to playing some more soon.

I'm a big fan of single player campaigns, and this one has a pretty good story so far, ie not just a run and gun with no purpose. I've started using the squad controls for my teammates more and actually using their particular skills which does help immersion. It is a third person shooter, and some complain about the FOV, but I haven't noticed it as a problem. Gunplay feels good and nothing really out of the norm either way in that area. Environments feel pretty interactive on the whole.... shooting out a window covered in sand and watching the proceeding avalanche never gets old.

Performance wise it runs great on the G73, it's not the best of the best graphics out there, but they really did a good job of using the desert sand as a game play element and is a nicely done environment...

If mulitplayer is your main purpose of buying, I'd probably pass... It works fine and is fun, and I've yet to have a problem finding servers to join, but by no means is it a BF3/MW3 in popularity in that regard.

 

Its probably the best story of a modern military shooter I've played. Its such a good story that it actually leaves you thinking about your actions.

Wasn't a big fan of the gun play, and thought the team mates squad commands could have been done a lot better. Also only a 4-5 hr campaign.

Worth a play through, but unfortunately the rest of the game isn't at the same level as the story.

 

It's on sale on Steam still. Pick it up, I recommend it. I got it off Amazon for $2.50 with $5 coupon. The game is brutal. Even under cover you will die from all the grenade spam and ricochet damage from bullets. Playing it on the 3rd level, hardest difficult first time around and it's tough, sometimes it's just all luck.

The things the game has you do, are crazy. You think what you are doing is the right thing, then the game spins it around just showing it's never black and white and you never have all the intel, and you can only make the best decision with the information you have.

If you don't know about this game. It's a third person cover shooter. No it's not like Gears of War. The cover mechanics are much better, much more fluid. Gears of War probably the worst third person shooter I've ever played. This game has tons of recoil, so you have to be quick and precise and always conserve your ammo. You are sent in to find survivors after a sandstorm destroyed Dubai. You have no intel, you don't know what happened. Your character makes decisions as it happens, blind. The player doesn't have much choice other than do the deed, or logoff the game.

The Co-Op is brutal. But fun.

 

I've heard amazing stuff about the plotline, but not much (positive or negative) about the actual gameplay. Thinking about picking it up one of these days. Call-of-Duty-style plots kind of annoy me, so I thought I might enjoy this more.

 

It'll definitely make you reevaluate the gaming medium and how we react to it. It's worth a playthough.

 

Definitely worth playing through. I mean, it's a really well done Heart of Darkness adaptation. So very strange (but welcome) to see that happening to be a video-game. It's difficult to put it on level with Apocalypse Now, because that's such a good film. And because it requires a lot more of the audience... to be able to use a controller, or a mouse&kb, that sort of thing. There's a long way to go before games don't require people to make a real effort to get over that barrier.

But I would have been happy to hear that someone played this game, even if they said they wouldn't read Heart of Darkness afterwards, and had no interest in seeing Apocalypse Now. The way the plot is written, with the player participation, and so on - really is that good.

 

Played this one when it came out.

Verdict: As crap as the dog's poo...

 

I disagree and don't believe you played it.

 

I did play and finished it too.
Lot's of dust storms heck the whole bloody storyline is one big duststorm..
Graphically poor but certainly a unique game with lot's of level climbing in abu dhabi or some iraq/iran war from memory.
A good shooter but moreso a USA army recruiter game...well that's what I felt it was like..

I recall some firefox grapple hooks where you jumpy down across buildings but again the huge duststorms await you once you go outside of the buildings...
The focus of the game being levels where you shoot the enemies in numbers and lots of numbers..

Not bad but certainly not good either... hence the dogshiat tag...
As always YMMV..

 

Mmmhmm, still don't believe ya. Sounds like you just watched a youtube review :/

 

Your entitled to that opinion but honestly, I have played it and have finished the game.
If you find my opinion on the game itself is quote off-putting then so be it.

I just found it very linear, plotline was boring the duststorms were excessive and personally it looked like it was all very rushed towards the end...

 

I don't dispute that you've played it at all, but I interpreted it very differently than you. The game was a scathing critique of how our society, and especially our videogames, glorify violence. You play as an American soldier who literally commits war crimes in a failed attempt at playing the hero. Unlike all the other COD ripoffs out there, you aren't just killing hordes of brown people "terrorists," but US soldiers. It makes you think about the people you're killing, question the characters' sanity and motives, and provokes disgust and shame instead of blind blood-lust or misguided patriotism. It has the most interesting plot of any military shooter I've ever played. Ever.

 

Well that certainly puts a unique spin on it..

I for one was rushing through this game not really following the story just trying to finish it but wowza that is probably the best if not the best review I have ever read about that game.
Come to think about it it's been 6 or so months since I last played it so can't really remember all the details but the sand still remains in my eyes.

 

If it hadn't been for the plot, I would have quit playing after half an hour lol. I can see not liking the game if you aren't really paying attention to the plot.

The gameplay is pretty mediocre, not bad, but not good either. Graphics are decent.

But if you ever try it again, pay attention to the plot/characters. The game is basically just a giant middle finger to Call of Duty, even the part where you drop the napalm on the innocent civilians is just like the level in COD4 where you bomb the crap out of people in the AC-130 gunship. The point of most shooters is to have fun killing enemies without thinking about it, and Spec Ops challenges that perspective. It's interesting.

 

No it's not. Anyone who plays the game gets the message.

 

haha that is so retarded (no offense) that it made me cry.

I find the story really good, but the game itself isn't what I expected it to be... at all, really sad to be honest

 

Oh just a hint to others:

This is one of the few shooters where you do have a choice. At each point, you'll know, there will lots of emotion and arguing. You don't have to do what the game says, you can choose not to. It's not COD, where you lose unless you do what you are told.

 

SPOILERS.

I'll try to keep it as vague as possible because of the lack of spoiler-tags, but people who haven't played it should still stay clear.

It doesn't result in a gameover state, but I find that there's very little real choice in the game beyond shutting down the game and stop playing (which is a perfectly valid choice as per The Line's lead writer). There's no branching story line other than the endings. This is both a good and a bad thing since it's used to illustrate that you (the player character and the player) aren't the center of the universe like in most other games.

The game forces your hand at one particularly crucial junction. I can certainly see why it had to do it for the sake of the story arc, but despite that I still didn't appreciate being forced to do something that I could literally (!) see from miles away.

 

You also have choices throughout the campaign, whether you notice them or not, but like you said they don't affect the outcome. I won't go into specifics to avoid spoilers, but there are quite a few examples of situations playing out in different ways depending on what you decide to do.

 

SPOILERS.

I know, but I'm talking about real choice. The game is pretty blatant about it whenever it wants you to make a choice and it signals this clearly through dialog, but my point was that it really doesn't matter. Not in terms of how the story logically has to progress and certainly not in terms of the overall moral of the story (since you, the player/PC, opted to continue on instead of shutting down the game/leave the city).

 

Yeah I get you, though there are smaller things that I only noticed on my second playthough.

Mild Spoiler: Small things, like when you first run into the 33rd infantry guy being tortured by the CIA agent, you can just pop a cap into the soldier instead of letting him escape and lead you into the trap lol. It doesn't affect the story other than how your team reacts to what you did, but there are a bunch of little things like this. Most games would just give you a game over screen if you shot a character, but Spec Ops lets you make these little decisions without ever punishing you for your actions.

 

Of course it doesn't affect the outcome, but at least you as a player believe during it, you are making the right choices. The outcome is the WHOLE POINT OF IT! Just as person above said, this is an adaption of Heart of Darkness. If you didn't understand the outcome and see how it wasn't any other way, you missed the point.

This isn't an RPG. This is not just a shoot it up to prepare you for the MP like COD. It's a darn good story and I think they did very well telling it through a game. That's tough to do, not like a movie/book, so you still believe there is some semblance of control, but really isn't. It's done well I think. I don't expect more from a third person shooter.

 

The discussion about player agency is an interesting one and I think the game (for the most part) succeeded in what it intended to do here. The game forced me to make one choice that I as a player didn't want to make though. I could see it was the wrong choice, but it wouldn't let me do anything else because the PC had to do it for story reasons. I don't think they solved that particular situation well.

...

Feel free to re-read what I've written in this thread and you'll see that I've said as much myself. Several times, in fact. Thanks for telling me I didn't play an RPG though.

 

Just finished playing the game and I was really impress by it. I did not notice this game at all when it first came out due to me thinking it was just another generic military shooter. But when it was on steam sale for $7.49 I decide to try it out. I enjoyed the single player very much, it told a great narrative. Better than any Call of Duty game I played. The gameplay is nothing special just your typical cover base shooter, but I liked the aspect of being low on ammo and trying to conserve. Graphics are decent I put everything on high and it runs smooth its nothing special because this game takes place in dubai everywhere you look is mostly brown. I like this unique take on military shooters in how you are fighting against "American Solider" not some generic terrorist. I have yet to touch mulitiplayer but all and all this game single player was really enjoyable. Also, as you progress through the single player game the title screen changes depending where you are at in the story, just a little touches like that makes this game that great.

So when can we discuss spoilers or do I have to make a separate thread for it?

 

You can discuss spoilers, just be sure to hide them in spoiler tags and warn people ahead of time

Glad you enjoyed it, I thought it was a refreshing take on the genre as well. The multiplayer is garbage though, it wasn't even developed by the main team and was basically disowned by the lead developers lol.