Hello and welcome all to the Spec Ops The Line (SOTL) review. Now if you're a gung-ho American who likes wearing their red white and blue shirt depicting bombs being dropped on middle eastern nations with a bald eagle saluting and shedding a single manly tear this game may screw with you. SOTL is a third person based shooter that takes place in Dubai. The game came out in 2012 and although old it still hold importance when speaking about morality. On a side note though if you have seen combat and witnessed the horrors of war I would implore you to be careful with this game as it may unintentionally trigger something. Now lets get to the review.
The game play itself is nothing special, its a third person shooter so pretty much you want to fill your enemy with more bullets then they fill you. The cover is also quite basic, press a button and hide behind cover nothing special. The game does allow for minor control of your teammates by instructing them to focus fire, throw a grenade or move to cover. The game play and mechanics of SOTL are so basic that at times I would simply get bored of listening to the agonizing screams of my enemies as they get injected with lead. BUT on that same note SOTL's game play is not where the game shines, its the story and character progression.
Forget the game play, with no sarcasm attached to this statement SOTL's story is one of the most interesting and thought provoking stories ever. The game shows you the true effects of war, war is not glamorized and your morals will be tested. There are stories of people who after completing certain sections in the game simply had to stop or were completely unable to finish the game at all. I at one point in the game had to pause and truly think about what I had just done. Although the graphics are from 2012 it made little difference as the designers knew exactly what they wanted and the intended effect of said images. There are moments in the game where its simply you running with a gun and annihilating enemies but the game will always yank you back into this reality of look at what your choices have done.
Speaking of choices SOTL does a very interesting thing with said choices. Many situations you can either do one thing or the other but the game truly makes you feel that whatever you did was the wrong choice. Its hard to make someone believe that no matter what they do is wrong but this game does a perfect job of it and the characters feel it as well. Not only do you get to psychologically watch them deteriorate but there clothing also physically shows their degradation. There is something unnerving that even my inner sociopath shivers at which is watching a man who thinks he knows good from evil drop to such a level where he is only driven by self preservation. That's what this game makes you do, much like walking into buffet you think "I'll only eat till I'm no longer hungry" but you leave fatter then President Taft, you enter this game with ideas of right and wrong but by the end of it you leave questioning everything from your own morality to what if color blind people see the sky as green but call it blue because everyone else does. You will dislike yourself, this game will not make you feel like you won, rather, you simply survived and sometimes not even that. I leave you with two quotes one from Rick and Morty and one from the game itself, "Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die" and finally probably my favorite quote from the game "Do you feel like a hero yet?" This was a shorter review compared to more coming but to truly explain the beauty of the story I would have to give major spoilers and I want each and every one of you to play this game with a fresh pair of eyes without the anxiety of what is to come.
I will not usually do this at the end of reviews but to any parents if your son or daughter is under the age of 16 and they want to play this game I would recommend it as long as you talk with them after about morality. This game may screw with them and watching young teens try to make sense of things they don't understand is one of the most hilarious things you will ever see so don't miss that opportunity to "bond" with your kid.
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