Spec Ops The Line Review

Posted 11 years ago by myetvmedia

The cover system is far from intuitive and you will often see yourself playing the game akin to a first person shooter; ducking your character behind cover rather than actually use the terrible cover system. The guns are based on true to life weapons; they’re boring and don’t hold a candle to the stuff we are used to with games like Call if Duty or Ghost Recon. Sand, the shit is everywhere and Spec Ops uses it in a novel and interesting way. When you shoot a glass barrier holding back a torrent of sand it rushes into the environment to bury enemies and bridge the distance to high ground. Really this us just an extension of the age old exploding barrel and while there are plenty of those as well the sand is a lot more entertaining and clever.

Photo courtesy of 2K Games

Graphically Spec Ops is a mixed bag. The environments are surprisingly fantastic, the game’s desert setting could have featured a really bland palette but the developers manage to keep things varied and colorful. The games locations have a remarkable sense of atmosphere. The character models do however leave a lot to be desired; they are stiff and look like they could be made of cheap plastic.

Spec Ops features a multiplayer with some very Call of Duty esque progression and while the design of the multiplayer is up to snuff the games garbage cover system makes the multiplayer a poor competitor to games like Ghost Recon Future Soldier.

Spec Ops does feature a lot of licensed music and it all works really well. When the game was pulling me out of my immersion with a ridiculous body count and silly enemies that would run a hundred feet to try and knife me, the music pulled a fleeting smile across my face.

Choice is a big selling point for Spec Ops The Line; the game presents morally grey scenarios for you to weigh in on. While they do communicate the game’s themes effectively they are extremely shallow in execution. When you make a choice you are presented with a superficial scene that has absolutely no bearing upon the gameplay and will not ripple throughout the game. In modern gaming we expect choice to take effect in our game worlds. The Witcher games often have us choose one girl over another, once that choice is made there are consequences and we have to deal with that throughout our experience.


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Spec Ops The Line Review

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Spec Ops The Line Review

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