Now Playing: Spec Ops

Spec Ops: The Line is a third person shooter I picked up in the recent Steam sale. It’s one I’ve had my eye on for some time. It’s gained something of a reputation as an underrated game with a unique setting and a strong narrative. In terms of its gameplay, I don’t think anyone has spoken very highly of it, but it’s a game I’ve seen people recommend based on setting and story alone. And it’s not hard to see why.

The game is set in Dubai, now a dead city ravaged by constant, deadly sand storms. You play as Captain Walker, sent into Dubai to search for survivors and a missing battalion of American troops. The setting itself is a nice choice, although sadly, it’s only something of a backdrop to the environments. It doesn’t feel like the game takes much advantage of the setting in terms of levels, nor in terms of gameplay. There are a few windows you can shoot out to drop sand on people, but that’s about it. Graphically, it’s okay. It does the job. It has some nice effects here and there. I can’t say much more than that. The music is okay too.

So what about the story? Is it as good as I’ve heard? Well, no, although it is certainly better than you might expect from a game like this. The story of Spec Ops, as Walker travels through Dubai, is fairly well paced and takes a decent stab at what it’s trying to do. I don’t want to really go into detail with this because honestly, the narrative is the only real reason you’d want to play this game, and it’s not something I want to spoil. What I will say is that it’s not predictable. It’s a story that will keep you guessing right up until the end. So I have to give it credit for that.

But as much as I appreciate what the narrative was trying to do, I don’t think it quite works in practice. There are certain moments in the game completely out of the player’s control and as a result, the consequences never have the impact you feel that they should. To give a more specific example without spoiling too much, there’s a moment when you’re firing on soldiers and some civilians are killed. It’s meant to be quite harrowing, not just for Walker, but for the player too, when they realise they’ve fired on the wrong target. The problem is, I hadn’t fired on the target. I thought the target looked odd and avoided it. Of course, the game has to progress so in the end it fired on them for me. And this is why a disconnect between gameplay and narrative can cause all sorts of problems.

The impact of the moment was lost on me because it was out of my control. And there are several moments in the game that feel much the same. You can argue that this is a linear story but that’s not quite the case, as there are small ‘choices’ to make along the way which can determine how certain things play out. Nothing major, but enough. Spec Ops walks a strange middle ground in terms of the narrative/gameplay connection, occasionally giving the player difficult choices, but then taking choice away when it wants to rub their noses in something. If there’s one thing Spec Ops doesn’t do well, it’s subtlety.

And this, unfortunately, ties into the ridiculous, over the top combat. So it’s a TPS, and not a very good one. You have a two weapon carry limit with three grenade types. There’s not a great selection of weapons, and enemy variety is crap. You have maybe 4-5 different guys based on the weapon they carry or the hat they wear. You’ll see them a lot, as the game throws wave after tedious wave of the buggers at you. Oh, and their AI is effectively brain dead. Although they did seem to give them a nice auto-aim on higher difficulties. It’s funny watching their laser sights track you even when you’re hidden and moving behind cover. As you can imagine, this all grows rather repetitive very quickly. And it certainly doesn’t help that the actual combat system is so wonky.

You stick to cover when you don’t want to, and break away awkwardly at the worst possible times. Moving in and out of cover can be hit and miss, and some things apparently just don’t work as cover at all, leaving you running against it like a twat waiting to get shot. So yeah, the cover system, a rather key component of a cover-based TPS, is a bit shit. Shooting isn’t really satisfying, not with the limited enemy types or the sparse weapon selection. So what about the level design? Small, linear and pretty crap, really. There’s very little room to manoeuvre or flank, it’s really just a very long whack-a-mole corridor. Like I said earlier, the actual setting doesn’t have much influence in the levels. I hope you like burnt out cars and randomly placed concrete barriers, because you’ll spend most of the game humping one or the other. But if it wasn’t already as dull and run of the mill as you’d expect, it throws in plenty of mindless static turret shooting too. Yay!

So does it do anything new, or interesting with its gameplay? Well, you can order your two squad mates to target specific enemies, but a lot of the time it’s quicker to just take them out yourself. Sometimes they can be useful in a fight, other times they just watch an enemy run past them and shoot you in the back. I sort of liked the characters though, but the more they f**ked up in combat, the more I just wanted to be rid of them.

This isn’t going well, is it? It probably sounds like I’m taking a real dump on Spec Ops, and maybe it doesn’t deserve that. And it certainly should be commended for trying to do something different with its setting and narrative. It takes some risks, it asks some difficult questions of the player. I like that. But like I said, it’s a flawed attempt, one which doesn’t quite have the impact it feels it should. And towards the end, it leaves way too much open to interpretation. You can get away with that to an extent, but there’s so much about how things unfold in the last couple of chapters that really don’t add up if you stop to think about them.

But would I recommend it, based on the strength of the narrative and setting alone? I’d have to say no. It’s okay, but it doesn’t make up for the exceptionally dull and repetitive gameplay. But was that meant to be the point, as I’ve seen some people suggest? This is war, war is hell and you really shouldn’t be having fun? Is the game intentionally poking fun at over the top, modern day shooters?

But even if you’re trying to make a point, it doesn’t excuse the painfully tedious and repetitive combat, terrible enemy AI, lack of enemy and weapon variety and the dull, linear environments. I was bored during most of the game, simply pressing through the awful gameplay sections to continue the story. And when you consider that I beat the game on the hardest available difficulty in under six hours, that’s really saying something. I have to give Spec Ops credit for its attempt to do something daring with its narrative (even if the attempt is flawed and ultimately fails) but that’s pretty much the only nice thing I can say about it. Not recommended.

4/10