Spec Ops: The Line Review
So much of it comes down to a question of influences: Conrad, not Clancy; BioShock, not Call of Duty. At first glance, Spec Ops: The Line looks like so many other military shooters, built of sand dunes and dusty fatigues and filled with the flash and sparkle of a thousand rifles glinting in the sun. Look again, though, and you’ll see the setting’s quietly fantastical, and the two-man squad under your command seem unusually tense – warn down, twitchy, even a little shell-shocked. Yager’s latest is trying to have it both ways, perhaps – Gears-flavoured stop-and-pop action one minute, The horror, the horror, the next – but the end result is interesting in its internal conflicts, and bold in its willingness to embrace its own confusion. Spec Ops: The Line is a game divided, and that isn’t a criticism at all. It’s actually the best thing about it. This isn’t the first shooter to draw from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, of course, but compare it to Ubisoft’s attempt in the brilliant, uncompromising and frequently infuriating Far Cry 2 and you won’t find too many elements in common. Far Cry 2 was a sandbox and Spec Ops is a corridor: it’s a cover-based blaster in which you clear rooms of enemies, cast weapons aside to pick up new ones, and occasionally sit back to watch a set-piece unfold. Read more…
