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Spec Ops: The Line |OT| Apocalypse Whenever - Starring Nolan North

L

LuchaShaq

Banned
Spoiler for Chapter 10 I think.

My biggest issue with the game so far.

WHY THE FUCK IS THE LIGHT TURNING OFF AND ON GOD DAMMIT. Seriously, I've never gotten a headache so fast in my life. My gf wasn't even paying attention and literally ran from the room saying my game was going to give her a migraine.

Also ziplining bare handed? WTF? Besides these two things I've enjoyed it much more than I expected.
 
A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
It was atmospheric is all. It looked and felt distressing. It made you feel uncomfortable, just like the character was. It was well used. By the way, that avatar is super dope.
 
S

smik

Member
NullPointer said:
While I really liked what they did with the game, the calls for a sequel just feel very weird to me. But I am interested in whatever Yager does next and whether they are allowed the freedom to explore even more in whatever it is that they do.
Click to expand...

idk why but Spec Ops really clicked with me and would love to see them make another,
I could say i have seen way worse titles get a sequel but its not valid enough reason to.

Spec Ops has alot of wiggle room for improvement just from a gameplay stand point, alot of good controls implications are not executed properly and close attention to quick/smooth and snappy cover transitions and on-point aiming would provide SO:TL a much more visceral experience.

Spec Ops is also a little bogged down by simply not having enough maneuverability options as well, Dive/Rolling and evading would have been great to see implicated, aiming sway needs to be tweaked and even little things like throwing back grenades or evading them can be done for a potential sequel.

Cover animations and transition can be greatly improved as its a little slow to react and sometimes a little unatural while getting into cover, the Enemy A.I in Spec Ops was greatly under appreciated and would love to see more options with enemy encounters, more pathways and maybe have some stealth actions would be great to add to Spec Ops Camapign.

The Mutliplayer also can be greatly improved if the above controls where introduced, along with launching with more total Maps and Co-op Modes (Separate from Campaign) would be interesting to see what Yager can do, all these simple additions could turn the overall game into a much more enticing pick up.

buts ultimately, its the story/universe which they can expand upon.
 
B

boi

Neo Member
LuchaShaq said:
Spoiler for Chapter 10 I think.

My biggest issue with the game so far.

WHY THE FUCK IS THE LIGHT TURNING OFF AND ON GOD DAMMIT. Seriously, I've never gotten a headache so fast in my life. My gf wasn't even paying attention and literally ran from the room saying my game was going to give her a migraine.

Also ziplining bare handed? WTF? Besides these two things I've enjoyed it much more than I expected.
Click to expand...

You mean the part with
the "Heavy" (Juggernaut). Thats because the guy has a strobing light on him to make you go "awww shit" and all.

Edit: Sorry, better spoiler this.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
boi said:
You mean the part with the "Heavy" (Juggernaut). Thats because the guy has a strobing light on him to make you go "awww shit" and all.
Click to expand...
I thought
Walker was just freaking out at that point.

Noriega said:
Ending kinda confused me
So if you let konrad shoot you, it's basically Walker committing suicide right?
Click to expand...
Alternatively,
Walker dies in the helicopter crash and none of that happens.
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
Conor 419 said:
This game is underrated.
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It absolutely is.

I think the game doesn't get enough praise for what it does. It's a successful adaptation of Heart of Darkness into videogame form. That alone is commendable. The allusions to Apocalypse Now and its overall tone also basically make it a big budget anti-war game in an industry full of games where war is generally handled uncritically at best and glorified at worst.

Even if it "only" covers themes that have already been well explored in other media, in the space of videogames... it just relegated every other military war shooter to B-movie trash tier status.


:bow Yager
 
S

swampjesus

Banned
(my first post)

I bought it, because I wanted to like that game, and I gave in all the 'underrated' opinions people were saying on neogaf. The demo was all right to me and especially the sand setting with it's visual effects were really nice.

But after playing it to about chapter 10 I think at best this is mediocre show. There's nothing much wrong about it, but then again the game play doesn't offer any variation or deepness to it(there's no hook...). This feels like a product without a soul. Don't see any reason to replay it - I wonder what really happened behind the long production time. It's looking good and has different theme and setting but that is not enough.

Enjoyed Binary Domain really much, but Spec Ops is good game for renting in my opinion. Sorry to bash it but that's how I see it... :)
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I beat this. I don't feel like there's enough player agency for me to feel bad about my actions. I understand the Bioshock comparisons, but I think Bioshock was a commentary on agency. I'm not sure the same point is being made here...it's using the same techniques to try and show you something else, but I don't feel complicit.

The graphics really, really took a hit from that initial reveal.

I don't like Nolan North as tough guy.

Also, there were way too many enemies. God, swarms and swarms.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
It's a game where you basically have to forgive the boring gameplay, even though that boring gameplay is itself supposed to be a commentary on games.

I will say this:
Y2Kev said:
I beat this. I don't feel like there's enough player agency for me to feel bad about my actions. I understand the Bioshock comparisons, but I think Bioshock was a commentary on agency. I'm not sure the same point is being made here...it's using the same techniques to try and show you something else, but I don't feel complicit.
Click to expand...

The "real" ending of the game (as discussed in the previous pages somewhere in this thread - not the Konrad stuff, to be clear) basically blows anything Bioshock tried to do out of the water in terms of this specific issue. It's probably the only thing that stops the game from caving in on itself and I'm glad it was even a possibility.
 
M

Messofanego

Banned
C

Clunker

Member
Messofanego said:
Thanks for this!

EDIT: OHHH FUUUUU so basically after the chopper crash
you're just in a limbo/purgatory where Walker has to confront what he's done over and over again much like Memento
?!
Click to expand...
This is one way to read it. It's not necessarily that this is the One Way the Game is Meant to Be, but in the Gamespot Gameplay podcast with the lead writer, he raised it as one way to definitely read the game - which is really compelling, but I think the game works even without that perspective.

The more I think about Spec Ops, the more I like it. I don't know if I can really say people should buy it, but anyone with a remote interest in storytelling techniques in games should definitely play it. Really enjoyed my time with it on a rental, and I'd pick it up again on the über-cheap to run through it again.
 
C

CosmicQueso

Member
Jintor said:
Tom Bissell's Article is a Good Read.
Click to expand...

Thank you for linking this. Thought provoking to say the least.

Two things in that covered the game for me:

"That was clumsy but genuinely interesting. Huh.
OK, this maybe actually does something."​

This was my take on the game itself.

"Unlike most shooters, Spec Ops: The Line wonders what kind of person likes virtual killing enough to spend hours engaged in it. It bothers to ask, "Aren't we all a little sick and crazy to want this?"​

And here's where I've been since finishing my playthrough a few hours ago. I did not enjoy playing through the game, but I had to finish it. And while I was doing so, I was cringing inside at the actions I was doing onscreen.

Yes, it's a good game and a great piece of interactive storytelling.

Honestly, what surprises me the most is the fact it got funded, that it went through greenlights and was approved, and was ultimately brought to market like this. Spec Ops will not sell in the millions of units. It won't get the results needed for a sequel and will most likely lose money.

But the fact that the thing exists, and that we can experience it, is an incredibly good thing. Even if it wasn't "fun".
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Just tried the demo and I kinda liked it. The shooting is decent enough, nothing spectacular. In short, it works.

Characters seem fairly typical US ARMY good guys.

The story seems interesting, I'm getting a Heart of Darkness vibe from it.

*edit*

Read OP...
This is an adaptation of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Apocalypse Now, set in the modern day in a storm ravaged Dubai. It stars Nolan North.
Click to expand...
Well that makes sense.
 
A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
Yeah I definitely wouldn't call the gameplay great. It's better than mediocre, but not good. There's a certain flow to it, chaining slow-mo head shots together feels really cool, but apart from that there's nothing spectacular about it.
 
R

rizzo0

Member
Cool atmosphere. Def makes you feel uncomfortable in some parts but the gameplay is SOOO boring that it takes away from everything else. No freaking way would I recommend ANYONE to spend more than $2 on this from redbox. Beat it and never play it again!
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
Gameplay wise, I think this is a close cousin to Rebellion's Rogue Trooper from 2006. The gunplay and movement feel really similar to that game. Dubai as a setting is great and the sand might've been a neat idea once, but it's simply not backed up by the tech and is more or less irrelevant.

The gameplay is never more than passable.

But, even attempting to make a (relatively) big budget anti-war game in this industry full of war glorifying war games - with CoD as the premier military shooter/recruitment initiative smashing new records every fucking year - takes some serious balls. Even if it's "just" an adaptation of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, transferring the themes intact into a videogame deserves praise.


edit: oh, I basically posted the same thing twice and didn't even notice. :lol


edit²: and to complete the linkages, here's Klepek's writeup on the game's story and design.
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Haunted said:
But, even attempting to make a (relatively) big budget anti-war game in this industry full of war glorifying war games - with CoD as the premier military shooter/recruitment initiative smashing new records every fucking year - takes some serious balls. Even if it's "just" an adaptation of Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now, transferring the themes intact into a videogame deserves praise.
Click to expand...

Are you saying it takes balls to go up against CoD or it takes balls to make an anti-war game?
 
N

NullPointer

Member
AEREC said:
From a pure shooting standpoint the gunplay is great and satisfying...nothing more nothing less.
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Every weapon feels powerful in its own way and provides useful secondary modes, aiming is precise, including when firing from cover. There's a nice mix of verticality and encounter ranges in the battles the game throws at you. Blind fire is effective. You can't take many hits and you don't have endless ammo so the game rewards utilizing cover, timing your exposure, prioritizing targets and making every shot count. That's solid gunplay in my book.

Its not revolutionary, but it works just fine. Its the cover system that brings it down a bit, along with the not-as-useful-as-you'd-hope squad focus fire commands.
 
Cuban Legend

Cuban Legend

Member
Clunker said:
This is one way to read it. It's not necessarily that this is the One Way the Game is Meant to Be, but in the Gamespot Gameplay podcast with the lead writer, he raised it as one way to definitely read the game - which is really compelling, but I think the game works even without that perspective.

The more I think about Spec Ops, the more I like it. I don't know if I can really say people should buy it, but anyone with a remote interest in storytelling techniques in games should definitely play it. Really enjoyed my time with it on a rental, and I'd pick it up again on the über-cheap to run through it again.
Click to expand...
agreed, this is what I've been telling all my friends about the game.
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
NullPointer said:
Every weapon feels powerful in its own way and provides useful secondary modes, aiming is precise, including when firing from cover. There's a nice mix of verticality and encounter ranges in the battles the game throws at you. Blind fire is effective. You can't take many hits and you don't have endless ammo so the game rewards utilizing cover, timing your exposure, prioritizing targets and making every shot count. That's solid gunplay in my book.

Its not revolutionary, but it works just fine. Its the cover system that brings it down a bit, along with the not-as-useful-as-you'd-hope squad focus fire commands.
Click to expand...

I did get the feeling of verticality from the demo, and I really liked that.

This game is definitely next up on my must-get list. Funny that I just got a few games from Steam sales but I'm more interested in this game.
 
S

smik

Member
is anyone here on GAF enjoying the Multiplayer? Chaos Mode is where the fun is at, alots of action and your out on your own.


theres a healthy MP community hanging around and most players are really friendly,im almost at rank 45 as i re-enlisted to get the extra lvl2 class perks, im using the M4/Sniper combo with Always prepared & IDE expertise perks. warning for new players always equip the IDE expertise perk or you will step into mines 24/7.

with all this said, im dying for some more maps as 6 maps is just way to shallow and my interest wont hold forever.

did some "investigation" and there is 2 Mp maps - Foreclosure & shipwreck that didnt get included in the lineup, (found in the PC Movies Folder) not to mention iirc atleast another 2-3 maps from Spec Ops beta i participated in have been oddly left out.

waiting on the free August DLC to see if they will be any new mp content

August DLC info/media and pics of withheld maps
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...LC-New-versus-MP-maps-(Videos-amp-Pics-Inside)
 
The English Conquistador

The English Conquistador

Member
Ahh, just finished this.

One of the best shooters I've ever played. Constantly making me think "wtf?!", great gameplay, with a nice feel with the shooting, movement etc. Story went into some dark places too. Ending didn't make a great deal of sense, but there were some really superb moments in the narrative.

Absolute gem! So glad I played it. Such an incredibly fresh experience in gaming.
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
The English Conquistador said:
Ahh, just finished this.

One of the best shooters I've ever played. Constantly making me think "wtf?!", great gameplay, with a nice feel with the shooting, movement etc. Story went into some dark places too. Ending didn't make a great deal of sense, but there were some really superb moments in the narrative.

Absolute gem! So glad I played it. Such an incredibly fresh experience in gaming.
Click to expand...

Pretty much have to echo this myself. Finished the game on the third difficulty (although I switched to normal for the last level) in about 4 hours and 20 minutes.

I have to say, walking away from this (ending spoilers),
I have no clue who the hell the bad guy is, which is crazy for a video game. The 33rd still went insane right? That wasn't just in Walker's head? And then there's the CIA arming the rebels and Riggs destroying the water trucks. Then there's Walker going insane which in turn ends up with Adams and Lugo getting killed.

Really though, what an ending.
 
C

chizmiz

Banned
Tomat said:
Pretty much have to echo this myself. Finished the game on the third difficulty (although I switched to normal for the last level) in about 4 hours and 20 minutes.

I have to say, walking away from this (ending spoilers),
I have no clue who the hell the bad guy is, which is crazy for a video game. The 33rd still went insane right? That wasn't just in Walker's head? And then there's the CIA arming the rebels and Riggs destroying the water trucks. Then there's Walker going insane which in turn ends up with Adams and Lugo getting killed.

Really though, what an ending.
Click to expand...

The 33rd did what they could. Konrad wanted to save people by evacuating them, but they just could not, so as all hell was breaking loose in Dubai, fighting over resources, he instored the martial law. For instance, he protected the water so everyone could have a ration, even if it meant killing people. Some members of the 33rd revolted out of a sense of despair, and he had to make examples and kill them too. He committed suicide eventually. Throughout the game, Walker makes sense of it all in great difficulty, and we realize that Konrad had been dead all along. The radioman had Konrad's voice in his broadcast because the broadcast echoed on the storm walls. When we hear Konrad through the walkietalkie, it's different, it's an hallucination: Walker understanding what happened, although it materializes in denial. Nobody in the story had malicious intent, they just had different interpretations on what had to be done, and even of what was happening. For instance, Briggs argues that if nearby countries heard of a US battallion instoring martial law in Dubai, it would cause a world war that the US could not afford, and thus, everyone had to die in Dubai. This is crazy, this is cold, but this is an argument. Nobody is right, everyone suffers, this is war, where there is no hero.

This is EASILY my game of the year so far. I absolutely LOVED everything about it. It is so fucking smart.
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
Not finished it yet but I'm at chapter 12 now and my God it's so underwhelming it's not even funny.

I didn't have high hopes for this anyway, but decided to give it a shot after hearing all the compliments for the story and plot. But even that so far, really has been nothing noteworthy out of a couple of scenes. Too much of the game is the crap shooting gallery segments with the more "poignant" moments serving as occasional punctuation rather than a backbone of the experience.

I agree with Y2Kev on this. I don't feel involved or engaged enough to feel the impact of what the game is trying to show/tell me. I'm being told that much of the stuff I am doing is horrible, but it hasn't had much emotional impact to me
with the exception of the white phosphorus scene, I admit that caught me off guard and was well done.
But that is the only exception. I'm just not attached to Walker in any way to sympathise with him.

As a game, it's incredibly generic and bare bones mechanically. ymmv on how much you'll enjoy it depending on how sick you are of cover based military shooters.

By now I'm going to finish it just to see how it ends, but I do not understand why this is getting praise for its story, not at all.
 
L

luffeN

Member
Just finished the game. Normal cover shooter gameplay but the story and narration, fuck. 4 different endings if I counted everything right:
suicide, dropping the weapon, fighting but dying, fighting and surviving "welcome to Dubai" xD
 
A

Alo81

Low Poly Gynecologist
DennisK4 said:
This game sort of slipped under my radar.

Reviews seem to be mostly 7 and 8s out 10.

What is the GAF verdict?
Click to expand...

If you can find it for under full price, it's worth playing. The game play is fun, even though it doesn't really do anything new.

If you're playing the game, you're playing to see video game story telling done in a really respectable way. One of the best stories in a video game to date.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
It's an interesting story because of the double twist, but I don't know if it's "the best". In some places they don't really go far enough. The actual gameplay is pretty lacking though. I think if it played differently from your standard, boring, third person cover-based shooter with turret sequences and rail sequences, it would have had a chance at being the next "Bioshock" though.

As it stands, it's a game that very few people will experience sadly. It doesn't have the chance to enter the zeitgeist like Bioshock (or even Portal) did.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
If you look up "average" in the hypothetical video game dictionary, there would be a short clip of Spec Ops: The Line's combat. But the combat is made interesting in the context of it's intense narrative.

Not GOTY-contender or anything, but a very interesting experience. If you can find it for cheap, there's worse things to buy.
 
A

antitrop

Member
DennisK4 said:
This game sort of slipped under my radar.

Reviews seem to be mostly 7 and 8s out 10.

What is the GAF verdict?
Click to expand...
Sleeper hit of the console generation, to me anyway.

I'll take a Spec Ops: The Line 2 over another Call of Duty: Modern whatever-the-fuck any day.
 
G

gurudyne

Member
ViewtifulJC said:
Not GOTY-contender or anything.
Click to expand...

If this doesn't wind up on at least a few GotY lists, I'll have lost all respect I have for gaming awards as they stand. And frankly "a few" is bare minimum. This thing's a contender. Even if it isn't the most well-rounded title, it's a work of art and it elevates the entire medium which is what those awards are supposed to signify.
 
C

CatPee

Member
Sigh, anyone able to resolve the black screen upon startup issue? I've tried Run As Admin and running it in XP SP2, but I still have the same issue.
 
H

HyperCubed4

Member
smik said:
is anyone here on GAF enjoying the Multiplayer?
Click to expand...

0syiA.gif
 
K

Keasar

Member
Got the game from GreenManGaming after hearing so much about it from Zero Punctuation, Extra Credit (first Spec Ops episode) and friends.

Completed it yesterday.

Holy shit, is all I can say. I felt a bit dead after the credits rolled and I had stopped feeling like being punched in the gut. All those times I had enjoyed a shooter like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Band of Brothers, I felt fucking horrible for it. If this game doesn't make it to at least 7-10 nominations for best writing, I will loose hope for this industry.
 
H

HyperCubed4

Member
Nominations? Nominations from whom? There are no Academy Awards for video games, no awards show run by actual game developers and people actually in the game industry. Any awards will be from video game journalism sites, which do have their merits, of course. The closest we'll come is... the VGAs. Golly gee.

This was also the topic of an Extra Credits episode, if I'm not mistaken.
 
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