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LttP: Spec Ops The Line where every choice matters

Maybe if not for the braindead friendly AI that constantly ruined whatever fun was to be had from a mediocre cover shooter. They would just charge ahead and get downed in the most retarded places requiring me to constantly run into fire to res them. Often I would get killed in the process. This happened too often. For me it spent all the goodwill I had for the game (basically my curiosity to see how it ended, and I usually enjoy tactical cover shooters, but this threw tactics out the window when AI was so awfully dumb).

Combine that with an irritating, sometimes non-functional cover system and you've got a recipe for annoyance. I appreciate what this game was trying to do but I absolutely loathed the gameplay.
 
I don't understand how anyone can bring themselves to care about a narrative when the gameplay feels like shovelware...

"Gripping"? Really? I don't get it... at all.

well personally I have no problem playing a game with a game with great story and mediocre gameplay, but I can't play a game with bad story and great gameplay.

The Line has some bad gameplay elements, but it isn't THAT bad, compared to other shooters like Uncharted, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Max Payne 3, and others, The Line is far better as a whole experience IMO.
 
It is my internet duty to hate on this game eveytime I see it mentioned. WIldly overrated on the interwebs. Mediocre at best gameplay with a story trying way too hard that ultimately fails way too hard.

well personally I have no problem playing a game with a game with great story and mediocre gameplay, but I can't play a game with bad story and great gameplay.

The Line has some bad gameplay elements, but it isn't THAT bad, compared to other shooters like Uncharted, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Max Payne 3, and others, The Line is far better as a whole experience IMO.

lol@ Spec ops being better than Uncharted or Max Payne anything.
 
I thought it was kinda meh. Not a bad game, but people hyped it up too much and the actual game didn't live up to it.
 
Did you play through to the end? Clearly not because you weren't a fan of the gameplay but once the
white phosphorus
.

I don't really get this. By the time this happens, I've already killed countless enemies. Seriously, this game throws an absurd amount of dudes at you.
 
well personally I have no problem playing a game with a game with great story and mediocre gameplay, but I can't play a game with bad story and great gameplay.

The Line has some bad gameplay elements, but it isn't THAT bad, compared to other shooters like Uncharted, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Max Payne 3, and others, The Line is far better as a whole experience IMO.

Well I think you're out of your damn mind, but opinions and all that...

I will say, I gave this one a fair chance. Maybe they should have sprinkled some of that great narrative into the beginning and middle of the game. Then maybe you could talk about "whole experience".
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.
 
That moment was one where if you've ever had to handle or deal with Willie Pete is absolutely fucking sickening.
 
I'm getting it tomorrow. Let's see if it can actually blend gameplay into storytelling like Spec Ops did.

...I love Spec Ops but in my opinion doesn't blend gameplay into storytelling until very late in the game when your
psyche starts to break down as a result of all of the killing and the game's commentary on violence, war, games, etc.
, where the theme of 'survival by any means' is present throughout The Last of Us.

I don't really get this. By the time this happens, I've already killed countless enemies. Seriously, this game throws an absurd amount of dudes at you.

Sure, but you kill loads of dudes in Uncharted too. It wasn't until that moment that it had an effect on the way I looked at the game and what I was doing.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

I finished it, only because I read a lot of posts like yours. I was disappointed. I did get a kick out of it, I suppose.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

I finished it and it made the story even worse. I should have NOT finished it.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head..

Is finishing the story going to retroactively make the 8-10 hours of gameplay I did experience suddenly not mediocre or the friendly AI not dumb as bricks?
 
the irony being that
absolutely none of the choices matter
.

Yep. I was coming in to say "everychoice matters
except you doing a suicide mission instead of using the mortar.
"

Completely overrated game. Story is just Heart of Darkness done badly with mediocre shooting. The only reason it's hyped is because of said Heart of Darkness-cloning to where it's "better than most game stories" as the hype-rs make it out to be.

TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

I love you, Cuban: But this is one of the most overrated games ever. Completely not worth the time investment and I 1000gs/Platinumed it when it was a rental on PSRS.

The only "saving grace" if you want to call it that is the multiplayer which was dead on PS3 and kinda got old after a few hours because the shooting mechanics were still the same as the singleplayer so they weren't anything amazing to phone home about. Uncharted 2-3 was a better cover shooter than Spec Ops.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

Finished it. Strong art direction and voice acting aside, story did absolutely nothing for me and I absolutely hated the dull cover based gameplay.
 
I'm getting it tomorrow. Let's see if it can actually blend gameplay into storytelling like Spec Ops did.
As much as I love Spec Ops and as much as it is personally relevant to me, TLoU does outclass it.

I don't want to take anything away from Spec Ops, though, because it's a landmark game.
 
Bar the gameplay, the game certainly made itself memorable thanks to the way it handles the story. (The you-know-what-part and ending) At least for me it did. Though with how much 'death' the game throws at you, I honestly became a little desensitized throughout the game. It's quite difficult to care much for (newly introduced) characters the further you get.

And frankly, I'm not surprised people stopped halfway through because the gameplay really can become unbearable. There's no way I can recommend people to just keep playing either if they're really, really, really not having any fun.
 
Solid shooting and a cringe inducing story. Sounds like most shooters, except this one is praised because of the hilariously bad cutscenes.
 
I honestly think that the comparisons to Heart of Darkness are entirely superficial. Heart of Darkness, at its core, was about the dangers of colonialism and the consequences of a person being left isolated from the rest of the world for a prolonged period of time (the latter of which was the main theme of Apocalypse Now, as well). While the trippy atmosphere of AN and the general premise of HoD are there, the game is about something completely different. Spec Ops is about PTSD, and on a meta level a commentary on war as entertainment. I felt that the twist (END GAME SPOILERS)
where you end up being the Kurtz character
, while executed rather poorly, was a neat way of subverting your expectations if you had been exposed to the other two versions of the story
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.
I haven't finished the game, I'm at chapter ten, but all of my points will still stand whatever happens between now and the credits. The gameplay will still be pretty crappy and boring and the game will still have failed to make me care about the characters or any of the events for the first ten chapters.

But we'll see. I'll finish it up and see if anything can change my mind. If it's just a twist ending, which I highly suspect, I doubt it'll change how I feel about the game.
 
I find it pretty laughable that this game tries to make you feel bad for killing people, yet rewards you with extra ammo for performing brutal executions on downed enemies.

I thought this was brilliant. Same with the little screen shake when you get a headshot. both of those are to make you feel awesome for being brutal which reinforces the story.

The game does get a bit slow and repetitive, but I'm ok with that. The gameplay reinforcing the story so well makes this so easy to recommend.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

Is this even possible? How on earth could that go over your head?

I hope this was a joke post pointing out how ridiculous some people get with the "YOU DIDNT UNDERSTAND I GUESS" point of view. You'd have to have the sound off to misunderstand that hokey ending.
 
...I love Spec Ops but in my opinion doesn't blend gameplay into storytelling until very late in the game when your
psyche starts to break down as a result of all of the killing and the game's commentary on violence, war, games, etc.
, where the theme of 'survival by any means' is present throughout The Last of Us.
For me it stated with the
white phosporus scene. The way they lead you to think it as another military shooter and the mandatory shooting from above scene. I remember expecting to have my usual a triumphan run throught the scraps, then being forced to walk by dying corpes just for the later scene.
It is one of the best examples of interactive storytelling driven by gameplay I have played. They used gameplay to create a state of mind in players then just to flip it upside down with a completelly different emotional reaction not just by in-game elements but in the use of a cutscene to create a bigger emotional impact because thus it was required. Brilliant.
In the other hand, creating this state of mind actually requires players to perform some redundant and monotonous actions for quite some time to actually have an effect afterwards. So I think some of the complaints towrds the game can be justified by that. This idea definitelly needs to be tested and further evaluated but I would need to replay the game since I've only played it once.

I really wish to discuss the game more but I'm quite busy right now. Maybe later tonight.
 
the irony being that
absolutely none of the choices matter
.

good game though, one of my favorites from last year.

The last one does but yeah, thought the same when reading the title, they don't really matter at all.
I'm starting to think that the praise this game is getting is a bit over the top.
 
Is this even possible? How on earth could that go over your head?

I hope this was a joke post pointing out how ridiculous some people get with the "YOU DIDNT UNDERSTAND I GUESS" point of view. You'd have to have the sound off to misunderstand that hokey ending.
I would say that about 50% of the people I've seen that strongly disliked Spec Ops have not understood the plot to a satisfactory level.
 
TO ANYONE IN THIS THREAD COMPLAINING ABOUT THE GAME WITHOUT HAVING FINISHED IT:

stfu and finish the story first, then go to Antitrop's first post in this thread if the point of the story still sailed over your head.

GOTY 2012 for me btw.

I finished it, and the endings I got were all dissapointing and equally stupid.
 
The Line has some bad gameplay elements, but it isn't THAT bad, compared to other shooters like Uncharted, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Max Payne 3, and others, The Line is far better as a whole experience IMO.

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My goty of 2012 easily.

EDIT: I also don't get the hate on the gameplay. It's not the best (yes Max Payne 3 has better third person mechanics) but it's playable and gets the job done.

Just thinking about this game makes me want to go replay it again. Especially since I didn't do so immediately afterwards so I haven't had that 2nd playthrough experience yet.
 
Overall, I found the game rather average myself. However, there are two things I found really cool:

1) the way the combat chatter changed over course of the game. At first it was very calm and professional but later in the game it started to turn very brutal and violent which really gave the story more weight.
2) Choices that were not really presented as choices. For example, the part with the civilians threatening you.

My thoughts exactly. Can't really join in on the dogpile praise as the story nor gameplay ever really resonated, even the three or so endings I reloaded to witness. Yet, the little details struck a chord.
 

He thought the shooting elements in Spec Ops were better than Max Payne 3? Whoa.

no,no,no,no,no,no, BIG NO, Max Payne 3 shooting mechanics are 2nd to non.

I meant as a whole experience, after finishing Spec Ops The Line it was stuck with me as something I loved, while Max Payne 3 more like something I liked, over all I enjoyed The Line more.

That doesn't mean Spec Ops had better shooting mechanics, fuck no, nor did it have a good cover system, it had one of the most annoying cover systems.

I find it pretty laughable that this game tries to make you feel bad for killing people, yet rewards you with extra ammo for performing brutal executions on downed enemies.

I give it props for trying, I guess. At the end of the day though, it's just another game GAF loves that really isn't that good.
Actually at the start of the game executing an enemy is not that brutal at all, but as you go on and on with the execution (or down the story in general) Walker gets more and more violet in his executions.
 
no,no,no,no,no,no, BIG NO, Max Payne 3 shooting mechanics are 2nd to non.

I meant as a whole experience, after finishing Spec Ops The Line it was stuck with me as something I loved, while Max Payne 3 more like something I liked, over all I enjoyed The Line more.

That doesn't mean Spec Ops had better shooting mechanics, fuck no, nor did it have a good cover system, it had one of the most annoying cover systems.


Actually at the start of the game executing an enemy is not that brutal at all, but as you go on and on with the execution (or down the story in general) Walker gets more and more violet in his executions.

You also couldnt fucking roll dodge or just dodge in general. That annoyed me far more than the low class cover mechanics.
 
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