You might have heard about this game by now. Spec Ops: the Line, a 3rd person shooter that got lukewarm review scores. And at a surface level, it really does look like any other modern shooter out there. 

But the game is actually quite different from most other shooters. While the gameplay is bog standard, the game actually has a message. And to be frank, I don't think that that message would have hit home as hard if it was not just another bog standard game.

Take a look at any other military shooter set in a roughly modern setting. How does it portray war? How does it portray the people in the war? Spec Ops is the polar opposite of this. It tries to show what war would be if people were actually like in the shooters, it tries to show (some of) the dilemmas that real soldiers has to face, and what the results of their actions can be. It does not condemn the soldiers themselves, but rather explains why some things might happen.

And I also think it does another important thing. Rather than focusing on being "fun", it focuses on evoking emotions from the player. I did not have "fun" while playing through it, but I felt a need to finish it. In fact, at some points the game made me feel really bad. Something that clearly was intentional. 

I would recommend that everyone takes a look at this game, even if you don't normally like shooters. Because while crude at points, it really showed how powerful gaming as a medium can be when it comes to evoking emotions. 

This isn't usually my type of game but I read so many positive reviews I bought it, hesitantly. I've been wondering when games would move up to the more serious level, because in the beginning of the movies (19th century) they were just for entertainment and only later moved on to more serious, meaningful stuff. And games will no doubt do the same thing, the only question is when.

At first I thought it was no more than a pro-american shooter but as I played and thought about it, it was clear there was a lot more to it. Any plot details would be spoilers but the game is morally complex and multilayered, with interesting choices to make. The only problem is that, as always in these games, most of the time you're just mindlessly shooting things.

Originally Posted By walsh (17 AUG 2012 6:50am)

The only problem is that, as always in these games, most of the time you're just mindlessly shooting things.

I think that was an intentional choice in this game. To show the disconnect between the general entertainment indistruy's view of war as being "fun", and the harsh reality of it.