10.7.2012

After pre-ordering Spec Ops: The Line it finally arrived 4 days ago (much later than most got ahold of it, of course, due to my current country of residence and the slow nature of delivery to small FOBs in Afghanistan). I had read all the early reviews and the consensus seemed to be the following:The game is relatively short (some say 4 hours, other around 8)The story is fantastic...albeit darkThe action is solid and fast-paced, if only flawedI can tell you that the game (on the hardest difficulty) ran a solid 8 hours for me with only a few areas slowing me down due to multiple deaths by either myself or one of my partners.The action was pretty good, but like others had said was flawed.The enemy AI made things easier than it had to be, but perhaps that was necessary. Had the AI been too advanced, finishing this game would have been quite the task...the Dark Souls of Third-Person Shooters. Only because some enemies decided to linger out in the open were certain areas passable. Your character can't take all that much damage, so truly clever AI enemies would have cut the average gamer down left and right. However, overall the failings of the AI didn't hurt the experience for me. This game is about the story.From the first steps of this adventure to the last, you have no idea where your foray into Dubai is headed. You will question who the enemy is many times, and it won't be until the very unique ending that you know for sure. The revelation will be quite...thought-provoking to say the least.The moral dilemmas you face in this game are brilliantly devised. This isn't an RPG where the good and bad choices are laid out for you labeled as such. Sometimes you don't even know that you are facing a dilemma right off the bat. The way they all fold into the story, and the way you will at times ponder the choice you made, is woven subtly into the fabric of the story and gameplay. Spec Ops: The Line will have you questioning your own morality, how you would have truly reacted in a given situation by the end of the game. It has a way of tapping into your emotions to illicit a natural response based on a situation or obstacle. No game I have played before has done this as effectively, though many have tried.By now you know the premise, you know the setting, and you know the basic faults with the gameplay elements, but they are all irrelevant. This game deserves 8 hours of your time for at least one playthrough so you can be fortunate enough to experience one of the better stories any game has ever had to offer. You will not be bored with this game because the action is constant, the pacing appropriate, and there is enough variety in locations and gameplay elements to keep the action fresh, all the while the story drives on to the rhythym of a symphony of chaos that you cannot help but participate in. Even when you know you've made a terrible mistake, you have no choice but to move forward in hopes that the end justifies the means. Machiavelli would have loved this game.I loved Binary Domain and enjoyed its story, but Spec Ops: The Line gets my award for the best Third Person Shooter of 2012...and it is certainly worthy of standing alongside the Gears series...but such a comparison is unnecessary because The Line stands on its own just fine.Do yourself a favor and pick this one up (even after a price drop) and you will be glad you did.

6.8.2012

Being a huge fan of shooters (first-person or third-person) and also a huge fan of military-based games, this game caught my attention when it was released. I typically check reviews of any game before I purchase it, and this one had some mixed reviews. I decided to give it a shot. Right off the bat, I found it enjoyable. The control scheme is solid, the voice acting is good and graphics are nice. After getting about 3/4 of the way through the campaign, I can say a few things about Spec Ops The Line. First, the story is good and provides plenty of motivation to finish the game to find out what happens in the end...and there are four different possible endings. These endings depend on certain in-game choices that you make.Some of these choices are fairly emotional and can actually be difficult to make. This makes the game interesting and provides some decent replay value. The control scheme is good and what you'd expect from a shooter. It plays very much like Gears of War, using the same type of cover system. However, the cover system is clunky...sometimes you take or move away from cover when you don't want to and you end up dead. Also, if you are not COMPLETELY behind cover, you are open to be shot. For example, if your big toe happens to be peeking from behind your cover, the enemy tends to have great aim...this results in you being hit...and sometimes being killed. The game on normal mode is not very easy. You can only absorb a shot or two before you bite it. But that's ok if you like a bit of a challenge. Another thing that I found annoying is the shear volume of enemy soldiers that your tiny 3-man Delta squad is faced with defeating. Per the story line, you are supposedly taking on a platoon or batallion of soldiers with some local militia at their aid. However, most firefights seem like you are taking on 20-30 soldiers at a time. I'm 75% through the campaign and I've killed enough soldiers to make up an entire army...a bit much? Finally, your AI team are idiots. They do kill their fair share of enemies, but they do not follow commands consistently and they are constantly getting wounded, forcing you to heal them before they bleed out, resulting in game over. This usually means you are forced to run from cover to save them and more times than not results in your own death.PROS- Great story- Good graphics- Good control scheme- Good voice acting- FunCONS- Cover system needs work- Can be overwhelmingly difficult, especially on harder levels. It seems like your 3-person squad is taking on an entire army.- AI is not smart and is more of a hinderance than a help.Despite it's flaws, this game is certainly fun and well worth the play. It's not worth $60.00, but if you can get your hands on it for $40.00 or less, I would recommend you pick it up. I'm not much of a multiplayer guy, so I can't comment on it. I've heard that it is lacking, though.

20.10.2012

If you have NOT played the original DOOM , or if you have not played DOOM 3 . then this is a must have. Simply one of the greatest games to be ever made , now availabe in this quality package. Alot of PC players who played it back in 2004 [doom3] will tend to have complaints due to the changes.But overall if your new to DOOM 3, as i am . Then this has to be one of the best games to pick up this year. Its 24.99 in most places. and its defo worth the investement.You get a heck of alot for your money , And you get DOOM 3 in all its splendour. Up to date HD, DOOM 1 AND 2Expansions packs for DOOM 3 .Does it live up today ?astonishingly the atmosphere in DOOM 3 alone is worth the experience.

22.10.2012

Ok. I'm old. I still clearly remember getting a demo of the first ever DOOM, playing it on my office PC (because I didn't yet have one of my own), then posting off for the full game (yeah, those were the days of snail-mail) and THEN buying a PC so I'd be able to play it when it arrived.Seriously. Doom was the reason I forsook my trusty Commodore Amiga and bought my first PC.DOOM! Graphically, there was nothing else like it. It was fast. It was scary as hell. It was challenging. It was FUN! We talked about it, shared solutions, even had dreams about it!Remember those nasty little fireball-throwing imps? The 'Pink Ponies'? The big flying eyes? Those brainiac spiders with machine guns?

25.1.2013

At first I was hesitant to buy this game after reading the reviews. The concept seemed fun but the gameplay sounded difficult and hard to learn. However after buying and nearly completing the game in 8 hrs last night on suicide difficulty, ive got to say this game is a beautiful breath of freah air from the overly hyped Call Of Duty series. The only way I can describe it is like a modern warfare version of Gears of War, only in the sense that thats how the controls are set up. B is melee, u can press A for cover, reload with X, swap weapons, so if youve ever played Gears of War then you get what I mean. This was never stated in any review ive read and was kind of a surprise,

22.7.2013

This game already has a lot of reviews so I will keep mine brief.With all three games in one package this game is excellent value, however Doom 3 is one of the most frustrating games I have played in a long time. For the first few hours of game play Doom 3 is engaging and fun to play, however the game play quickly becomes very repetitive as you walk from one poorly lit futuristic hallway to the next. Everywhere in this game looks the same and after a while it just becomes a chore.As well as the repetitive game play, the enemies have an annoying habit of spawning directly behind you. At first this adds tension to the game play.

16.7.2014

Spec Ops: The Line is a shooter that takes it's direction from Conrad's Heart of Darkness. And that's a good thing. Anyone that has ever seen Apocalypse Now will find haunting reminders of that movie as the player moves through the story.The game lasts 15-25 hours depending on the players expertise with the shooter genre and how much time they might want to spend hunting down collectibles. Also nice from my perspective, this game takes the approach with collectibles that fewer are better so there are no more than a couple per chapter.The movement, cover and shooting mechanics are all solid. Nothing here to really detract from the game but they did not stand out to me as the best shooter game play mechanics I have ever used in a shooter either.

16.6.2014

I first heard about this game from its 2010 teaser trailer or was 2011? Either way I've always been interested in this game and only until recently have been able to play it. I expected a new shooter would try to nock off call of duty and battlefield but I was quickly proven wrong. This game exceeded every expectation I had and blew me away. The story is the best I've played threw in a game in a long time. Moral choices and dilemmas that kept me guessing on what to do. At many points in the game I was at the edge of my seat wondering what to do next and what I should do. The story is compelling and moving,

13.2.2014

The game flew under my radar until I saw it being reviewed on the website "Zero Punctuation". I expected a wonderful deconstruction of another sub-par, generic shooter in rapid, anglo-wit style. I was wonderfully puzzled to watch as the game was praised and recommended!I played through the entire campaign on normal difficulty in two, long sessions; Under the same grip of suspense that can claim an individual when one reads a phenomenal book or hears an extraordinary piece of music. The gameplay is generic. It offers no groundbreaking change from chest-high wallandia, and no spectacular challenge at higher difficulty either. What it does is provide a vehicle to tell the story. Avoiding any and all spoilers,

21.7.2012

I bought this game when they had the great 50% off deal. The game has good graphics for what it is. Terrain detail could be a little better. I would love to see a more destructive environment. I also would love online to look like the single player. It looks very weak and when I tried it there were only like 2 servers online.Besides the couple negatives I noted I think the game has an amazing story line. I think I might have to play it again just to wrap my mind around what actually happened. I also like the different types of weapons. I think there shouldve been a few more interesting melee executions. The story is extremely X-rated for violence. I feel like I almost had PTSD just playing the game.

7.12.2015

The Line is a solid third-person military shooter that's elevated by a great single-player campaign. Based largely on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the story revolves around a small team of Delta Operatives sent to rescue a war hero colonel and his unit from a post-eco-disaster Dubai. True to the source material, our protagonists are thrust into increasingly maddening ethical dilemmas that add a gripping sense of urgency and relevance to all the bloodshed.Combat mechanics are satisfying and largely forgiving. Games like Gears of War and Binary Domain come to mind as strategic use of sprint features and cover are essential here. Graphically, the game's environments and set-pieces completely steal the show,

13.7.2012

I got this game on sale for about 40 dollars. I wouldn't say the game is worth a penny more. reason because the game is really short. even so in that short time you will take part in one of the best stories I played in any shooter to date. (even better then Gears story) The story also has alot of emotion and WTF moments. The excellent voice acting even makes it better.The MP is trash and the online community is dead. I wouldn't buy this game if you want to play a shooter for mp there are better TPS's out there.Form start too finish you will enter a room full of bad guys get in cover and shoot them. After that you are followed by a cut-scene then you preceded too repeat those steps again.

4.12.2012

With and overwhelming number of shooters lacking any sort of story-line substance and relying solely on multiplayer, Spec ops the line stands head and shoulders above the crowd.I found myself actually caring about how the characters in the game devolved.But onto the gameplay, Spec Ops is a familiar formula of run and gun shooting.At times I found the game to be stingy on ammo for my weapon and in turn was forced to mix it up by picking up a variety of firearms, some better than others.The targeting system is amazing in this game, it has one of the best reticles, for accurate shot placement. (I was impressed by the sniper rifle the most)AI is also very solid as enemies tend to mix it up from one play to another.Some of the things I wish the game did better are squad commands.

9.9.2012

Please ignore my five star "fun" rating, because this game is many things, but it is not fun. If you are looking for something to just have a fun time blasting away dudes you will not find this here. Of course this also means you are precisely the audience at which this game is targeted.A lot of reviews docked a star or two due to unfun aspects of the game play, and, with respect to those reviewers, they are missing the point of this game. While not even remotely comedic, this game is a stunningly insightful satire of the first person shooter genre. The fact that the first hour very deliberately pretends to be a bad Modern Warfare knock-off is part of this.Play this game for its profound psychology of both war and video games,

20.9.2012

In this third person shooter you play as the leader of a team of three soldiers that are sent to Dubai to search for survivors after a series of sand storms destroyed the city.The main focus of the gameplay is on the psychological and physical deterioration of your team as the story progress. The atrocities of the war (some of them perpetrated by your decisions) affect the characters in a deeper way than other military shooters.The developers took much attention to the details, such as the load screen that shows informative messages about controls in the beginning of the story and by the end is showing messages like "This is your fault" and "You are still a good person".

Spec Ops: The Line - Reviews

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