Hands On with Spec Ops: The Line

Spec Ops: The Line / Developer: Yager Development / Publisher: 2K / Windows, PS3, X360 / Played On: Xbox 360 / Release Date: Spring 2012

MEN ENOUGH TO FACE THE DARKNESS

There’s a certain risk attached—a risk of having to turn in one’s Videogamer Secret Decoder Badge—to saying that a great many modern military action games these days seem to, well, blur together after a while; it’s all cover-mechanics this, blind-fire that, real-world settings and varying-loadouts the other, blah blah blah. Comparatively-rare is the contemporary tactical military shooter that offers much of a truly compelling story-aspect at all, let alone one that does so in any particularly thought-provoking way. We recently got our hands on a couple of hours’-worth of 2K’s forthcoming Spec Ops: The Line—and despite its admittedly somewhat generic-sounding title, it promises to take its thoroughly-travelled genre first into a new, spectacular, brightly-lit and unusually-exotic setting… and thence into “one of the dark places of the earth”.

The Line is a third-person tactical shooter that puts players in the combat-boots of Captain Walker Martin, leader of a three-man, Delta-squad recon team—dispatched to more or less modern-day Dubai on a search-and-rescue op to retrieve the presumably-missing Colonel John Konrad. The background: Six months earlier, Konrad had been leading his outfit, ‘the 33^rd‘, on a humanitarian/relief misson to Dubai in the wake of a prolonged and nigh-on Apocalyptic sand-storm that ravaged the exotic emirate city—causing chaos and a general exodus in some areas, while leaving entire other vast tracts of the super-modern metropolis buried in massive drifts of sand with glittering, mostly-abandoned skyscrapers jutting surreally out of them in the blazing sun of the Persian Gulf. The puzzler: After six months of ominous radio silence, a transmission has been picked up—and it seems to be coming from none other than the presumed-dead Konrad—and right from the outset, it becomes immediately clear that something about this mission is FUBAR.

For starters, the helo choppering in Captain Walker (along with his long-time brother-in-arms Adams and wiseass newcomer demolitions-guy Lugo) is attacked en route by what appear to be other U.S. Military helicopters; after a brief running (read: ‘losing’) sky-battle, our heroes haul themselves from their downed copter, and have to schlep on foot to the fringes of the city of skyscrapers (rearing up out of the desert like a futuristic, glittering mirage). Things quickly become only more dreamlike/nightmarish in the seething broad daylight of the desert, as our heroes reach the outskirts of the city: Amid tangles of cars abandoned on roadways mid-traffic-jam—and the strewn wreckage of airliners brought down in the latest sandstorm—our heroes find their progress checked and assaulted at every turn, apparently by members of the very military unit they’re supposedly ‘rescuing’. Through subsequent pieces of found intel, scattered perplexing radio-contact with the formerly-’missing’ Konrad and the growing evidence of numerous, recent atrocities, it quickly becomes abundantly clear that the legendary military leader they’ve come to ‘save’ has gone completely off the rails (you probably see where this is going—his name is ‘Konrad’, after all).

Thus begins a military-shooter descent into the darkness and weirdness of contemporary war, as our heroes wind deeper and deeper into the results of Konrad’s apparent attempts to restore Order in the urban-aftermath isolation being called the ‘Sand-Wall’. While the player essentially controls Walker, the other two team-members act intelligently on their own—all the while carrying on gritty, witty, sometimes-wiseass and increasingly-heated conversations (Walker is voiced by Nolan North, AKA ‘Nathan Drake’, like you’ve never heard him before—tough as nails and pushed to the limit, not to mention dropping F-bombs like there’s no tomorrow). Walker’s two teammates can also be given direct orders such as laying down covering-fire or employing flash-bangs and other special munitions—but before long, relations (and even halfway-civil exchanges) between the protagonists become increasingly-strained as they and the player delve deeper into the madness (the Heart of Darkness, if you like) wrought by Konrad and his followers; the game soon raises numerous and troubling questions about just where a military man’s Duty lies…and where it begins to fray at the edges (and the mostly-martial parsing of the subtitle ‘The Line’ begins to take on the suggestion of another meaning entirely).

Mechanically, The Line gives you pretty much what you’d expect: Cover-fire mechanics, general orders given to teammates, and a fairly brutal rifle-butt melee attack for close quarters combat (which becomes, when necessary, a close-up ‘execution’ attack on downed soldiers you intend to make sure stay down); there are also the occasional stints of sniper-scope duty and of manning various heavy stationary weapons such as heavy machine guns.

Where the game (at least the hours of it we’ve thus far played) really shines is in its plethora of brilliant presentational touches: The dramatic echoes of Apocalypse Now when Walker & Co. enter a formerly-upscale building lobby and descend sweeping stairwells down into basements blaring Deep Purple tunes over the public-address systems (along with occasional crazed salutations from Konrad); the massive glass walls of skyscrapers completely buried in stories-deep drifts of sand (which, if shot out at the right moment, can be employed as devastating tactical weapons in a given building’s lower floors); the bodies of civilians and U.S. Military personnel alike, savagely hung from lamp-posts as a threat or a warning; and moments of seemingly-solid Foundations figuratively andliterally falling away beneath your feet, assumptions of the realities of war and Order slipping through your clenching grasp like sand. This new Spec Ops game draws The Line in the sand—and then does (if the direct quote may be allowed) “an aggravated witch-dance” all over it.

With the one-two pre-emptive strike of fearless writing coupled with flawless voice-acting and number of additional unpleasant surprises it just wouldn’t be right to telegraph here, Spec Ops: The Line is one of the most promising and exciting contemporary military games we’ve seen in Kurtz-knows-how-long. Even stripped of its compelling, controversial story and setting—suffice it to say the folks in the United Arab Emirates are not amused, and the game is already banned from sale there—The Line plays smoothly and beautifully… but the addition of its dark dramatic/thematic elements make it a truly anticipated title. Stay tuned to this frequency for updates from behind the Sand Wall when Spec Ops: The Line ships later this year.

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