Last night I had a chance to head into the Take Two offices to play a bit of the upcoming shooter Spec Ops – The Line. They had a build of the game that was something like 50-60% of the whole game, so I sat down for an hour and just went in guns blazing.
Well, not quite guns blazing, because Yager Development must’ve taken a page out of Left 4 Dead 2’s book and limited the amount of ammo you can carry and find. What happens a lot then, is that you’ll be constantly scavenging different guns pretty often. I didn’t realize how little ammo there would be at first, and on a couple of occasions I was completely out of ammo and had to flank and melee some guys to pick up their guns.
Welcome to Dubai!
Anyway, the basic gist of this new Spec Ops is that Dubai has been hit by a massive sandstorm that has turned the luxurious city into one giant ghost down, dwarfed by enormous sand dunes and valleys. An elite military unit called the Damned 33rd, led by a Col. John Konrad, had gone in but went AWOL. Then there was a mysterious distress beacon, and your squad of Delta operators are sent in to investigate. And that’s when everything just goes completely nuts.
The plot seems to be what’s really setting this game apart from the other shooters (more about the gameplay itself later). It is based on Heart of Darkness, that same novel that the classic film Apocalypse Now was based on, and I initially had reservations about this, because the last thing I want to play is a carbon-copy of that movie. But from what I’ve played, it’s really quite different, and what they’ve taken from it is inspiration about the horrors of war, rather than just replicating a famous movie and switching Vietnam with Dubai.
During my session, I met up with unknown local insurgents, CIA guys of dubious motives, members of the Damned 33rd, and random civilians – and I have no idea who is on my side, or who I should not be shooting at. When I see bodies of executed soldiers, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing. The plot keeps twisting around, and in a good way thus far. Everyone’s either shooting at you, or seems mad, and you’re just confused while returning fire. It’s a bit like a David Lynch movie, except with more gunfire and no dwarfs that speak in reverse.
“What the hell is going on? Why is everyone shooting at us?”
At one point, I was in a tense stand-off with some guy, and it looked like things were getting settled because he was lowering his gun. I wanted to test just how much choice you had in the game, so I pulled the trigger and lo and behold – I shot the guy dead just as he was putting his gun on the floor. This action shocked not only my two squad mates (resulting in a dialogue sequence where they’re like “what the hell did you do that for?”), but the PR folks that were talking me through the game.
Revo-Emag 