The grenade "sand kicking" and fake "rock" grenade are such fucking brilliant mechanics.
And the whole single player campaign is just so well thought out, listening to any analysis of it is a bliss.
Great video, but I wish he talked more about just the incredible amount of attention to details The Line has. For example, combat orders and executions get progressively more primal and brutal as the game progresses.
[video=youtube;RIFQzMgYS0I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIFQzMgYS0I[/video]
More examples:
[T]https://my.mixtape.moe/vbcmuf.jpg[/T]
[T]https://my.mixtape.moe/ddbwym.png[/T]
Just Youtube "spec ops the line easter eggs" and you'll find a ton of videos on the little things in Spec Ops. This game really is one of a kind.
i read a 160-ish page analysis on this game while replaying it (on FUBAR, dont do that unless ur masochistic) a second time. was very insightful. spec ops gets a lot of flak, and bits of it are deserved. but largely its a very well thought out game.
I picked this up falling in to the trap of thinking it was a generic sandbox shooter.
If I could wipe my memory of anything to re-experience it, it would be this game.
5 years on I still think this is narratively one of the best written games of all time.
Got to meet Nolan North at a con a few years back and talked with him about the work he did. Signed my copy. Was cool shit
It's rare that I consciously and willingly make an effort to finish a game in one setting. It takes spectacular enigmas and suspenseful happenings for me to do that, and Spec Ops succeeded.
However, despite its unforgettably well thought-out use of plot devices, it is a mediocre third person cover shooter at its core, and no amount of coating can make me see past that.
[editline]23rd July 2017[/editline]
This part on the highest difficulty just seems broken.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCO_3kDFStg[/media]
I bought this game god knows when, and it was just... rotting in my steam library.
One day I decided I was in the mood of having fun fun shooty shooty gears of war fun and I wasn't ready for it
[editline]23rd July 2017[/editline]
10/10 experience if you can get around the generic shooter mechanics
Spec ops deserves so much more attention then it got. Most people's knowledge of it drops past the white phosphorus bit, which is a shame because the game only escalates from there. It looked and ran great for its time too.
I never got the hate on the gameplay being generic because despite that it was responsive, had a good squad command system, and hard as nails at times. The only reason people hate on the gameplay is because it plays similar to other campaign shooters and came out in the time were it was cool to hate on that genre. If it came out this year people would be way less critical of it.
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52500374]This is the worst thing about the game tbh, the idea that you can just give it a 10/10 and discount how bad most of the games runtime is. Being complacent in the assumption that people who work on gameplay and story can't be assed to communicate and work together, which is kind of a big deal with how there's so many games out there whose story seems absolutely absurd merely because the story is tacked onto gameplay that runs completely contrary to the themes/morality/message of the story or are so shit that it drags down the pacing and turns the gameplay into a unpleasant challenge that's used to pad out the story.[/QUOTE]
"Generic" doesn't mean bad, just as much as "innovative" is a term that means absolute jack shit for me. Silent Hill 2 does more with tried-and-trash stablished horror tropes like tank controls and some more decent ones like resource mangement than Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark combined. (this is subjective I guess, that's how I see it)
The example of the Silent Hill series is actually an amazing example of that, bad horror genre tropes like tank controls allow developers to make choices in the map layout that affects how you decide to spend your resources, and also gives them a lot of freedom in how they frame the shots and how dynamic the camera can be, even dumb limitations like having to use stipple patterns to simulate color depth (since the PSx can only do 5bpp per color channel, versus 8bpp or even 10bpp of HDR screens) is actually used amazingly well, to the point where many games simulate that with grain filtering post process effects.
Thing is, SO:TL mixed up things every now and then enough that I was able to see past its issues, and the way they interweaved an amazing narrative so well into gameplay elevates this game way beyond the sum of its parts IMHO. (also I don't mean a literal 10/10 score- it's just a memey "great game" sort of thing)
Many of my favorite games are flawed to the same extent, the more "moving parts" your game has, the harder it is to make it consistently high quality in every aspect, it's even worse when you take into account how hard it is to market games that don't appeal to power fantasies and whatever, and publishers need their $$$s.
[editline]23rd July 2017[/editline]
I mean, STALKER is a trashy vodka-powered crash happy son of a bitch, and I just can't get enough of that game.
Easily the best analysis I've seen so far for the game, not the least because it directly calls out the people who declare that the gameplay is "purposefully" mediocre, while also criticizing the white phosphorous scene. It also pointed out a few things I had missed even after watching other videos talking about it. I think I'm going to reinstall and play through it for the third time.
[QUOTE=Silikone;52499975]
This part on the highest difficulty just seems broken.
[/QUOTE]
In my experience(especially with newer games), hard modes often get tacked on with little or no attempt made to balance them. It's actually becoming a big problem
[QUOTE=JohnnyOnFlame;52500482]
Many of my favorite games are flawed to the same extent, the more "moving parts" your game has, the harder it is to make it consistently high quality in every aspect, it's even worse when you take into account how hard it is to market games that don't appeal to power fantasies and whatever, and publishers need their $$$s.[/QUOTE]
I think it's just how different people put varying amounts of weight on mechanics vs setting or story telling. You see this disparity a lot in conversations regarding Dark Souls, particularly when it's about bosses. If you ask a group of Soulsborne players who their favorite bosses are you will get wildly differing answers because to some people the [I]why[/I] of the encounter is a lot more interesting than the [I]what[/I] of the encounter. I don't think that when people use the word generic to explain The Line's gameplay they are necessarily saying its bad, its just a bit by the numbers. Personally the word I'd use is "solid", describing mechanics and game flow that isn't really close to bad or mediocre, but not quite differentiating itself enough to be considered great. If there is one moment amongst Raycevick's review I disagree with it's that Spec Ops The Line gameplay ranges from average to impressive; even on my first playthrough there was never a moment where I was genuinely [I]impressed[/I].
The truly impressive aspect comes not just from how the story is detailed, but the tiny details, particularly the way that executions gradually become more and more savage the atrocities your character has engaged in (or outright created) begin to stack up.
[editline]23rd July 2017[/editline]
It's genuinely hard for me to rate Spec Ops The Line on a 1-10 scale because on the one hand I don't think the gameplay rates anything above a 7 or 7.5 but it's such a unique experience that I'd basically recommend everyone play it even if third person shooters aren't typically your jam.
[QUOTE=Fayez;52499581]Great video, but I wish he talked more about just the incredible amount of attention to details The Line has. For example, combat orders and executions get progressively more primal and brutal as the game progresses.
[video=youtube;RIFQzMgYS0I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIFQzMgYS0I[/video]
More examples:
[T]https://my.mixtape.moe/vbcmuf.jpg[/T]
[T]https://my.mixtape.moe/ddbwym.png[/T]
Just Youtube "spec ops the line easter eggs" and you'll find a ton of videos on the little things in Spec Ops. This game really is one of a kind.[/QUOTE]
i've seen most of these but I've never scene the one of 2 dead enemies going into the WP pose
[editline]24th July 2017[/editline]
I'd just give it a 9/10 because of the gameplay dragging it down, but it's not really about the gameplay as much as everything else so it factors less into the total score as it would in a different game
I think SOTL is great, but I remember someone told me the generic gameplay was on purpose and that really rubbed me the wrong way. Its a beautiful and innovative game, I just wish some parts weren't so mind numbing to play. Maybe that is the point, but still. Something a bit more creative with the gameplay side of things would have gone a long way for me.
When my girlfriend first moved in with me we played a lot of games together, meaning one of us would play while the other watched. I was excited to show her Spec Ops, as it was one of my favorite singleplayer campaigns in a long time. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite ready for some of the late game mindfucks and kinda gave me the cold shoulder for a few hours after the end. When she told me what was up, she basically said "You didn't tell me it was going to be like that."
However, I'm pretty excited because these days she's kinda warmed up to my darker fiction interests and has expressed a desire to go back and re-experience the game with a more prepared mindset.
I feel so bad because I picked this game up a few months after it released, and I couldn't take it. I got all the way up to I think chapter 3 before getting bored of the bland mechanics and putting it away. Years later I read up on the game and of course had all of the fun stuff spoiled, but it made me feel awful. It made me wonder how many other people out there felt the same way and quit playing it, never to experience what the game really had to offer.
I think what upsets me most about it is how, as stated in this video, the signs of what the game has to offer are right there in the main menu.
The mannequin level creeped me the fuck out. They kept moving and shit and all the fake/not fake soldiers coming it reallllllly messed with my head.
Unpopular opinion: The game is bad in every way. The gameplay is generic, boring, also buggy as hell, but most people acknowledge that. At it's core, the game is a chest high wall shooter. However, what really rubbed me wrong, was the story. It was so bad, it honestly felt like a high schooler just finished watching full metal jacket and apocalypse now and wanted to do his own war is hell story. What really pissed me off though, is that the game tries to make you feel bad, by blaming you for the actions of the main character. Which you do, sure, but the game acts like as if you had a choice, then berates you near the end with the loading screens, where it asks asinine shit like "Feel like a hero yet?" (Side note: Walker is fucking retarded in the story with his choices, I remember I was dumbfounded when they just okay the white phosphorus attack without getting an actual visual confirmation, other than the heat signals or whatever they get, when they knew very well that there were also civilians trapped in the city. Then of course you're forced to do it regardless, then the game shoves it in your face to make you feel bad, and it just feels frustrating and weak). I never groaned so much at a game since then, it felt pretentious, and the only worse thing about the hamfisted story, was the circlejerk small cult following that it garnered. I can applaud it for trying to be different, but it missed the mark multiple times, and I feel like people idolize this game as if it were perfect, when really, it isn't, but it's the only game that even tried at all, and wanted to be serious about it. The same people also try to elevate and make excuses for the bland, buggy gameplay. Even in the video the guy keeps going on about how it has enemy classes, and teammates that can handle themselves. None of this is unique or well executed in it. Top of my head, while not a full on TPS, but mass effect games did it as well, years before spec ops. Just in this thread people are already doing this 10/10 9/10 thing. I bought it for the hype that the game has a good story and has neat little details like the callouts. I played through it within the first week, and I am still mad that I wasted both money and time on this thing. But to be fair, I'll try the game again, I haven't played it since it came out, maybe I can appriciate it better now that it had some time to sit. Also, full disclosure, I only watcehd it till the end of the gameplay bit, I want to re-experience the story before hearing the guy's opinions on it.
You seem to miss the point of the story. The point of the story is to make you feel powerful, just like any other shooter, but also make you face the consequences your actions have. Think of Call of Duty and the amount of war crimes you commit in the games, the horrific ways you murder literally thousands of enemy troops... And your character never faces anything repercussions or seem affected by it.
[QUOTE=ZuXer;52501728]Unpopular opinion: The game is bad in every way. The gameplay is generic, boring, also buggy as hell, but most people acknowledge that. At it's core, the game is a chest high wall shooter. However, what really rubbed me wrong, was the story. It was so bad, it honestly felt like a high schooler just finished watching full metal jacket and apocalypse now and wanted to do his own war is hell story. What really pissed me off though, is that the game tries to make you feel bad, by blaming you for the actions of the main character. Which you do, sure, but the game acts like as if you had a choice, then berates you near the end with the loading screens, where it asks asinine shit like "Feel like a hero yet?" (Side note: Walker is fucking retarded in the story with his choices, I remember I was dumbfounded when they just okay the white phosphorus attack without getting an actual visual confirmation, other than the heat signals or whatever they get, when they knew very well that there were also civilians trapped in the city. Then of course you're forced to do it regardless, then the game shoves it in your face to make you feel bad, and it just feels frustrating and weak). I never groaned so much at a game since then, it felt pretentious, and the only worse thing about the hamfisted story, was the circlejerk small cult following that it garnered. I can applaud it for trying to be different, but it missed the mark multiple times, and I feel like people idolize this game as if it were perfect, when really, it isn't, but it's the only game that even tried at all, and wanted to be serious about it. The same people also try to elevate and make excuses for the bland, buggy gameplay. Even in the video the guy keeps going on about how it has enemy classes, and teammates that can handle themselves. None of this is unique or well executed in it. Top of my head, while not a full on TPS, but mass effect games did it as well, years before spec ops. Just in this thread people are already doing this 10/10 9/10 thing. I bought it for the hype that the game has a good story and has neat little details like the callouts. I played through it within the first week, and I am still mad that I wasted both money and time on this thing. But to be fair, I'll try the game again, I haven't played it since it came out, maybe I can appriciate it better now that it had some time to sit. Also, full disclosure, I only watcehd it till the end of the gameplay bit, I want to re-experience the story before hearing the guy's opinions on it.[/QUOTE]
If you start playing the game, expecting a guilt trip or tip-toeing like that, you're gonna be disappointed because the strings become very obvious rapidly. Like the first shooting, where you're forced to kill them for no reason. Then the game doesn't work out well.
If however, you go in blind, expecting a dumb shooter, then that's when the game is the most effective. You start killing left and right because that's what feels right, and the game progressively shows you what you're really doing.
That's why it's extremely important to go in this game blind.
[QUOTE=Spetsnaz95;52501732]You seem to miss the point of the story. The point of the story is to make you feel powerful, just like any other shooter, but also make you face the consequences your actions have. Think of Call of Duty and the amount of war crimes you commit in the games, the horrific ways you murder literally thousands of enemy troops... And your character never faces anything repercussions or seem affected by it.[/QUOTE]
No, I got the point, I even said, it's the same war is hell story that has been done to death by the 90's. As I said, it's mainly recycling plotpoints from war movies that don't try to be an explosionfest. What makes it really bad, is that forces you to do bad shit, then berates you for doing them. If I remember correctly, the part where there are 2 guys hanging and you have to choose which one you shoot to punish. No matter what you do, they both end up dead, and then later the game is giving you shit for letting them die. If I recall correctly. The game itself begins with Walker disobeying a direct command, and you have no choice in the matter. And other games also danced around this plot element, and others did it a lot better, the one that comes to mind is Farcry 4, where if you do as they say, you get an alternate ending. Maybe it's not fair to compare it to a game that came after, but you get the idea. The intent of the game's story is great, and I like that they try to play in Walker slowly losing his mind, it really hasn't been done in gaming, but it's an overplayed trope in every other medium. It also didn't help that leading up to, and after the release, the devs kept throwing around the word realistic, in relation to both gameplay and story, and it fails on both of those.
I liked the gameplay tbh, it was really hard at times and overcoming those challenges was fun. Being out of position pretty much meant your death at every turn, kinda like STALKER.
I don't really feel like the game berates you though. From a narrative perspective your character is just suffering the repurcussions from his actions. As a person who loves rpg games, I understand the complaint that the game forces you into the actions, but it was never advertised as anything other than a linear single player game. I feel like a lot of people misinterpreted the ending loading screens to be berating the player, when it was more just pointing at the fact that you're piloting an unhinged man who's killed a whole army of people.
After all the hype I tried to play more of it but I just got bored because it is such a bland shooter and I didn't get to any point where it would have caught my attention. I just couldn't go on.
Also, whats the first game shown in the video? With the guys in different uniforms.
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52501788]I suggest replaying the game because it doesn't present itself like that at all. Sure the first 3 minutes at best seem normal enough but the game's tone becomes surreal, threatening and ominous from the music the scenery and the mysterious DJ blasting upbeat music while you fight in middle eastern post apoc hell hole.
The game doesn't pretend to be a dumb shooter, it's an incredibly grim game from the get go with stupid shooter gameplay.[/QUOTE]
This, also I remember a few pre-release interviews and they were all nudge nudge wink wink this game is different guys.
I guess what's the main fault is, is that they did try to have a new and innovative, thought provoking story, and there are elements that really did make it seem like they tried, but then you have the majority of the game that's just bad. If you want to do something new, then go for it all the way, don't half-ass it. If you want to show the horrors of war, and the fucked up shit that you do in shooters, don't make the player take a bunch of on rails turret sections where you mow down people. That's why it's insulting, it tries to berate these actions, then forces you to do the same shit. It's like ironic shitposting, it's still shitposting.
Feels like the game has an identity crisis. Maybe that's what happened, they wanted to be different, but still wanted to appeal to a lot of people, or the publisher intervened, but with this, it kinda undermines their intentions. I feel like this story would've worked better in an indie game or if the entire game, with both story and gameplay was fully behind it. And I mean, it can be done with games, the ending of MGS3 where you have to actually pull the trigger got more of a reaction out of me with that sequence, than the entire 8 hour snore and groanfest spec ops is.
[QUOTE=ZuXer;52501805]And I mean, it can be done with games, [B]the ending of MGS3 where you have to actually pull the trigger[/B] got more of a reaction out of me with that sequence, than the entire 8 hour snore and groanfest spec ops is.[/QUOTE]
Isn't this exactly what you're complaining about in Spec Ops? Sure you'll (probably) ultimately end up caring about the cast of MGS3 more than that of Spec Ops; but at the end of the day you're still railroaded into a horrible scenario that your character will have to live with for the rest of his life. There's no real player agency there, the ending is still very dark, the best option for Snake still would have been for you not to play the game in the first place.
Also Snake will shoot by himself if you leave him alone long enough, so if anything it's even worse on that front.
[QUOTE=BelatedGamer;52501814]Isn't this exactly what you're complaining about in Spec Ops? Sure you'll (probably) ultimately end up caring about the cast of MGS3 more than that of Spec Ops; but at the end of the day you're still railroaded into a horrible scenario that your character will have to live with for the rest of his life. There's no real player agency there, the ending is still very dark, the best option for Snake still would have been for you not to play the game in the first place.
Also Snake will shoot by himself if you leave him alone long enough, so if anything it's even worse on that front.[/QUOTE]
Snake is forced to do his mission, and he has more and stronger motivations than walker& co.
It's his order to kill the Boss, which he follows. He wants to find out why the Boss betrayed him, so he goes through the mission. If he fails, the cold war escalates. He has multiple motives. The story is also better, and the gameplay doesn't undermine the story. In short, it did it better, and made you care by having a decent plot. Also MGS3 allows you to go through the game without killing anyone, save for the bossfights. But if you kill people, you get a very different scene with the Sorrow, which is again, a better commentary on the whole violence angle.
My problem with Spec ops is that it doesn't try, or doesn't feel like it, it just wants to be different to be contratian. It also tries to go super meta, especially near the end, which just falls flat. Ultimately, Walker has a choice at the beginning to avoid all the shit that he has to go through, but he disobeys his order, and the game doesn't let you have the choice. This is the main problem for me, it prides itself to be a choice driven game where your actions have consequences, but it doesn't give you a choice at the biggest decision. It's bad writing, have the mission be find Konrad and neutralize him, or gather up the civilians at an evac point. But I'll admit, maybe I just have a hate boner for this game, and/or the fanbase it gathered, and now I just have a blind bias against it.
It is a valid concern. I've seen some comments for other games who goes totally apeshit and bash the fuck out of the game just because the game forces the player to do something they might not agree with.
I think to enjoy this game is to treat it as a lesson. You don't really have any say in this so just ride along and see what the message leads to, instead of vindicating yourself by "but you made me do this! I'm not in the wrong you asshole of a game!"
[QUOTE=ZuXer;52501754]No, I got the point, I even said, it's the same war is hell story that has been done to death by the 90's. As I said, it's mainly recycling plotpoints from war movies that don't try to be an explosionfest. What makes it really bad, is that forces you to do bad shit, then berates you for doing them. If I remember correctly, the part where there are 2 guys hanging and you have to choose which one you shoot to punish. No matter what you do, they both end up dead, and then later the game is giving you shit for letting them die. If I recall correctly. The game itself begins with Walker disobeying a direct command, and you have no choice in the matter. And other games also danced around this plot element, and others did it a lot better, the one that comes to mind is Farcry 4, where if you do as they say, you get an alternate ending. Maybe it's not fair to compare it to a game that came after, but you get the idea. The intent of the game's story is great, and I like that they try to play in Walker slowly losing his mind, it really hasn't been done in gaming, but it's an overplayed trope in every other medium. It also didn't help that leading up to, and after the release, the devs kept throwing around the word realistic, in relation to both gameplay and story, and it fails on both of those.[/QUOTE]
I actually shot and killed everybody but the two guys, and it becomes an insane nightmare to get out alive if you do.
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