For me, The Line made me question just what my responsibility is as a player of military shooters, and the following chapters are an exploration of how it made me ask those questions.” It is an attempt to pick apart this game from start to end to try to understand just how I was so powerfully affected by it. (…) So what follows is not a defense of The Line nor is it a praise of The Line. “It is a significant game, and that is why I am writing this. Brendan Keogh is writing an entire book on the subject, his view being that: More even, those critics that do not need to abide by commercial strains began to dissect the game profusely, and albeit some being more positive than others in their analysis, a strong sense of respect for the game and its aims – as a shining new example of rhetoric on war and war-games – is felt through and through. The point here is that though the game was undervalued from a consumer angle, it was acclaimed in terms of its cultural value, at least by the most successful opinion-makers in the community: “A striking vision of a devastated Dubai plays host to murky morality and banal gunplay in Spec Ops: The Line”, or “The first shot has been fired in the battle for a smarter, morally cognisant shooter”. ![]() Edge claims that shooting lacks a gimmick to make it interesting (read ‘fun’) Gamespot mentions issues of imperfect movement, meaning control was not satisfying to play and most reviews mention trial and error grinding and a lackluster multiplayer. After the almost art-criticism, comes the consumer angle, bent on addressing entertainment ‘value’. Other outlets followed a similar line or reasoning: “a game rife with contrast, an utterly commonplace third-person shooter, but narratively, it strives to raise philosophical questions and put you outside of your comfort zone”, “trying to have it both ways, – Gears-flavoured stop-and-pop action one minute, The horror, the horror, the next – but the end result is interesting in its internal conflicts, and bold in its willingness to embrace its own confusion”. A game that understands its own ugliness and base urges, undermining the thirdperson shooter even as it adheres to its formula.” Nonetheless, Spec Ops: The Line deploys the crude ordnance of thirdperson carnage to persecute more formidable targets: war, soldiering, American interventionism, and the depiction of those things within videogames. “This could well be one of the most subversive shooters yet made. Take Edge for instance, its online review opened with this paragraph: Since magazines and sites survive thanks to their role as buying-lists, when journalists find off-beat titles they seek an equilibrium between honest criticism and cynic consumer reporting, muddling the two in their texts, so as to remain as balanced and unanimous as possible. ![]() “The Line” got a sympathetic look that felt muted by the ever-looming fears of public reproval given the game’s lack of conventional appeal. The community’s response mirrored the shy reply that eccentric, heterodox or otherwise intellectual games garner, usually before a sufficient passing of time leads to a less compromised validation and subsequent rise to cult status. ![]() “Spec Ops: The Line” is a title that came out in the slow-churning furnace of mid-summer, singled out as a point of reference in its ephemeral release period and greeted with a consensual, though mild applause.
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