Spec Ops The Line... 5 Years Later

shooters are in a tough place they're violent and visceral which makes them intense and thrilling but also fleeting and forgettable in the thousands of online matches an enemies spawn to the hundreds of campaigns and millions of bullets fired rarely does it lead to us the player thinking beyond that immediate sensation and even when it does the game's quality can still be lost in an ether of releases that don't so much as make a dent but it's this exact market that resulted in one of the most discussed yet least played video game experiences out there I and many others presume SpecOps the line to be a name pulled out of a hat but SpecOps was actually a franchise from the late 90s this was a golden age for nearly every genre in platformer stealth shooters RPGs strategy simulation arcade story multiplayer sci-fi fantasy you name it and this period had it but among the half lives thieves and rainbow sixes there's plenty of games and aspiring franchises that were left behind spec ops was one of them in fact at this time of recording the only review on the original game Rangers lead the way is by examine life of gaming a channel that intentionally covers forgotten PC games while its creator zombie studios committed but two full games and mission packs the series moved to the PlayStation despite the next generation having already arrived by this point other developers took over and take to acquire the publishing rights spamming out for games between 2000 and 2002 with low price tags and even lower reception well these cheap games may have cashed in on the military and tactical shooter trend Rainbow Six counter-strike and operation flashpoint had greatly impacted the industry seemingly aware of this take - now the owners of Rockstar had hired a team who had proper experience in this field barking dog studios was a developer based in British Columbia that assisted with counter-strike and created their own military game with global operations being a perfect fit for spec ops they were rebranded as Rockstar Vancouver and set to work on bringing a new spec ops experience to the PlayStation 2 details on this game are limited to a few concept drawings of characters and that Queens of the Stone Age is founder was writing music for it whether this spoke to a higher level of production or the musical equivalent of blowing your meager budget on a well-known actor something that still goes on today we may never know because Rockstar Vancouver's military shooter was cancelled by take-two in 2005 the greatest issue with spec ops was unlike its competition that clearly fit within niche sectors of the market neither its developer nor publishers seem to know what defined it other than being military themed and one look at any art form confirms just how broad that spectrum is having acquired a developer based on how good of a fit they'd be for the franchise and failing take-two decided to open its doors and have developers come to them instead calling for pitches that would hopefully pull this tired franchise out of the muck what happens next is difficult to piece together as many of the articles interviews and information about the lines birth and development is contradictory or unverified from the research I've done this is a clearest narrative I've been able to assemble in 2006 German based developer Jaeger pitched their own project to 2k one subsidiary of take-two interactive it was a third-person squad based shooter mechanically identical to the final product but lacked the Dubai setting and story while the publisher liked Yeager's concept 2k revealed to the small developer that they internally greenlit the revival of spec ops and offered Jaeger to repackage their pitch into an installment for this franchise flattered Yeager declined saying that the brand didn't fit with what they had in mind for a project until for reasons that can only be theorized take-two said the words at very few game developers beyond iron storm ever got to hear no restrictions as long as Jaeger made a military themed game with the spec ops a name they could do whatever they wanted needless to say Jaeger accepted two K's offer and all the company's founders and half of its staff got to work development began in 2007 during the time when shooters were beginning to move away from halo science-fiction into battlefield and Call of Duty's ripped from the headlines modern military style it was hugely successful and many publishers began to step up to the plate and cashing in not unlike take-two had done with spec ops in 2000 but neither developer nor publisher desired repeating that while the story and themes were bare as bones at this stage Jaeger knew that it couldn't be thrown to the side they hired German writers to produce the narrative but decided early on that they needed an American to write this tale about American soldiers this is what led to Jaeger working together with their publisher 2k and having them directly assist in 2008 2k brought in Corey Davis as lead designer Walt Williams as the lead writer and Richard Percy as co-writer the first had actually pitched a futuristic shooter to 2k around the same time Yeager did and after completing condemned to blood shot was informed by the publisher of what Yeager was trying to develop with Corey Davis and Walt Williams having lived through horrific storms in America the team incorporated an element from Davis's pitch tattoo cave that become critical to the Lions experience the setting of Dubai the project gained lots of traction hiring all the cast members during this period in innovating with their brutal storytelling in unique combat scenarios going as far to reveal the game in 2009 the vertical slice impressed gamers with its fidelity and potential of manipulating the environment in real-time gameplay as well as the moral choices that had moved beyond good or evil the project only gained more enthusiasm from the developers and publisher the speculation that spec ops was a game the developer tricked a publisher into making is almost the opposite of truth 2k and Yeager were working hand in hand with this project almost every step of the way producers such as Greg Kasavin who eventually departed from 2k to found supergiant games were passionate about the sort of game that spec ops was looking to be but III 2010 didn't capture the surreal darkness of spec ops as reveal and with far more actual gameplay footage appeared to be just another military shooter in a rapidly oversaturated market and with the game's release date being pushed from 2011 to 2012 only lowered expectations with gamers having to wait almost four years since its reveal many forgot about it the gimmick gone through many alterations not in mechanic's Benham pacing in plot differences in the order of events and sections of levels can be seen in the trailers compared to the final product and there was also much contention with Hagar and 2k when it came to multiplayer Yeager's publisher didn't give many boxes to check but one of them was a competitive progression based multiplayer component and despite discussing it as early as 2010 it's evident due to reasons that will be discussed later that the multi players development must have had far less time than that but ultimately through all the trial and tribulations after 5 years of development backups a line was finally completed and released in summer 2012 on the surface just another third-person military shooter at least in gameplay terms that's what you'll be forgiven for thinking the line has received much criticism for its mechanics utilizing outdated tropes clunky inputs and mindless shooting gallery sequences some even go as far as suggesting that the gameplay was intentionally cookie-cutter and dull but after multiple playthroughs over the years I don't believe that is the case Jagr have stated that the final product is based on their original pitch and while spec ops is gameplay has problems there's plenty that's done extremely well mainly in its finer details while you won't be knocking down skyscrapers the environment comes to play in many interesting ways in fact the breakable windows with sand are probably the least interesting element they don't alternate the terrain dynamically and are mechanically identical to the explosive red barrels of killing all enemies within a radius better or how explosives kick ups and potentially stunning enemies and blinding them but because the grenades that do this are also your lethal explosives capable of killing multiple enemies you often have to choose between using them directly against the enemy or sacrificing one of your items to allow you to push farther having to make decisions like this on the battlefield is unique and former interesting been simply giving you the full selection of frag flash and smokes like any game B's more in-depth mechanics aren't necessary at lower difficulties but become extremely useful on higher ones other touches such as a blind fire function that's actually useful squad members that can handle themselves and kill a decent amount of enemies smoothly peeking around corners unlike other third-person games muzzle flashes and disable trajectory during sandstorms and the different enemy classes raised SpecOps above mediocrity it alternates from average to impressive depending on the level design weapons and enemies chapters 1 through 5 are mostly average with flat geometry overly convenient cover placement and almost one type of enemy exclusively not counting to knife rushers and the occasional shot gunner 6 and 7 is when the game picks up with a section that strips you of ammunition support close quarters combat a surreal set piece in both gorgeous and horrific scenery this mostly goes for chapters 8 through 12 with the exception of some tedious checkpoints 13 drags with open terrain before teen concludes with some of the best level design and pacing of the game it's a net positive but that's not going to blow you away weapons don't have much significance in the earlier portions because whether it's a knight millimeter or a rocket launcher the standard enemies go down if you just look at them funny in classic games like doom and halo the limited sandbox still has a dynamic pace that responds to the player and creates a flow pistol shotgun imp and infected is all that's needed to get you strafing managing health and ammo and predicting the enemy's actions pistol AR grunts jackals and elites gives you plenty of engaging encounters and SpecOps moderately armed soldiers you can one-shot from the moon doesn't present anything beyond point shoot regen rinse repeat later on armored soldiers knife rushers heavies shot Gunners and snipers are all thrown at you at once which forces you to utilize the sandbox given this large e falls onto the level design earlier chapters allow you to stick to one piece of cover and pick off enemies one by one like a big budgeted whack-a-mole for this also changes in later levels what cover that leaves you far more exposed in multiple ways of advancing rather than a strict one-way path in general spec ops is best when you're advancing rather than staying put and it seems to be the intended design with its fast sprint sand mechanics and kicking people over cover not that it always works and the controls unintentionally discourage this play style the game isn't very liberal with how you take cover not accepting corners or diagonal fixtures and attaching melee in Vault to the same button not even allowing you to bind them separately on PC its usage of the buzzword tactical is quite the stretch your squad mates mostly take care of them and marking targets for them is only reserved for the most chaotic scenarios as in most cases if you're already pointing at the enemy there's only one more input required for them to be dead and this goes for all ranges as mentioned despite having a variety of weapon types you'll rarely be in a scenario where unable to hit a target assault rifles have the accuracy of snipers shotguns have the range of SMGs and pistols are just absurd it's hilarious to hear words such as realistic in old interviews I've talked to soldiers and they'd rightfully laugh in this game's face in regards to its combat what truly prevents spec ops from being lobbed into the same bin as every other Gears of War imitation is not the quality of its tools but how it uses them the context and scenarios are put in or what make it stand out whether it's glass under enemy's feet navigating sandstorms hearing Nam era pop blasting over loudspeakers seeing the destruction of your actions killing American soldiers in conflict with the innocent fighting through ruins and luxurious high-rise towers the situations and creativity put in the levels are what sets backups apart from its competition and gameplay but mainly it's accomplished through story [Music] the narrative is something that you don't so much experience but descend into its cavernous wake much like its Dubai setting exactly as a protagonist Captain Walker expects a routine mission based on what he's seen and known in the past the player is on that exact path in terms of input and setup SpecOps is opening is ubiquitous in media res turret sequence Gref military shouting the intense opening set piece the stoic commander black guy and smartass press a to take cover to weapon restriction regenerating health slowly walk with dialogue the linear tutorial explosive red barrels pseudo stealth insurgents all of these even to a casual player that buys three games a year is something that's been seen before but as you peel back the narrative you begin to identify the distinct layers that Jaeger founded with this game there's an attention to detail and commitment to the narratives themes right down to the menus being 17 and ignorant to all of the iconography when I first played spec ops this menu was just a menu with a functional if bland UI that does its job having sat through film school half a decade later the game is already hinting at all the hell you're about to venture into with both visual and audio cues while the visual side is the American flag that's upside down a signal of distress officially in the USA's flag code this is combined with Jimi Hendrix's star-spangled banner played at 1969 Woodstock a version of the American anthem meant to signify the horrors of war before you press start the game is already subconsciously informing you of what awaits before a difficulty is selected you're already on the path and descending like the character from beginning to end each chapter gives you a bigger nugget to chew on in Chapter 1 there appears to be nothing with a forgettable execution of soldiers and something to do with Americans in conflict with the locals however the first piece of the puzzle is in the credits the special guest being you in chapter 2 we hear an American DJ playing licensed songs over loudspeaker in your battlegrounds in Chapter three the locals are led by US soldier Chapter four the American thirty third fire at you forcing Delta to start killing their ally soon after a distinct moral choice unlike most games that present their decisions with a d-pad or a and B SpecOps uses the already existing gameplay mechanics with its choices it simply adds unique narrative context but what's great about the decisions is that a lot of them aren't suggested but are things a player would dream up on their own for instance this isn't technically the first choice in the game earlier in chapter 4 the game allows you to kill an American and at no point is it ever made explicitly clear the game's subtle enough to simply account for it being a possible outcome the importance of these decisions isn't to make for a branching narrative it's to further reinforce the lack of any good deed being done in terms of decisions this is one of the few cases where the game allows you to save people an action that ends up being frivolous due to the destruction and death that you caused later but it's not until chapter 8 that the game makes this point unavoidable for a scene that's come to define SpecOps it's fascinating that something similar had been attempted just one year prior homefront is one of the many military shooters that failed to capitalize off of Call of Duty in battlefield success while the game's multiplayer may have been great it's mediocre campaign utilize as much of the brutality that end up in spec ops but use less intelligently white phosphorus is a case in point in homefront the game has spent its entire first half painting your enemies as heartless husks the white phosphorus is fired by someone else there's only one character that slightly shows remorse and there's an accident that serves to heighten the melodrama of your allies you never met being killed the tone is all over the place the characters response is saying no one deserves to die like this is we stole it from the enemy they were going to do it to us there's nothing profound it says about the weapon in its use it's not honest about ostensibly good people being capable of doing worse than their enemies and the player has no involvement whatsoever it's purely shock value yet in spec ops similar to the opening it lures you in with just how ubiquitous its controls and setup are I've mentioned how the ac-130 gunship mission and call duty 4 completely echoes a real-life footage that gives a mission an unnerving atmosphere and tone but by this point in shooters that same gunship mission had been taken to blowing up Paris in modern warfare 3 simply saw the gunship level as a way to mix up pacing and yeah it does that but that's the most superficial reading of infinity ward's efforts SpecOps is the only one that really highlights just how messed up the context of this gameplay is the idea of slaughtering soldiers with continuous aerial bombardment with the purpose of making you feel strong and powerful speaking from personal experience what hit me so hard about the white phosphorus scene wasn't that it's brutal destructive and horrifying lots of games are all three what unnerved me to the core is just how casually I did it how routine it was to fart a laptop screen and play polka dot with missiles exterminating white blips that might as well have been zombies only to be forced to walk through your actions and see the effects the scene obviously doesn't have this effect on repeat playthroughs but there's no way to steer this into a way of feeling good the visuals sounds and voice acting is so perfectly executed that it's hard to take the piss out of but the scene does run into some trouble and isn't faultless by any stretch some who've played were able to identify without spoilers that this area of the map is filled with civilians just by how they're packed together in a way that no group of soldiers would ever be and that there is no way to not fire white phosphorus at these people so that when the game is ostensibly blaming them for the actions it falls flat and I can't really dispute this according to a GameSpot podcast with the lead writer there were discussions of having the story branch out into two different paths from this point all the way until the finale but not only would this be nearly impossible from a resource perspective but in storytelling would have resulted in multiple elements of the plot changing that had nothing to do with the player and as such was internally scrapped there was also a bill that allowed you to properly fight against the thirty-third in this section the fight would have been impossible to win due to the amount of enemies thrown at you at once but it was at least an option but memory issues on the Xbox 360 and ps3 restricted you to the rooftop you can still try to fight them but it's pretty clear there's no option to progress further enemies instantly respawn after being killed and it's not exactly elegant admirably the lead writer acknowledged this in wish that it could have been done better then again it still wouldn't have addressed the issue of not wanting to shoot white phosphorus at the civilians now they don't require direct fire most players probably fired at the Humvee killed civilians through collateral damage but at the end of the day the scene is going to create a disconnect for players that see each trick civilians killed by collapsing sand would have had the same effect and neither would have just killing the soldiers I can't argue that the scene is designed in a way that will work for 100% of players but I'll argue that it's necessary and absolutely the game's most memorable scene some argue that it's too on-the-nose and in-your-face but due to the amount of subtleties this game has even in this scene I respectfully disagree Walker's reflection in the monitor the meta dialogue what it is you've seen what it does you know which I never choice go go there's always a choice no the music the difference is in lighting from the beginning of the stage to the end being able to put soldiers out of their misery or being called murderers by your enemies right after the cutscene it's expertly crafted and presented in order for the game to truly send its message it needed this scene both in the narrative and meta context of this type of level in shooters nearly every decision comes just after Walker and you the player commits one atrocity from the next giving you a moment to judge two murderers after leaving dozens of innocents in ashes quickly executing or burning the CIA agent that stole Dubai's water and doomed everyone in the city to death by dehydration immediately after you helped him do exactly that all choices are driven by revenge in your last decision before the finale Walker has so much less ground to stand on as a judge of morality than the civilians that hang Lugo but one of the reasons SpecOps despite its brutality doesn't feel preachy or patronizing is through moments like this where despite your clear option of mowing down civilians you can still fire into the air and let them run away in fear and Yeager's attention to detail with the civilians and their different voice lines and reactions furthers this this first layer of the story the raw events that have occurred set you up for the conclusion the moment when the surreal goes into overdrive the twist that John Conrad was dead all along and merely a fragment of imagination is clearly telegraphed chapters ahead of time and yet it still packs a serious punch not by taking what was thought to be real and revealing that it wasn't but by laying the final nail in the coffin that neither you nor Walker have done anything that should lead to us being put on a pedestal the game doesn't pull the rug from underneath you but rather repeatedly kicks you in the head while you're on the floor in fact the ending really started in Chapter 13 after the helicopter crash Walker's vision has him using the same excuses and lines as his conversation with Conrad you gave us a choice what happened here was out of my control we tried to save you we tried to save you you're no Savior this wasn't my father this isn't my fault takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him nolan north was hired long before becoming such a well-known actor in video games he'd done everything from one of the most popular characters of the seven generation to background vocals for NPCs and games like Halo he's done hundreds of games but this is the one where he goes far beyond providing the believable voice of a soldier for the player to shoot alongside with this is a full-on performance and one that successively grows the character from the opening to this final scene it's a combination of not just the well-written script and the talent of the actors but also their direction so who's gonna take care of the DJ the hell you talking about he ain't passing the torch we're still in the man's mic three soldiers against the fat ass with an iPod I'm less than worried gotta expect the unexpected Adams adapt and overcome [ __ ] the plot was acted recorded and shot from start to finish in chronological order multiple times to ensure that the actors themselves had the authentic harshness and exhaustion in their voice when Walker and company have dropped the professionalism and become instinctive violent human beings in terms of Nolan's work this is easily the best acting he's ever done but the direction shouldn't be forgotten because there's not a single weak link in the cast the ending is effective not just because of the scene itself but in how the entire game from start to finish builds up to it from visuals themes and performances yet it seems to have finally run into issues with how it portrays a twist that Conrad is a figment of Walker's imagination the two men Conrad held up were just corpses that there was no battery in the communicator with Conrad the whole time and yet somehow your fellow soldiers kept following you indeed it's a twist that doesn't add up because the ending shows dialogue and visuals that never played in the key scenes this style of twist is not bad storytelling it's just not as impressive as one that truly gives everything the audience needs prior to figure it out rather than cheat and show them something different these are rather big plot holes but one scene that you did revisit that isn't brought up here is the chopper sequence where the in media res prologue and chapter 12 conclusion have one very large difference wait wait this isn't running we did this already the speculation from a few is that there's one more layer to this game story from the literal - character and meta-narratives that there's a final piece to the puzzle I hated this at first the idea that Captain Walker died in the crash in the whole game is some bizarre flashback having this one line seemed like a lazy last ditch effort but the game is just as meticulous with this narrative as it is with everything else to revisit the main menu there's another hint in the earliest screens you hear helicopter blades faintly in the background these clearly reference the in media res crash subsequently as the game moves further from that the sound effect never comes back until you repeat the helicopter crash where it plays in every screen even after the epilogue the difference is in dialogue between the crashes are apparent but what's not is how they differ in the way they cut at the end in the prologue it doesn't cut to black it has a faint light with the helicopters blades pulsing in the background as if there's someone's final moments whereas in the twelfth chapter the helicopter spins out of control and when finally crashing the screen plainly cuts to black even while editing this video I picked up on something as soon as the helicopter collides with yours there's no more dialogue from your squadmates and Lugo and Adams can't be seen anywhere in the chopper but the most damning evidence of all can actually be seen from the very first level of the game as far back as the demo from chapters 1 through 5 Conrad's face can be seen on multiple billboards it not only recontextualizes the events thought to be literal it even does so for the meta-narrative loading screens in the third act begin to kick the player down with lines such as how many Americans have you killed today and do you even remember why you're here there's one that says but none of this is real so why do you care it's clearly meant to refer to the players relation to this game but it may also refer to the events themselves there's also the amount of times the game fades to white it's obviously used at times to clearly highlight Walker's visions yet it even appears in levels like the white phosphorus section and talking to the DJ and there's a level design and pacing forcing the player to make a judgement call after each atrocity committed can be seen from a game design perspective but it may also relate to the character doing this to himself it's even in sync with the games of visuals specifically how no matter what every level has you descending further and further into to buy with visuals and loading screens and cutscenes that clearly refer to Walker staring into the abyss even Adams and Lugo play the role of Walker's psyche Lugo is always Walker's biggest critic with Adams disagreeing with some of his actions yet always signing with him until the finale their fates are constantly reinforced with some unavoidable scenes but also in subtle foreshadowing such as the reflection of a soldier hanging in the spot where Lugo normally is rappelling after all the playthroughs and readings into this game there is no doubt in my mind that the true narrative here is Walker mentally torturing himself in order to confront his horrific actions when I play the game today the only ending that seems right is to finally accept it but even if Walker doesn't even if you select what appears to be the closest thing to an escape from Dubai there's a final line that tells you Walker died and that this is his personal hell you don't mind me asking what was it like how'd she survive all this who said I did some can write off the story and SpecOps as pretentious or full of itself as with many films albums and shows that don't simply utilize the most instinctive and superficial of storytelling it doesn't fully work as a literal narrative with the holes laid out by its final twist but that's because the game is not a literal narrative Walker has far more in common with television and film characters than he does with the typical video game protagonists in games most leads are ones that we the players inhabit they're given deliberately vague backstories in plain characterization in order to make it easy for us to be on the same page and that is how most video game stories achieve their power by having you and the character be at least a similar entity at all times having the same reactions in experiencing the same troubles and triumphs but Walker isn't meant to be us and we're not meant to be him the games point isn't that we the gamer are Walker typically in games we save the day help people in the world SpecOps is point is that we the gamer have far too much in common with Walker SpecOps likely would not have been possible without the collaboration to 2k in Jaeger it was an unusual circumstance in the gaming industry and a perfect alignment of talent that came together to make something unique in an overcrowded genre but 2k is still a publisher and while two of the checkboxes provided were very open to interpretation a final one was not Jaeger did not want a multiplayer mode but it was going to happen no matter what it was a decision made early on as foretold by the interviews in 2010 that mention it but Jaeger would end up being against the idea so much that a portion of their game would be outsourced to another company darkside Game Studios was the obvious choice having also developed the multiplayer for Bioshock 2 a few years prior there is little information on the multiplayer let alone its development so any reasoning for how the game turned out to be is entirely speculative but I thought it'd be better to have an actual assessment on it rather than just saying it sucks and moving on but with a population that's emptier than a games version of Dubai help was needed thanks to viewers that follow on Twitter and/or support on patreon we were able to fill up lobbies and try every game mode and map the game had to offer it took far more effort than expected this is the buggiest multiplayer I've touched in a long time it makes early access titles look like they were made by Blizzard whereas the single-player game runs smoothly looks great and has very few issues in regards to optimisation or stability multiplayer crashes with the frequency to make the Ukrainians behind stalker cringe beyond crashes that mostly occurred in the main menu there is constant leg regardless of whose hosts and where they're from bizarre deaths and hit detection visual errors audio errors and most bizarrely mouse sensitivity changes that seem to be attached to whose hosts and this is before we get into the game itself it's a cover based shooter as in single-player but unlike most third-person multiplayer games the time to kill is effectively instant with very few circumstances where you'll be able to escape someone who shot first this encourages you to camp in state but but seeing as how the games mechanics were designed for moving the player forward there is a constant disconnect when playing online you have movement and controls that push you forward in tiny maps that have you stopping and turning with all weapons having the power of a 50 Cal this does have the presumed effect of at least putting players on equal footing but oh no being a game developer consoles in mind there is certainly no testing or changes to account for how a 20-round semi-automatic sniper with the precision of a mouse and a fire rate as fast as you can manage effectively snaps the game's balance in two are you [ __ ] kidding me and in hardcore war it's a one-shot kill forget it even the pistols are broken with their pinpoint accuracy but the worst example can be found through the game's perks specifically bloodthirst a bonus that increases your damage output with every kill by 10% if that wasn't enough the level 2 version of the perk gives you 10% armor increase with every kill this may in fact be the most nonsensical perk I've ever seen in a multiplayer shooter how something this broken made it beyond someone's inner thoughts is baffling that's actually the keyword for a lot of spec ops as multiplayer for instance the opposing factions aren't red and blue they actually have their own appearance and bonus traits based on campaign there's the damn 33rd and the Exile it's a neat idea but the differences are things like 10% XP bonus for sandstorm kills 10% pistol damage increase 30% damage reduction while on zip lines in fast ropes an XP boost in very specific scenarios isn't going to distinguish two sides from one another and damage reduction doesn't matter very much in a game where your character bites a dust if they're spat on in general there doesn't seem to be much consideration for balance or counter play based on how buggy it is I'm going to assume this is down to a very rushed development and lack of devoted resources I know it's nitpicking but when a game's end screen is this flat you know the developers were scrambling to get this out the door Bioshock 2 at least had its text fade in that and there's only six maps and so for now we're just saying multiplayer will be there it's a super important part of the game because any any any military shooter aspiring to be you know an excellent entry in in like a super competitive and you know really high-quality genre on the whole needs to have a strong multiplayer component so that's really important to us and it's going to be connected to the narrative in this game's case and it's gonna hit all the bases in terms of your kind of co-op type feel your your team based and your all types of mode so there'll be a lot to it but but there's no depth here in gameplay or content bad design is everywhere later on you can equip proximity mines instead of frag grenades and normally when you pick up a box of grenades you get three frags but you get the same amount if you use mines meaning that you can spam them everywhere on the map and they don't disappear when you die there are bonuses players get for sticking together with their teammates but they're only icons so you're never exactly clear what they even are while playing hardcore mode gets rid of all UI despite being in a game without iron sights and only a handful of weapons with scopes and because the time to kill is even faster in this mode there's no requirement for aiming not that you can in the first place even the sand manages to be more gimmicky than in a campaign because the deaths happen so quickly there's no time to aim for weak points if someone's shooting at you it's going to take longer for you to aim where the sand is then on their body and because this are practically instant there's no benefit for using the sand nearly every kill earned by it and the hours we played was either someone camping a spot waiting for someone to walk into its kill radius or by complete accident to cover everything wrong with this component would take ages so it's better to just discuss the two things that are pretty good firstly rock-throwing when playing you always have a rock you can use as a fake grenade being able to flush players out of cover thinking there's a frag into their boots so you can pop them in the head having an unlimited amount means everybody can just spam these and it kind of ruins the purpose of the mechanic but it's a neat idea and something that would fit perfectly in a tense game like battlegrounds second the mode buried with cutscenes that play at the end of each match it's pretty clear this is where darkside games to use put most of their effort and understandably so as it's a far more interesting mode than the bog-standard rally point or uplink objectives and unlike the chaos of team deathmatch has a semblance of actual teamwork in buried both teams have a high-value target they need to protect this HVT is protected by three objectives that need to be destroyed in order for the HVT to be exposed what results is a game-mode that's about defending and attacking simultaneously cooperation with your team is necessary for both as if you attack and fail to destroy one of the targets the enemy team can simply repair the damage meanwhile if you only attack you've all but assured that one player can sneak to your base and take down one of the objectives before you get back it's a legitimately cool mode and we're put into a game with better design and netcode it could be something great but the game's issue is hold the mode back from being something to hunt down the closest I've seen to this game type is skirmish and insurgency but even then the cache is destroyed or attached to your reinforcements and not your base something can be worked out have a better game takes us mode but that's unfortunately all the spec ops multiplayer is able to bring to the table the poor design and execution is only a symptom of the much bigger problem that spec ops wasn't focused on multiplayer from day one and that squeezing it in is like trying to fit dubstep into a showing of the mono Lisa oddly enough the co-op mode that was added months after launched due to having discussed co-op multiple times in years past is surprisingly enjoyable all of the levels are built around the game's momentum of pushing forward through the environment and with two players the amount of enemies is increased to deliver enough of a challenge but there's only four levels which can be completed in under an hour so in terms of replayability or content it's sadly lacking a shame because it manages to utilize spec ops as gameplay strengths in a way that the competitive multiplayer simply doesn't having actually played ours thanks to the people who watch this channel I can safely confirm spec ops the lines competitive multiplayer is bad [Music] the multiplayer is easy to ignore it's akin to attacked on DVD extra it clearly has nothing to do with the campaign nor does it make Yeager's work any less brilliant but it was where many people got their first impressions of SpecOps and were rightfully underwhelmed the multiplayer beta flew under the radar in its constant appearance didn't hype any potential customer this same issue can be applied to the game's demo for as much as many of us may miss demos there's a good reason why they so rarely come out prior to a games launch these days extra credits goes into far more detail but there's a lot more scenarios where a demo hurts a game sales and spec ops is a case in point the demo is simply the earlier levels but skipping chapter for the first time Walker brings destruction to Dubai in its citizens and the significance of shooting American soldiers has an American soldier and it's half-baked narration and story teasers simply make it appear like the ill-conceived child of Apocalypse Now and Bioshock it's been argued by many that the marketing is deliberately misleading to fool players into thinking it's just another military game but if that's true then the marketing is wildly inconsistent almost every interview emphasizes from the very start that spec ops is a narrative focused game about entering the heart of darkness the line is an intense third-person military shooter with a very strong focus on a dark and mature narrative the line is a person military-themed shooter with the focus on a dark and mature narrative Metal Gear Solid 2 is the example of a deliberate bait and switch and SpecOps doesn't have the consistency of that marketing campaign spec offices reveal trailer has the eerie and disturbing atmosphere of the game but the closer it got to launch more of the marketing traded that in favor of making the game look like everything else but without that being the plan from the get-go it simply made the game lack a consistent identity the only trailer that effectively communicates the game's tone without spoiling the experience is the journey trailer the problem this is probably the first time it's been seen by a lot of people and was released almost a full year before the game came out plus it doesn't really illustrate what type of game SpecOps is there's nothing here to inform someone that it's a third-person shooter I understand why the marketing wasn't able to be consistent for this game because it's not easy to sell play this so you feel bad isn't very compelling nor is it completely accurate spec ops is far more sophisticated than simply making the player feel like [ __ ] similar to the works it was inspired by it's an exploration of a mental state for soldiers with PTSD and gamers with a desire to feel powerful it's a narrative that begins with a large-scale objective driven plot of saving a city's population that evolves into a deeply personal tale of a man mentally torturing himself for the heinous crimes he's committed five years after its release with all of its outdated tropes clunky mechanics and story that frequently addresses the player directly I assume spec ops would become dated but in fact the opposite has occurred I love it more than I ever have it's certainly not flawless and shouldn't be treated as such it should be critiqued and discussed because there is so much that games and the industry on the whole can learn from spec ops how to make choices through your mechanics rather than cutscenes having connection and separation between the player and protagonist simultaneously telling a small-scale story in a big-budget game how not to include multiplayer how to use foreshadowing can your scenes truly affect all players how large can your meta-narrative be our plot holes okay if there's another interpretation that explains them spec ops has provided hours upon hours of discussion debate and analysis and I don't think that's going to change nor do I want it to years later SpecOps really does hold up and will always be a game that not everyone will praise but everyone should play [Music] extra special thanks to the people who showed up during the spec ops multiplayer play sessions having you for an audience is fantastic but I never want to take you guys for granted and being able to do something like this create an entire segment of a video that I previously would not have been able to make had I just been completely on my own is amazing and I hope that I get to do this more in the future the steam curation page is already at a thousand followers thank you for that and be sure to join the steam group as in the future I hope to have more multiplayer play sessions like this and reviving games that people have either forgotten or doesn't have a huge player base these days thank you for watching thank you for supporting and have a good day you [Music]

Channel: Raycevick

Views: 2,024,187

Keywords: Raycevick, CuHnadian, COG, connected, COGconnected, review, analysis, years, later, Spec, Ops, The, Line, Yager, 2K, Take-Two, Interactive, Breakdown, Critique, Look, Interview, Multiplayer, Darkside, Studios, Walt, Williams, Cory, Davis, White, phosphorus, Lugo, Adams, DJ, Chapter, PTSD, Insanity, Dark, Mature, Apocalypse, Now, Heart, Darkness, Joseph, Conrad, Konrad, Endings, Twist, Hints, Nolan, North

Id: 8dzstxE_5Rc

Length: 43min 30sec (2610 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2017