Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

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Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Fri Mar 30, 2018 7:55 am

link

I haven't played this yet but if gamers are to be believed it's THE GREATEST META MILITARY SHOOTER OF ALL TIME. I make no guarantees about it whatsoever, even though I'm a sucker for meta shit I've played enough to know circlejerks like undertale and doki doki are very very very niche products, and the discussion of the meta elements of the game are fourth class level at best usually. Don't expect House of Leaves. It's just Heart of Darkness.

If anyone who's played it has a review, post it here so people want to play it or whatever.

I'll probably play it some day.
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WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME. BUT YOUR CANDLE WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE IT GOES OUT -- A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT...
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Re: Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

Postby KleinerKiller » Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:31 pm

A Combustible Lemon wrote:If anyone who's played it has a review, post it here so people want to play it or whatever.


Well, fine, since you asked.

I don't know that I would call it the greatest military shooter of all time, so much as a candidate for the greatest military shooter story of all time. And I think most everyone who's played it would agree -- the gameplay is kind of shitty and generic 90% of the time. It's certainly by design to trick unaware players into a false sense of security, but the fact remains that unlike the other games you named, it's not all that fun to actually play for the most part; most of the environments are the same gorgeous-but-lifeless sandy city street, most of the shootouts play out almost identically, and there are very few standout setpiece moments that actually involve the basic gameplay mechanics (the only time I can recall that the shooting gameplay is used to great effect is in two of the four endings).

But all that's to say that I still consider it one of my favorite games ever, solely because the story and how it's implemented absolutely rocks. It doesn't start to get visibly compelling until after the halfway turning point (and the infamous "white phosphorous" scene almost everyone has at least heard about by now), but even the setup becomes pretty brilliant in retrospect once the meta shit kicks in. Said meta shit is indeed downplayed compared to something like Doki Doki, but it provides a fascinating examination of player agency, completionism, and relative morality, more along the lines of a more brutal Bioshock if Bioshock had kept digging into all of its "would you kindly?" stuff instead of dragging on to a painful and generic third act where nothing happens (hey, it's kind of like a reverse Bioshock then). The entire latter half is pretty much nonstop sadistic encounters and choices mixed in with the subpar gameplay, leading up to one of my favorite game finales and a rare choice of endings where all four are equally fitting resolutions.

It's certainly not for everyone -- those who get annoyed instead of impacted when a game tells you you did a bad thing, or those who don't tend to feel empathy for game characters because they're not real, will most likely be in the crowd that finds the story pretentious and pointless -- but I personally can't recommend it highly enough.
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Re: Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

Postby satan_n_stuff » Sun Apr 08, 2018 1:52 pm

KleinerKiller wrote:It's certainly not for everyone -- those who get annoyed instead of impacted when a game tells you you did a bad thing, or those who don't tend to feel empathy for game characters because they're not real, will most likely be in the crowd that finds the story pretentious and pointless -- but I personally can't recommend it highly enough.

It is pointless and pretentious when the only alternative to the player character making bad decisions is not playing the game. Now some people would consider that a choice, but I consider it an insult to my intelligence. Who in their right mind would buy a game only to not play it? As far as I'm concerned as long as the player has no actual choice in how the story progresses you don't get to try make them feel bad because of it, because you don't know what the player would have done had you actually given them alternative options.

It's basically the same as an actual movie trying to guilt the audience into feeling responsible for the events on screen, but nobody would stand for that because there's not even the illusion of control there. When your game has the same level of plot interactivity as a movie, the player is exactly as responsible for the plot as the movie audience is, no exceptions.
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Re: Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Sun Apr 08, 2018 2:46 pm

What do you think if it went the other way
Spoiler: show
Undertale making fun of people who watch streams as being complicit in the genocide run.


I mean, I think it's allowed, maybe the Spec Ops people just hate the genre. Don Quixote's writer did, for example.
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WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME. BUT YOUR CANDLE WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE IT GOES OUT -- A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT...
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Re: Spec-Ops: The Line free on Humblebundle

Postby Windy » Sat May 26, 2018 3:18 am

Ah this game, I remember the part where you deal with a lynch mob who wanted revenge because you launched chemical weapons at them and destroyed their water supply and doomed them all, I shot like 70 of them and launched a few grenades into the crowd because fuck Dubai
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