Time extended: Spec Ops: The Line (mini-review)

I saw this game on a lot of "best game of 2012" lists, so I bought it last month from amazon.com for PC/Steam (it was $10 together with 2 other games I think).

I'm not a big fan of military shooters to be honest, but from what I've read about the game, it's not quite your average Call of Duty game, and the story is also about the morality of war and violence. I certainly liked the sound of that!

But even then, it might be "different" but that doesn't automatically makes it good. So, I started playing it a week ago, and finished the game after a little over 6 hours of play time (on normal difficulty).

I absolutely loved the setting. Dubai more or less destroyed by a huge sandstorm gives the game a bit of an apocalyptic atmosphere, which I always enjoy in videogames and other media.
It plays out like a typical military squad shooter for the most part, so expect to hear things like clicks, MO, and things like that.

The actual gameplay (in which I mean the actual running and gunning) is alright, but in no way exceptional on its own. If it weren't for the setpieces, story and very dark last hour or two of the game, it would've been an average game. The best thing you can do is go on spoiler free, but even when you know what's going to happen, the journey you make in the game, and the end result, is very satisfying. I don't know how others felt about it, but I was sort of...emotionally tired at the end of the game. Calling it shell-shocked would be an exaggeration, but certainly the feeling was similar. In those 6 hours you see some awful things, you do some awful things, and in the end you've killed hundreds of people, for what, exactly?

I'd recommend this game even to people who aren't into military shooters. The first two hours or so might be typical military shooter stuff and mostly very cliché, but later on it gets a lot darker, and once you get what the developers tried to do with this game, you'll enjoy the ride. Like I said, the setting and atmosphere are great, and outweigh the somewhat average gunplay.

I took some pictures while playing, I guess some are sort of spoiler-ish as they're taken in the last 2 hours or so of the game, but it doesn't reveal anything story-related.