Spec Ops: The Line

The player can select from four difficulty levels: Walk on the Beach, Combat Op, Suicide Mission, and the hardest difficulty, FUBAR, which is only unlocked after completing the game on Suicide Mission. Various new weapons and equipment become available as the game progresses, some dropped by downed enemies. These include several different rifles, handguns, and machine guns. Some offer alternate firing modes, like attaching a suppressor or using a telescopic sight. Players can also acquire and make use of grenade launchers, hand grenades, and rocket launchers. Supply caches can be found in different parts of the game, allowing the player to refill their ammo and grenades. Whenever the player successfully shoots an enemy in the head, a slow-motion mode is activated for a short period of time. The player can also defeat enemies at close range via melee combat. Dying enemies can be executed, which grants the player additional ammo. Hiding behind cover can provide protection and prevents the player from being shot, as well as providing opportunities to blindfire or lean out to shoot enemies. As a third-person shooter with an emphasis on squad-based tactics, players can issue commands to Sergeant Lugo and Lieutenant Adams, who accompany the player for most of the game. Available commands include focusing fire on one particular target and ordering medical attention for an injured squad member. Adams can defeat enemies by using heavy gadgets or throwing grenades, while Lugo provides sniping assistance. Environmental hazards like sandstorms occasionally occur, drastically reducing the player's vision and visibility. Sand becomes a key gameplay mechanic and players can manipulate it at scripted moments, such as triggering a sand avalanche to bury enemies alive. When a grenade explodes on sand, dust clouds that can blind enemies are formed. The player needs to make moral decisions at certain points, including making choices that can determine the fate of both soldiers and civilians. These decisions affect the relationship between the player character Martin Walker and his squadmates, and will cause them to react differently. The game incorporates several subtle effects to visualize the lead character's increasing mental and physical distress; alongside the degradation of their combat uniforms, Walker suffers visual and auditory hallucinations later in the game, and his executions of enemies become more violent. The orders and shouts to his team become increasingly angry and ragged in contrast to his stern but collected orders at the outset. His kill confirmations of enemies corrupts from professional in the beginning to psychotic. Similarly, loading screens initially display helpful gameplay hints for the player, but as the game progresses, the text becomes increasingly hostile towards Walker's actions, and sometimes breaks the fourth wall by addressing the player directly. In nearly every level, players can collect Intel items that provide the player with information on the events preceding the main story, as well as insight into the psyche and motivations of certain characters. Multiplayer Set before the events of the campaign, the competitive multiplayer divides players into two different teams: The Exiles and The Damned. Both teams have their respective perks. Six classes are available for players to choose: Gunner, Medic, Scavenger, Breacher, Sniper and Officer. Each have their own upgrades and advantages. Environmental hazards, including sandstorms, may also occur during a multiplayer match. The game modes featured in the multiplayer include: ==Synopsis==

Setting Six months prior to the game's events, the worst series of sandstorms in recorded history began across Dubai. The city's politicians and wealthy elite downplayed the situation before secretly evacuating, leaving countless Emiratis and foreign migrant workers behind as the city was overwhelmed by the surrounding desert. Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad (Bruce Boxleitner), the decorated but PTSD-troubled commander of the "Damned 33rd" Infantry Battalion of the United States Army, was returning home with his unit from Afghanistan when the storms struck. Konrad volunteered the 33rd to help relief efforts, defying orders by the Army to abandon the city and its refugees and deserting with the entire battalion. The storms intensified and a massive storm wall engulfed Dubai, disrupting surveillance, air travel, and all but the strongest of radio broadcasts. Struggling to maintain order amid 80mph (128km/h) winds, riots, and dwindling resources, the 33rd declared martial law and began committing atrocities on the civilian population. Aggrieved by this, the staff of the 33rd staged a coup d'etat against Konrad but were defeated, while the remnants are branded as "the Exiled". The CIA then sent in a black ops squad to investigate, and as part of their plan organized the locals into insurgents to attack the 33rd, eventually resulting in a ceasefire. The last communication from Dubai stated that the Exiled 33rd was attempting to lead a caravan out of the city. The caravan never arrived, and soon afterward, the United Arab Emirates declared Dubai a no-man's-land. All travel to the city was barred, the 33rd was publicly disavowed for treason, and no further news left the city. Two weeks before the start of the story, a looped radio signal finally penetrated the storm wall. Its message was brief: "This is Colonel John Konrad, United States Army. Attempted evacuation of Dubai ended in complete failure. Death toll... too many." The United States military decides to covertly send in an elite three-man Delta Force team to carry out reconnaissance, led by Captain Martin Walker (Nolan North), who served alongside Konrad in Afghanistan. Walker, First Lieutenant Alphonso Adams (Christopher Reid), and Staff Sergeant John Lugo (Omid Abtahi), are ordered to confirm the presence of any survivors, then immediately radio for extraction. Plot The game begins in medias res with Walker, Adams, and Lugo flying in a helicopter past the skyscrapers of Dubai, shooting down several pursuing helicopters until a sudden sandstorm forms, causing one of the pursuers to spin out of control and crash into the trio. The story then jumps back to the start, with Delta traversing the storm wall to the outskirts of a mostly buried Dubai. They later come into contact and engage a group of insurgents (who believe them to be with the Damned 33rd) led by CIA agents, who have renewed conflict with what remains of the 33rd. Delta attempts to aid the 33rd, but are mistaken for CIA and treated as hostiles. The team also hears broadcasts by the Radioman (Jake Busey), a former journalist turned DJ who was once embedded with the 33rd and now speaks on their behalf. After seeing civilians rounded up by the 33rd, Walker elects to disobey orders and find Konrad. Receiving a broadcast of CIA agent Daniels being interrogated by the 33rd, the team chooses to intervene. Tracing the signal's origin, they find Daniels already dead; the broadcast was a trap set for fellow CIA agent, Rick Gould. Gould helps Delta escape, but is later captured and killed while assaulting a location called the Gate. The team heads there and continues the attack. Finding it heavily guarded by the 33rd, the team employs white phosphorus to obliterate their opposition and advance further into the city. While walking through the aftermath, they realize they accidentally killed a group of civilians moved to the Gate for shelter by the 33rd. Vowing revenge, Walker blames Konrad and the 33rd. Finding Konrad's executed command team, Walker uses a small radio to communicate with who he believes to be Konrad himself, who challenges the morality of his actions throughout the story. Konrad then manipulates Walker into executing an Emirati survivor or a 33rd soldier, who both committed serious crimes. Delta subsequently meet CIA agent Jeff Riggs, who is leading a raid on the city's last water supply. Delta aids Riggs with the aim of crippling the 33rd's operations, but Riggs destroys the supply instead, admitting he wanted to wipe out the remaining population of Dubai to cover up the atrocities of the 33rd, fearing that their revelation would lead to the region declaring war on the United States. With the city's residents now facing death from dehydration, Delta heads to the radio tower to silence the Radioman. After Lugo executes the Radioman, Walker informs the city of Delta's planned evacuation effort. Adams commandeers a Black Hawk helicopter to escape the building, and Walker destroys the radio tower as they flee the scene, leading to the helicopter sequence from the opening of the game (which Walker seems to remember). After the aforementioned crash, Walker awakens in the middle of the desert and reunites with Adams, but is too late to stop Lugo from being lynched by a mob of civilians. Walker and Adams make their way to the Dubai Seaside tower (a fictional version of the Burj Khalifa) to confront Konrad, but are soon pinned down by the last of his men. Walker, who surrenders, is pushed to safety by Adams, who fights to the death. Walker stumbles inside the tower, where the remnants of the 33rd surrender to him. Walker finally meets Konrad at his penthouse. Konrad appears to be the charismatic, villainous force behind the atrocities that Walker was hoping for, until Walker finds his decaying corpse on the penthouse deck. Walker finds that Konrad committed suicide after his failed evacuation effort, and he has been communicating with a hallucination of Konrad created in his mind following the white phosphorus strike; a flashback shows that the radio he used for this purpose lacked a battery and was thus unpowered. Rationalizing the actions he had witnessed and carried out, Walker distorted many subsequent events of the game to make Konrad look responsible. With this revelation, "Konrad" forces Walker, at gunpoint, to decide once and for all if he is to blame for his actions in Dubai. Endings There are four possible endings. Walker shooting himself or allowing "Konrad" to shoot him will immediately end the story, with Walker's and Konrad's corpses shown together on the penthouse deck and Konrad's original broadcast playing as the camera pans over to a burning Dubai. If Walker instead shoots "Konrad", he disappears after telling Walker that he can still return home despite everything he has done. After the 33rd surrendering is shown to be a figment of Walker's imagination, Walker uses Konrad's radio to request immediate evacuation of Dubai. A post-credits epilogue shows a convoy of Army rescue Humvees locating a shellshocked Walker sitting near the Dubai Seaside wearing Konrad's uniform and brandishing an AA-12. Walker can either concede to the patrol or open fire on them. If Walker relinquishes his weapon, he evacuates with the patrol, and has a conversation with one of the soldiers where he questions his status. If Walker is killed by the patrol, he dies in a pool of blood, recalling a conversation between himself and Konrad during the War in Afghanistan where Walker casually remarked about returning home, but Konrad criticized him, claiming soldiers "do what's necessary" and then die. If Walker kills the entire patrol, he uses their radio to greet Army command with "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai", one of the first statements Walker said to his team as well as one of the first statements "Konrad" said to Walker. Walker then returns to the Dubai Seaside as the camera pans to a ruined Dubai. ==Development==

Background Following the release of several Spec Ops games in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the series met with low sales and poor reviews, causing a halt to the production of successive games. In 2003, Take-Two mentioned in their financial results that Rockstar Games was working on the franchise, but in 2004 the project was cancelled. It was later revealed that Rockstar Vancouver would have developed the canceled project, with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme working on the soundtrack. From 2005 to 2009, the series remained largely unmentioned, with the rights still fully belonging to Take-Two. In 2006, German-based Yager Development pitched a cover-based shooter to publisher 2K Games, who rejected the original concept of futuristic soldiers without Dubai as a setting. However, 2K offered them a chance to develop a reboot for the Spec Ops series, promising that they would have a lot of creative freedom. Development began in early 2007, with most other fundamentals of the initial game intact. While the game is an installment in the Spec Ops series, the team chose to use new ideas and intentionally avoided using existing elements of the franchise. Narrative design The developers drew inspiration from multiple media. The set-up and the game's foundation was inspired by Heart of Darkness, whose story reveals the changes a person undergoes in chaotic times. The relationship between Walker and his squad mates was inspired by HBO's Generation Kill, and the post-war traumatic experience suffered by Walker was inspired by ''Jacob's Ladder''. The transformation of the squad's mentality serves as an important plot device and has a significant narrative context. The changes in the cleanliness of their clothing, and their reactions toward each other, help to illustrate the story. To make the transformation process clear, the team found it necessary to show the characters' personality at the beginning of the game in order to create a strong contrast. Combat sequences sometimes force players to make split-second decisions and accept whatever the consequences are. Through these choices, the team hoped to have prompted players to examine their own inner emotions, and provided different experiences for players without having a branching storyline. Replay value was also considered when the development team was designing these choices. The team also added conversations between enemy soldiers in an attempt to humanize them. However, 2K approved their vision even when the team thought they had pushed the narrative to extremes. The city of Dubai is filled with graffiti, which is used to give players information regarding the factions and the backstory. According to Yager, the graffiti was designed to give players a perspective that is different from the main game, and to help make the location more realistic. The team also hoped to make players feel lost. As a result, the team added hallucinations to the game. To prevent the sand mechanics from turning gimmicky, the team introduced multiple ways for players to use sand as a weapon, such as the player's ability to trigger dust clouds by throwing grenades on sand and cause a sand avalanche by shooting weak structures and supports. In addition, the team added several scripted sequences regarding sand to keep the game dynamic. The occurrence of these moments were decided based on the game's production value. The game featured advanced artificial intelligence due to the inclusion of a squad command system. Adams and Lugo will assist Walker in battles and react to the battle situation accordingly even if they are not given any orders. They will also analyse the situation when instructed and decide the best approach to defeat enemies. The battle command system was designed to be accessible and easy to use, so that players would not have to spend a lot of time managing the squad. The menu screen music is a live recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner", performed by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. To establish the character of the Radioman, the team added licensed music, including "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas and Mogwai's "Glasgow Mega-Snake". Multiplayer Although Spec Ops: The Line has a strong single-player focus, it also features multiplayer components. Yager was only responsible for the single-player campaign; the multiplayer was outsourced to Darkside Game Studios. The multiplayer team at 2K Games, which previously developed the multiplayer of BioShock 2, also assisted in creating the multiplayer. The president of Darkside Game Studios, Hugh Falk, responded by calling Davis' opinion "outlying". He added that Darkside participated in the project towards the end of the development cycle and that they had to revamp the entire multiplayer system within tight deadlines. Davis later claimed that his comments were not directed at Darkside Game Studios, and that he is satisfied with their final product after a long and troubled development cycle. The game originally did not have a cooperative multiplayer mode, as the development team thought that it would distract from the tonally darker levels of the single-player campaign, not matching the game's narrative. ==Release and marketing==

On December 12, 2009, a ninth game in the series was announced at the Spike Video Game Awards; a trailer depicted several minutes of gameplay and showed off the setting. A subsequent press release detailed the premise, other game features, and a possible 2011 release date. An official site was soon launched, and a new trailer was released in November 2011. It was later delayed to the first or second quarter of 2012, before the final fixed release date was announced. Spec Ops: The Line was released on June 26, 2012, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released on March 13, 2014, for OS X. This version was developed by Digital Tribe Games. No news about the game was made available for 18 months after it was initially announced. A playable demo, which featured two chapters from the beginning of the campaign, was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 8, 2012. According to Williams, the game was difficult to market, as the team wanted to prevent spoiling the narrative yet encourage people to buy the game. He added that the demo they released was unrepresentative of the final game. Williams expected the game to be sold through word of mouth promotion and that it would eventually become a cult classic. ==Reception==

Critical reception Reviews of Spec Ops: The Line were mostly positive, with many critics praising the narrative, themes, and the provocative take on violence in video games, but noted that it failed to innovate, present a strong multiplayer component, and felt tonally uneven. Many critics consider it to be underrated, or overlooked. Previews of the game, as well as the game itself, were banned in the United Arab Emirates for the depiction of Dubai in a state of destruction. The overall gameplay received mixed reviews. Some critics believed that the gameplay was enjoyable, serviceable and acceptable by modern standards, unbalanced difficulty level, and sudden difficulty spike. Brandon Justice from Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that he expected the game to look "bland" due to its setting, but he was surprised at how much variety and color there was. Many critics thought it was a bold attempt by Yager and that the story about mistakes and consequences allowed the narrative to exceed its competitors in terms of quality. Some critics believe that Spec Ops: The Line does not intend the combat to be a fun experience for the player, citing the contrast between its messaging and its rather formulaic gameplay, but rather that its aims were to engage the player by critiquing the shooter genre, claiming it to be removed from reality and providing players with an unrealistic, morally dichotomous, escapist fantasy. The scene depicting the use of white phosphorus has been the subject of much scrutiny due to imagery that includes the corpse of a mother clutching her child, and was described as "troubling". In response to complaints that the massacre was unnecessary or exploitative, Williams justified the scene by saying that the plot device was intended to evoke players' anger, and that a valid way to end the game is simply for the player to put the controller down and stop playing. Nonetheless, the sequence is considered to be a defining moment of the story, and is praised by many critics. Davis added that the game received a positive response from war veterans and their families for its depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder and its portrayals of soldiers and civilians. In 2014, Former IGN Senior Editor Colin Moriarty included Spec Ops: The Line in his list of Top 25 Favourite Games of All Time. He wrote, "What I found underneath its bro-shooter façade was perhaps one of the best stories I've ever experienced in a game, all built around an entirely awesome third-person cover-based shooter. Spec Ops is underrated, and it will never see a sequel (nor should it), but it's a must-play for the story alone." Simon Bramble from GamesRadar in 2017 called it "haunting" and "thought-provoking", writing that the events in the game left a very strong and lasting impression even five years following its release. In 2022, David Wildgoose from GameSpot wrote that the game subverted genre expectations and described it as the "best exploration of bloodlust" in games, and wrote that "Spec Ops: The Line is unwavering in its commitment to the idea that not only is the protagonist of a military shooter a psychopath, but that our demand for and enjoyment of them reveals something deeply ugly about our culture". Retrospectively, Spec Ops: The Line was considered to be an influential game, and its release led to further critiques on modern military shooters. Sales The game debuted at No. 3 in the UK retail sales chart during its first week of release, behind Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes and The Amazing Spider-Man. Spec Ops: The Line was a commercial failure, selling less than anticipated by Take-Two. The sales of Spec Ops: The Line, combined with Max Payne 3, were lower than the combined sales of L.A. Noire and Duke Nukem Forever. The low sales of the title contributed to Take-Two's disappointing financial results in fiscal year 2013. At the 2012 Inside Gaming Awards, it won Best Narrative and was nominated for Best Game Cinematography. At IGN's Best of 2012 Awards, it won Best PC Story and Best PS3 Story, and also received nominations for Best Overall Story, Best PS3 Action Game, Best Xbox 360 Shooter Game, and Best Xbox 360 Story. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Spec Ops: The Line for "Outstanding Achievement in Story" at the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. ==Future==

According to Yager Development, 2K never discussed the chance of developing a sequel during the game's development. Team members expressed a desire to move on and develop a game that has a much lighter tone. == References ==