<p>The Spec Ops franchise is in a tough field for little guys. As a modern military shooter, it will find itself being defined as “Not Call of Duty” by many gamers. Even though the series has been around since the days of the original Playstation, it hasn’t appeared in this console generation or the even last, with Spec Ops: The Line being the first new game in ten years. When the demo for Spec Ops: The Line hit Xbox Live, it didn’t strike me as anything noteworthy; another third person “Army guys” game set in some middle-eastern hellhole. But a few minutes into this lengthy demo I started to notice things… My mission was to “rescue” a rogue American Colonel named “Konrad”… Why did that name and premise sound so familiar?</p>
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<p>It took me a while to see where the developers of this game were going. The brooding narrator, the war-torn third-world nation, a paranoid journalist, the natives acting oddly… Eventually I realized that I had misjudged Spec Ops: The Line. This was no generic “Army guys who shoot the Arabs” game. I was playing through Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the book that inspired Apocalypse Now!</p>
<p>The idea is long overdue. The last decade of American wars in the Middle East are suited to a retelling of this timeless story of the Western world’s forays into the more dangerous parts of the globe and the moral ambiguities that will inevitably arise. The demo only gives players a few bits of the story, but what is shown is very intriguing.</p>
<p>The gameplay isn’t quite as ambitious as the story. Spec Ops: The Line has all the features that players would expect from a third person, squad-based shooter. Players can charge into cover, vault over obstacles, and there’s even a slow-motion bullet time effect. The main character is in charge of a pair of other soldiers, and can call out simple tactical orders to them, such as designating targets for sniper kills, or where to deploy grenades. The demo even begins with a standard turret sequence as the Player mans a minigun inside a helicopter to shoot down other gunships over the city of Dubai.</p>
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<p>While the actual shooting in this demo is unremarkable, it is still competent. The demo gives players the opportunity to use different types of assault rifles, sub machines guns, shotguns and also more specialized firepower like sniper rifles and heavy machine guns. There is some physics-based gunplay that will let players shoot objects in the environment to indirectly harm enemies; an example shown off in the demo is burying enemies in sand. Sandstorms are said to be a much bigger part of the full game, but weren’t a significant part of the demo.</p>
<p>The developer obviously wants players to sink their teeth into the game, because the demo is quite long with plenty of cutscenes to make sure the story is explained. It’s available now on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, and anyone who suspects they’d enjoy some literary influences in their shooter would do well in taking a look at Spec Ops: The Line.</p>
<p>Spec Ops: The Line comes out for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on June 26th.</p>

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