Done it.

Interesting little beast - not entirely successful. A lot of ideas that needed more fleshing out, and it kind of seemed like a 1st draught ready to be refined into something more subtle. The ending rescued it a lot - I've been thinking for ages that a game should pull that on its player, and it was well delivered. Except for that, the only thing that really felt fully thought through was the setting/visual design, which said a lot more than many of the 'meaningful' set pieces could manage. Decadence meets destruction - simple, but effective.

I'm also not sure they really thought how the actual gameplay fitted in with this kind of narrative - I was forcing myself through it just to see what happened but not enjoying it, and mostly finding it frustrating (maybe that's the point). Interesting also that the long loading screen between deaths seems to be an integral part of the structure, as that's where it hammers home what's going on. Almost like you're supposed to get killed a lot, hence some of the confusing sections and sudden deaths. Should the gameplay in this sort of thing be 'good' in the conventional sense, or is something more 'flawed' more appropriate? If the latter, do we really want to play it? That was always the problem with this sort of war game - if war wasn't turned into such throwaway fun, who in their right mind would want to play it in the first place?

Overall it gets more kudos for effort than execution.

regmcfly wrote:

I think the point is "look at how you just kill in the gameplay and don't think about the consequences".

Yeah, it's a comment on war games more than it is on war. I also wondered whether the rather lightweight weapons and weak explosions were deliberate, so as not to make the killing too pleasurable, but if anything the opposite would have worked better - absorbing you into it before reminding you of the consequences.

Here's the opening of that book-length analysis. Have only got about halfway through, seems like it might be worth the asking price at least

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/11/read-an-excerpt-from-killing-is-harmless-a-book-sized-reading-of-spec-ops-the-line/

Picked this up for £15 yesterday and have to say I'm really liking it. I'm at the start of chapter 8 and it all just feels a little 'odd' but in a good way. I know it's just a normal shooter and I know I'm playing it like a normal shooter but there's something about it that just feels slightly leftfield, like its maybe mocking me (&every other shooter) somehow?  It's sort of entirely derivative of every other shooter but its nodding its head and winking at me about this but isn't that all a little bit... Futile?

I thought the point was here's your bog standard war shooter game character, and then this is how he should disintegrate if he actually went through the stuff most war shooters put him through. So in effect he's supposed to be a video game character that suddenly starts experiencing the trauma of his situation. That was one of the better realised ideas in the game IMO, and perfectly in synch with the game's theme.

As I've said at the top of the page, I didn't think it was entirely successful, but the 'theme' was clearly designed as a comment on war based video games.

I'm not sure the gameplay flaws are deliberate, in fact I doubt it, but the main character design is entirely consistent and one of the things they got right.

Has anyone actually made it their goty? I thought people were just giving it nods or top five placements. Which seems fair.

I personally thought the shooting mechanics were quite tight and fun in Spec Ops. Nothing exceptional but there were few points of frustration and I played it on Suicide Mission first time through.

Excuse me, just trying to get to the end of the thread on mobile..

Bollockoff wrote:

Has anyone actually made it their goty? I thought people were just giving it nods or top five placements. Which seems fair. I personally thought the shooting mechanics were quite tight and fun in Spec Ops. Nothing exceptional but there were few points of frustration and I played it on Suicide Mission first time through.

I don't think anyone here has, but I've seen a few lists that are including it.

i agree with webbo, its not the only point but the phosphorus section was genuinely 'ok what am i doing' and i think on a replay id see more of that, there are early hints of dementia and strangeness

I actually hated this game for most of the game, it was stiff, it was awkward, and some bits were almost serious sam, but it really did dawn on me later on, esp in retrospect (some really sudden plot switches and disposals of what youd think would be main characters) how it was trying to tell you its story

The ending speaks for itself really btw,it really is like unreal, because noone could feasibly do what your character does in a game and not well, that ending... the white phosphorus attack obviously being the climax of that arc where your suspension of disbelief is stretched, breaks, and you see youve played a a game that was more than it was really, and the discomfort and annoyance of playing a game you paid to play that seemed 'mainly dumb with a bit of art' suddenly reminds you that you probably should have been using the dumb shooting bits as breaks between the art, however you feel to define that (this is not a games is art post, just that the message was more powerful than the game that contained it)

I only realised the other day that you can see Konrad's face on adverts around Dubai.

Well I missed those 'eggs'. Been meaning to go back and do a hard runthrough for maximum gscore, I wonder what else is embedded.