The Most Underrated, Overlooked Third-Person Shooter Turns 10 Today

Games The Most Underrated, Overlooked Third-Person Shooter Turns 10 Today Matt Gardner Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A British writer covering indie and retro gaming, esports, and more. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jun 26, 2022, 12:18pm EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ remains one of the greatest games ever made. 2K Games / Yager Development In a gaming world ruled by social media, filled with spoilers, and oversaturated with information and opinion about even the most insignificant things, it can be difficult to be truly taken by surprise. Yet on this day ten years ago, Spec Ops: The Line emerged from relative obscurity, amid a heavily packed field of triple-A games, to bowl over nearly every person lucky enough to stumble upon it.

Arriving with little-to-no fanfare on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on June 26, 2012, Spec Ops: The Line –the last-ever game in an otherwise unremarkable ten-strong franchise of tactical shooters –not only revolutionized its series, but raised the bar for narrative storytelling to such a degree that it continues to set a standard one decade after its release. It’s all the more galling that it wasn’t a commercial or critical success–and it would be the last Spec Ops outing, despite arguably deserving a place in the top 100 games of all time. Drawing direct influences from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now , Spec Ops: The Line dropped you into the thick of the action in a post-apocalyptic Dubai, ravaged by unprecedented sandstorms six months before the game took place, turning the once shining city into a no man’s land.

If you’re still to play it, its story is captivating, but only sets the stage for something all the more gripping. While the city’s elite secretly evacuated, locals and migrant workers alike were left behind. Luckily, the “Damned 33rd” U.

S. infantry, led by the PTSD-affected Colonel John Konrad, volunteered his unit to stop by on their way home from Afghanistan. Things soon went south; defying direct orders to abandon the city and trapped refugees, the 33rd then lost control in the face of 80mph winds, a lack of water, and riots.

MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry The 33rd declared martial law, with reports of atrocities against civilians; members of the unit then staged a coup d’etat against Konrad, but lost. Fearing massive reputational damage, the CIA sent a black ops squad to attack the 33rd and guarantee a ceasefire. Finally, two weeks before Spec Ops: The Line began, a looped radio signal from Konrad himself was able to escape the storm wall, offering potential closure for the military.

You assume the role of Captain Martin Walker, voiced to perfection by acting legend Nolan North, and a character so complex, he has his own Wikipedia page . As the leader of a covert three-person Delta Force unit, you’re sent by the U. S.

Army to investigate the aftermath. Using Gears -style team-based cover-based shooting, everything seems relatively straightforward. Additional mechanics, such as the ability to shoot out windows filled with sand to kill larger numbers of enemies, were a neat addition.

But then, things soon take a turn. Spec Ops: The Line , which fully embraces the deep, dark mental health themes of its key influencers, soon sees Walker–and you–question reality itself. Dubai is chaos.

You don’t know who you’re fighting, or why. Decision making is done on the fly, with disastrous consequences. Dubai is a lonely place in ‘Spec Ops: The Line’.

2K Games / Yager Development For all the pearl-clutching responses to No Russian – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ’s most (in)famous mission–the earth-shattering, harrowing white phosphorus sequence of Spec Ops: The Line is simultaneously ten times more heartbreaking, and important, to the game’s narrative. Without spoiling the scene for newcomers–and good lord, best of luck when you face it–it essentially frames both physical and mental challenges you face as Walker, and as a gamer, for the rest of the experience. In those battles and exploration sections that follow, Lugo and Adams, your partners, increasingly argue with your decisions and choices: conversations you never truly appreciate until those end credits roll.

You stop trusting your surroundings, and rightly so. You’ll be sure that a tree had leaves. You’ll be utterly certain in your decision making, but then have the rug pulled from beneath your unsteady feet.

You’ll trust people, until you realize you’re the loneliest person on the planet. On a personal level, Spec Ops: The Line is one of only a handful of games that got inside my head so much, I was forced to switch it off and take ten minutes just to process my emotions–I literally jumped forward, mid-battle, to switch it off at the console, because I was so freaked out. Yet this is testament to an experience that’s expertly crafted to thoroughly get under your skin and make you not only hate the situation you’re put in, but yourself, for making decisions in the face of what ultimately relies on the illusion of free will.

You’ll walk away feeling simultaneously unfulfilled and entirely blown away by its storytelling. All its four endings are superb–even if one stands out as the “real” conclusion to the tale–but an overriding feeling remains: nothing before, or since, has replicated its formula. It’s one of a kind.

‘Spec Ops: The Line’ was not backwards in coming forwards. 2K Games / Yager Development Despite its cult following, Spec Ops: The Line remains one of the most overlooked and underrated third-person games in recent gaming history. Admittedly, it was a comparatively obscure addition to a packed field with similar titles reaching their prime, or about to make waves.

It garnered solid mid-70s across different platforms on Metacritic , arriving at a time when compelling third-person action games were all the rage: Mass Effect , Dead Space , Gears of War , Tomb Raider , Uncharted , and Saints Row , to name just a few. Spec Ops: The Line seemed, at least on the surface, to be a relatively bog-standard shooter. Those who were fortunate enough to pick it up, whether intrigued by the story, or out of sheer luck in a sale (as I did), soon learned it was so much more than another attempt to cash in on a popular subgenre.

Not that it did cash in; it was considered a failure in simple business terms, and so ended the Spec Ops franchise. Aside from PC, where it’s 80% off in the Steam sale , you can play Spec Ops: The Line on current gen consoles–on the Xbox Series X/S, at least, courtesy of backwards compatibility. It’s regularly on sale, dropping to the $6 mark , and you can pick up a physical copy for just a few bucks.

Still, even at its $29. 99 standard price tag on the Microsoft Store , it’s a steal. No, it’s more than that: it’s an essential experience.

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