A Spec of Ops

Spec Ops: The Line came out, and then, after it had a chance to sink in, everyone went crazy about it (where 'everyone' = the few people I read who are into gaming). There was this big twist, and how to talk about it would ruin the game, seriously you guys, you need to play this game.

Being a military shooter, I wasn't going to play this. I'm barely able to play any kind of shooter game, and military examples just don't interest me. However, now, finally... I've watched the LP. And... since I don't play military shooters, and was only watching, and already knew the twist, I can't say it blew my mind. The LPer, having played it before, wasn't showing his mind being blown either (which it might have the first time around, he didn't say).

However, I want to address one particular point. One question that continually occurred to me, but no-one answered because my questions were ignored as being from someone who isn't noticed, is: "How does this work if this is someone's first foray into military shooters?" It's supposedly such a devastating take down of the military shooter genre that I wonder if it can work if one isn't saturated in said genre.

And having watched the videos, and not being a military shooter, I might be able to get a little closer than others to answering this. What this watches is as 'here's a decent story that happens to be in the military shooter genre'. I've seen lots of games of decent stories, Mass Effect to name one that comes to mind, and yeah, I see similar 'story + shooting here'. If this is so innovative to military shooters, it's beyond me to contemplate.

I think some of it is 'hey, you military shooter, look how much mass murdering you are doing!' But since one mass murders in other genres, I'm not seeing this as needing to point fingers at this genre in particular. Perhaps I was into military shooters more?

So yes, people were up in arms, and tell me this is an amazing thing. But telling me it is amazing is about as amazing as I will work out it is, because it reminds me a lot of other big video games out there. Perhaps, then, I should stay away from military shooters if this is seen as innovative?

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