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Essays 01 September 2022, 15:40

author: Darius Matusiak

Spec Ops: The Line. Games to emotionally shatter you

Table of Contents

Genre: TPP shooter

Developer: Yager Development

Release date: June 26, 2012

The beginning of Spec Ops: The Line is a bit deceptive as it foreshadows a garden-variety action shooter. But in fact, from the very first minutes, a gloomy play on our emotions begins. The main character is supposed to do a reconnaissance in the city after a sandstorm and return, without firing a single bullet. The mission, however, gets more and more complicated and brutal. Careless shooting at enemies turns into a genocide of innocent civilians inflicted by the brutal white phosphorus, with the following death of our teammates.

The game then breaks the fourth wall in successive stages, putting the blame for all this on the player. It brings about a sense of guilt, and over time, it turns out that the main character's motivations were based on hallucinations, and he himself was plunging into madness. At the end of this completely unnecessary mayhem, only pain and death remain. There are no winners, no "mission complete" screens. Inspired by the classic novel, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the creators of Spec Ops: The Line took a bit of an advantage of the naivety in our carefree approach to computer shooters, in an attempt to subvert our expectations and show the gruelling nature of armed conflicts.

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Darius Matusiak

Darius Matusiak

Graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Journalism. He started writing about games in 2013 on his blog on gameplay.pl, from where he quickly moved to the Reviews and Editorials department of Gamepressure. Sometimes he also writes about movies and technology. A gamer since the heyday of Amiga. Always a fan of races, realistic simulators and military shooters, as well as games with an engaging plot or exceptional artistic style. In his free time, he teaches how to fly in modern combat fighter simulators on his own page called Szkola Latania. A huge fan of arranging his workstation in the "minimal desk setup" style, hardware novelties and cats.

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