5 replies to this topic

[Metal Gear (sting)RAY]

Whenever a new military cover-based shooter comes around, it's hard to feel excited after we've already been inundated with these mechanics time and time again. But sometimes a game comes around that's difficult to judge on mechanics alone- one that just twists your view of what a game can be, what a game can mean and what a game can do.

The Line is one of these games.

A catastrophic sandstorm has obliterated the city of Dubai. American forces were sent in to evacuate, but not everyone got out in time. After the US receives a distress beacon, you- Martin Walker, and your two squad mates are sent into the city's ruins to search for survivors. What comes next, however, is far more than you bargained for. I don't want to give any spoilers here, but you will be pushed to do something really, really bad. And this isn't some kind of cheap Cole McGrathy "be Ghandi or be Hitler" morality system here either- this is somewhere around Breaking Bad and Sophie's Choice on the moral grayness scale.

The question is not whether or not you'll enjoy this game, but whether or not you should. I'll let you decide if you take that as a recommendation.


And odds are this thread will get pretty spoiler heavy, so try to play the game first if you want to talk about it here.

[Motwera]

You know, when I first heard about this game and saw that it has Dubai in the story line, I raged and bitched about it because it has Dubai in it. But now I'm a little neutral about it but still, who the genius who came up with this idea? I don't know

[Metal Gear (sting)RAY]

You know, when I first heard about this game and saw that it has Dubai in the story line, I raged and bitched about it because it has Dubai in it. But now I'm a little neutral about it but still, who the genius who came up with this idea? I don't know

What's wrong with using Dubai?

Edited by SuperStingray, 01 August 2012 - 06:14 AM.

[Motwera]

What's wrong with using Dubai?

I was living there for about 4 years, and seeing it being used in a video just like that for shooting just got me when I first saw it.
I was basically hypocrite about liking Dubai so much.

[pooshoes]

Whenever a new military cover-based shooter comes around, it's hard to feel excited after we've already been inundated with these mechanics time and time again. But sometimes a game comes around that's difficult to judge on mechanics alone- one that just twists your view of what a game can be, what a game can mean and what a game can do.

The Line is one of these games.

And yet, it really isn't.

It's still a third-person cover based military shooter, and is so inoffensively run of the mill, it doesn't do anything to make itself stand out. The set pieces and environments are mostly forgettable (you see one opulent hotel lobby filled with sand, you've seen them all), and the main characters are so bland they're not really paying attention to. Yes, you can say that the story is good, which of course it will be as it's based on Heart of Darkness. But even then it's implementation is only average at best, relying a lot on audio logs to tell the backstory. The fact that all these critics seem to falling over each other attempting to praise the game for its narrative only goes to show how poorly narrative and story are treated in games.

If you've got £30 to burn, and need 6-8 hours of entertainment (don't bother with the multiplayer), you could do worse. But other than that I wouldn't bother.

Edited by pooshoes, 01 August 2012 - 08:21 AM.

[Metal Gear (sting)RAY]

And yet, it really isn't.

It's still a third-person cover based military shooter, and is so inoffensively run of the mill, it doesn't do anything to make itself stand out. The set pieces and environments are mostly forgettable (you see one opulent hotel lobby filled with sand, you've seen them all), and the main characters are so bland they're not really paying attention to. Yes, you can say that the story is good, which of course it will be as it's based on Heart of Darkness. But even then it's implementation is only average at best, relying a lot on audio logs to tell the backstory. The fact that all these critics seem to falling over each other attempting to praise the game for its narrative only goes to show how poorly narrative and story are treated in games.

If you've got £30 to burn, and need 6-8 hours of entertainment (don't bother with the multiplayer), you could do worse. But other than that I wouldn't bother.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but I'd swear we were playing different games. First of all, sand-devasted Dubai at sunset is FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. I swear, the vistas looked like a post apocalyptic Mirror's Edge.


Also, I don't know where you're coming from with the characters- even if they sounded like your standard hardened-yet-goofy patriot squad at the beginning, there's some strong development with them as the game continues.

Spoiler

You can see watch your squad begin to question the judgement of their leader and distance themselves from his crumbling sanity yet tragically get caught in the consequences of his misguided choices. And the protagonist himself? I could go on and on about him, but for the sake of brevity, he was at best an excellent deconstruction of your standard shooter game hero and at worst an experimental deconstruction of your standard shooter game hero.

But as for the backstory, were you even paying attention at all? I only picked up about 4 or 5 audio logs throughout the whole game, and I still managed to perfectly understand the motivation behind the characters and their relationships through dialogue and actions alone. And even then, the audio logs I found were more supplementary than expository, being things like poems left behind by the antagonist or a reading of the code of conduct for the enemy soldiers Hell, Dead Space relied more on audio logs for its story than this and it tells its plot perfectly well enough without them.

And yes, by being based largely on Heart of Darkness, it's not a perfectly original story, but I do think that being a game made a major difference in how it was conveyed that it couldn't have had in any other medium. The events behind the "game changing" event occur organically within the mechanics of the game and with the total consent of the players action as opposed to preemptive menus and narration; it's not even like the airport scene in MW2 where you're assigned that mission in advance by a higher authority and even then are free to walk around without killing anyone. In The Line, it comes off as a choice you make YOURSELF by simply playing along with the rules of normal shooter game conduct. In fact, I'd be curious to see if the story would have had the same impact if it DIDN'T play out like a generic Gears clone, because I imagine its ability to deconstruct war games is dependent on it playing like one.