What immediately is striking about Spec Ops: The Line, at least when people talk about it in Internet circles is that there is a lack of understanding of why the game seems to resonate or stick with people long after playing. The Doors “The End” have subsequently been replaced with various tracks from the likes of The Black Angels, Mogwai, and NIN. With Spec Ops: The Line, things have simply been recontemporized going from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the Near East. The main antagonist is aptly named “John Konrad” and mirrors Marlon Brando’s Kurtz as a mad self-appointed despot in a foreign land. Narratively, The Line seems quite derivative as wel,l borrowing from both Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation Apocalypse Now. In other words, not the more stale and contemporary setting one would expect from a tactical shooter hoping for realism or parallels to current military operations. The Line is more fantasy then reality, taking place in a pseudo-apocalyptic Dubai where sandstorms have literally engulfed the city leaving behind a vast desert canyon with walls made up of a meshing of skyscrapers and sand.
Also aside from being under the umbrella of the Spec Ops franchise, The Line has very little in common with its initial motivations or titles which aimed to bring a “realistic” bent to the shooter genre straddling that fine line between the simulation-nature of Arma to the Michael Bay-esque abundance of Call of Duty. While bringing decaying franchises back from the dead is no unique feat, Spec Ops remains largely unknown even among veteran gamers especially given the monumental and overshadowing success of Call of Duty and Battlefield in more recent history. The last entry before The Line was released back in 2002, a whole decade earlier. To take a step back and provide a bit of background on this title, Spec Ops is, or more accurately, was a tactical shooter franchise from the late 1990s to early 2000s. In a way, often times these collectives almost act as a small mutual aid group like AA to both induct and offer support to a new victim. When it does get these brief mentions, reactions are by and large the same and countless others come out of the woodwork to recollect and share their experiences of trauma. It wasn’t a major release by any stretch but has gotten a good deal of exposure to gamers simply because it’s also one of those games that happen to pop up on just about every Steam holiday sale. Spec Ops: The Line is one of those interesting games that seemingly appears to sporadically pop up in brief mentions on places like the /v/ board of 4chan or the Steam forums whenever someone just so happens to play it for the first time.