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Review: Spec Ops: The Line [Xbox 360]

Spec Ops: The Line
Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer: Yager Development; Darkside Game Studios
Publisher: 2K Games
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2012
Completed: 3 March 2016

Video games have always had a fascination with war, but few actually delve into the psychological effects of it.  Most of the time, combat is portrayed with a hefty dose of machismo and explosions straight out of an action movie to dilute the fact that you're killing virtual representations of people or things.  Spec Ops: The Line bucks this trend with an unforgettable, haunting story about the horrors of war and the things men are forced to do on the battlefield.

Captain Martin Walker and his squadmates Lieutenant Adams and Sergeant Lugo are sent into Dubai on a search and rescue mission.  Their primary objective is to locate survivors of the city ravaged by sandstorms and war after the 33rd Battalion, led by Walker's former commander John Konrad, seemingly failed in their evacuation attempt.  Walker's team is there mostly for reconnaissance, but they soon find themselves fighting for their lives against not only hostile enemies, but their own soldiers when it seems like the 33rd went rogue.  Of course, not everything is always as it seems.

As a game, The Line is little more than a Gears of War clone - a cover-based third-person tactical shooter.  It plays nearly identically, giving you the option to issue simple commands to your squadmates, and sprinting between cover points to advance on the field as you pop out to fire a few rounds between enemy fire.  Heck, even the icons displayed on screen are nearly identical.  Just about the only things missing are Gears' signature chainsaw-bayonet and the active reload system.  There are even those on-rails segments where you man a turret as another member of your squad pilots a vehicle of some kind.

What separates The Line from Gears is its absolutely incredible story.  As your mission becomes more complicated, so do the choices you have to make.  Do you allow Konrad's men to kill a civilian who stole water, a capital crime, or a fellow American soldier who slaughtered the man's family as punishment?  More importantly, the game questions how you live with the consequences of your actions. 

One particularly horrifying moment comes in the aftermath of a life-or-death situation.  Heavily outnumbered beyond measure, Walker issues the order to his comrades to fire mortars of white phosphorous into the battlefield.  The gruesome outcome leaves a lasting impression, even in a video game, because it drives home the old adage that war is truly hell, and those who've survived it have likely seen and done things the rest of us can't even imagine.

The game's finale is a stroke of genius that ranks right up there with Bioshock's most famous plot twist, and left me chilled to the bone.  There are four possible outcomes of the game's ending, and they're all worth seeing, but don't expect any of them to be happy. 

Ultimately, The Line is still a video game at heart, with all the tropes that entails.  Ducking behind cover will regenerate your health upon being riddled with bullets, and you can inject your fallen teammates with a syringe that instantly has them back on their feet.  You pick up weapons and ammunition from fallen enemies, though you can only carry two guns at a time, and if you see a rare heavy weapon, you can bet it will be useful in just a few seconds so you'd better take it. 

To its credit, the AI is aggressive and keeps things exciting.  They're excellent at using grenades to flush you out of cover, good at flanking, and they're fairly skilled marksmen as well.  This makes every encounter a primal fight for survival, which serves the story. 

There are also a few great setpieces that, while not really in line with the game's sobering themes, are exciting nonetheless.  Bringing down a giant tower from a helicopter's mounted turret or covering Adams and Lugo from the opposite side of the field while they fight for their lives were both thrilling moments.  The game even opens with a high octane helicopter escape that sets the tone for the action.

There are some hiccups too.  Vaulting over or ducking behind waist-high cover doesn't always work when you want or need it to, and this will likely force a few reloads for most players.  It's not quite as refined as the Gears games it apes. 

One major issue is that the gameplay that drives such a thought-provoking story is often unabashedly similar to other macho war games.  The firefights are often intense and thrilling, but the game's execution moves stand at odds with its desire to tell a meaningful story about the brutality and inhumanity of combat.  One moment we're expected to be conflicted about letting a supposed ally with ulterior motives burn to death or shooting him to spare him that pain, then the next we're getting ammo bonuses for finishing off a man crawling on his stomach on the battlefield. 

In the technical department, The Line looks OK, but not great.  Dubai itself is pretty, from the rolling hills of sand to its opulent hotels and office buildings, but the character models and their textures look rather low-res.  As the game progresses, Walker's face becomes more bloodied, burned, and scarred, but the textures are just an ugly mess. 

The audio is also just OK - meaning perfectly serviceable, but nothing special.  Though it does feature some great licensed tunes that fit the sequences they're placed in - specifically one of my favorite Mogwai tracks during an intense and long firefight - most of the original music is forgettable.  The voice acting is mostly good, as one might expect from gaming staple Nolan North in the lead role, and Tron himself, Bruce Boxleitner, gives an inspired performance as Konrad. 

It may look and play like a Gears of War ripoff, but Spec Ops: The Line manages to distinguish itself thanks to the superb, memorable story.  Some of the more typical design choices are distracting, but never enough to dull the impact of the game's phenomenal ending.  It's hard to say The Line is a "fun" game in the traditional sense because the story is so entwined in the gameplay that you start to think about all the virtual soldiers you're shooting, and as the casualties amass, it begins to make you feel a little sick - and that's the point.  Games often portray killing as a meaningless act; The Line wants to remind you that's not, even when it's your duty as a soldier.  With each life you take, you stand to lose a little of your own humanity, and when the dust has settled you have to live with your choices.  I'm just glad I only have to make them in a video game.

Spec Ops: The Line was completed on an Xbox 360 with no cheats.

Review: F.E.A.R.[Xbox 360]

F.E.A.R.
Xbox 360

Developer: Monolith/Day One Studios
Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games
Rated: M for Mature
Released: 2006
Completed: 29 October 2015

When F.E.A.R. first came out on PCs ten years ago it was known for its cutting edge graphics, aggressive artificial intelligence, and demanding system requirements.  Countless shooters have come and gone in the intervening years, but few have stuck with me the way F.E.A.R. has.  It's been nearly a decade since the last time I beat it, but I'm pleased to say it's still one of the best games in its genre.

First-person shooters are generally not known for their engrossing stories, but F.E.A.R. is one of the best exceptions.  As the nameless point man for the First Encounter Assault Recon team (see what they did there?), you and your squad are tasked with investigating paranormal activities and negating the threats they might pose.  In this case, your job, such as it is, is to track down an escaped cannibalistic psychopath named Paxton Fettel whose telepathic abilities allow him to control an army of genetically engineered soldiers.  As you track Fettel and fight through waves of heavy resistance, you'll uncover the dark secret of the Armacham Technologies corporation and their twisted experiments involving a little girl named Alma. 

F.E.A.R.'s story is genuinely captivating.  Told through a combination of scripted in-game events, telepathic messages from Fettel, and collectibles such as answering machine messages and laptops with encrypted data, Alma's story - and how it ties into the primary protagonist and antagonist - is horrifying, which makes her appearances in game that much more effective.  With a name like F.E.A.R., you can bet this is a scary game.  Alma is an intangible threat - always making her presence known without directly impacting the player.  It's just enough to keep you on edge, waiting for the next glimpse of the little girl in the red dress peeking around the corner or suddenly sharing an elevator car with you before vanishing into thin air.

Alma's look owes everything to Japanese horror films such as The Ring and The Grudge.  Long black hair covers her face, and she takes on the form of both a seemingly harmless little girl and an older, grotesque teenaged version whose emaciated body is covered with blood and scars.  It's all very effective while you're creeping through the darkened corridors of Armacham's offices and industrial complexes. 

Which brings us to F.E.A.R.'s biggest failing - the environments.  The game's lighting is still breathtaking and sets the mood perfectly, keeping you on your toes and constantly clicking your headlamp on to check every dark corner, but the environments themselves are comparatively dull.  Office cubicles, workshops, concrete corridors and service tunnels, sterile laboratories - it all has a very been there, done that feel.  The relatively low resolution textures don't help matters.  Unlike Monolith's 360 launch title Condemned: Criminal Origins, much of the game's signage is unreadable.  This certainly isn't a deal-breaker, but the 360 is capable of much better than this.

That said, the environments were designed specifically to coexist with the game's absolutely merciless AI.  F.E.A.R. still has some of the best, smartest, and most ruthless enemies ever seen in a shooter.  Their aim is accurate, and bullets chew through your health and armor much faster than most games.  They'll dive behind cover and if you pin them down, they'll fire blindly from behind it.  They'll toss grenades with deadly efficiency to force you out of your vantage point.  If you're stuck in a spot with multiple points of entry, you'd better have eyes in the back of your head because they'll send a few squad members to flank. 

Circle-strafing is not a strategy in F.E.A.R., it's a guaranteed game over.  F.E.A.R. is about intelligent combat - finding a good cover spot and using the life-saving lean mechanic to peak out and squeeze off a few rounds, then ducking back to reload.  Tossing grenades isn't just about blowing enemies up, but forcing them to change positions so you can get a better shot at them.  You can carry three firearms at a time, and finding a balance is critical for both close quarters and long range combat. 

When all else fails, you can always enter slow motion.  Yes, like Max Payne, the point man has his own superhuman reflexes that allow him to slow down time, making a frontal assault a viable option if you've noted where your targets are before emerging from cover.  It's not invincibility mode, though.  You will still take damage, and it runs out fairly quickly, making management of the ability as important as making sure your weapon is loaded. 

As the protracted battles rage on, bullets will tear into walls and send chunks of wood flying.  Sparks fly, dust, debris, and gun smoke fill the air and choke your vision.  F.E.A.R.'s environmental graphics may not be cutting edge anymore, but its particle effects and volumetric fog sure are.  There are times during F.E.A.R.'s kinetic gunplay where your vision is completely obscured.  You can wait for the room to clear, but that gives the enemy a chance to advance upon your position.  The firefights in F.E.A.R. are, beyond any doubt, the most intense and exciting of any shooter I've ever played.  It's still the benchmark all these years later because of how tactical it truly is.

The visuals do come at a price.  The framerate dips fairly frequently.  It's never enough to be problematic, but it's definitely noticeable.  Since it was a fairly early release in the Xbox 360's life cycle, it's obvious developers hadn't learned how to fully push the system's capabilities.

Sound design is incredibly important in a horror game and in shooters, and F.E.A.R. doesn't disappoint here either.  The most impressive effects are the guns themselves.  Every weapon, without exception, sounds spectacular.  The shotgun gives off a deafening blast, the machine pistol's rapid-fire chattering will leave a din in your ears, and shell casings can be heard clattering to the floor all around you.  Enemy soldiers coordinate their attack, warning each other of your movements, calling out orders, and occasionally expressing dismay as you thin out their ranks. 

The sound during quiet moments is even more effective.  Unseen forces will knock things off a shelf behind you, causing you to spin around and investigate.  Your radio will fuzz with static when paranormal events occur, usually accompanied by the sounds of a crying child.  The combination of great sound effects, eerie music, and an incredible use of light and shadow keeps you constantly on edge.

Since it was originally designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, the controls do take a little time getting used to.  Auto aim is pretty generous, and it can sometimes direct itself away from the target you want to shoot at.  The headlamp is mapped to down on the directional pad, and this is somewhat annoying because it's used so frequently and it requires you to take your thumb off either of the analog sticks.  The bigger issue is that leaning left or right is also mapped to the appropriate direction on the d-pad.  It works, but it's not at all ideal.  Regardless, I have to give Day One Studios credit for an overall smart button layout.  For example, mapping health packs to the Y button instead of the d-pad, which allows the player to quickly heal and still run to avoid enemy fire.  That could make all the difference in a chaotic battle.

F.E.A.R. is, in every sense, a classic in my opinion.  It's a shame the series has been all but forgotten after several sequels that failed to live up to the high bar set by the first entry.  This is as intense an experience as you can have, both for its ferocious combat and its excellent and utterly disturbing story. 

F.E.A.R. was completed on an Xbox 360 with no cheats.

Review: Alan Wake [Xbox 360]

Alan Wake
Xbox 360

Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Rated: T for Teen
Released: 2010
Completed: 26 October 2015

I'll just cut right to the chase: I love Alan Wake.  Remedy's psychological thriller is one of my favorite games of the last console generation.  Inspired by The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, and the works of Stephen King, Alan Wake is a surreal journey into darkness with some of the best tech of the generation.

Alan Wake, like King who is heavily referenced throughout the game, is a writer.  He writes mostly gritty crime novels about a hard-boiled New York detective named Alex Casey - an obvious reference to Remedy's Max Payne series - but he has suffered from a two year long bout of writer's block.  The help him break out of his slump, Alan's wife Alice plans a vacation to the beautiful town of Bright Falls.  After finding a typewriter in the cabin they're staying at, Alan storms out in anger until a sudden power outage plunges his wife into terrifying darkness. 

Alan races back to the cabin as his wife screams for him, her phobia sending her into a frenzy, but when he arrives he finds the balcony overlooking Cauldron Lake broken and Alice is gone.  He dives into the black waters then wakes up a week later in a crashed car with no memory of how he got there.  All he knows is that his wife is missing, and he has to rescue her. 

The beautiful, idyllic town of Bright Falls takes on a sinister quality by night, however.  A dark presence infects the town, turning its ordinary citizens into possessed puppets who attack from the shadows of the forests.  Even inanimate objects come to life to impede Alan's progress, and only the light can harm them. Slowly he begins to realize that Cauldron Lake itself has mysterious powers when he finds pages of a manuscript he doesn't remember writing - and the events on the pages have now come to life.  Aided by his lovable agent, Barry, and the local sheriff Sarah Breaker, Alan combats the dark presence and fights to rescue his wife from its clutches.

Alan Wake is just one of those games for me.  I love everything about it.  I love the story, the characters, the setting.  The combat is exciting, the graphics are stunning, the sound is phenomenal.  It's not a perfect game, but I even love the flaws.  I love that the puzzles all boil down to finding a generator to power something nearby.  I love fighting the almost constant barrage of Taken townspeople, even when they materialize behind you for cheap hits.  It makes each encounter a true fight for survival.  I even love the ambiguous, confusing ending that has spawned a dozen theories about what really happened.  Was it all a dream?  Is Alan Wake even a real person, or a character in someone else's story?  Is it just one Twilight Zone-esque alternate universe in an infinite number of alternate universes?  Who knows! 

The interplay of light and darkness is the focal point of the game, and the tech that drives it is nothing short of amazing.  Much praise was given to The Last Of Us as the best looking game of the last generation, and rightfully so, but Alan Wake looks just as good and it was released three years earlier.  The forests of Bright Falls look like real, living things.  The water shimmers on the surface, but the inky black depths seem bottomless.  The whole town feels real and inhabited.  Character models generally look fantastic, though their animation has that typical stiffness you'd expect from a 2010 game. 

I was often struck by the scenery.  The daytime sequences are filled with jaw-dropping vistas as the sun peaks over the mountains and trees line the ground as far as the eye can see.  What impressed me most is that it didn't look like a texture.  I felt like I could walk to any point in the distance. 

As if that weren't enough, the sound design is just as impressive.  Surround sound will help you identify threats, but that's to be expected these days.  What's noteworthy is just how well the sound sets the atmosphere.  Branches cracking suggest someone or something else stalking you in the forest, rocks tumbling down a nearby outcropping will make you spin the camera expecting an ambush, water gurgling below a fallen log you must cross reminds you that one misstep will send you to a watery grave.  Owls hoot, crows cackle, lights give off a comforting hum while you stand in their safety, but the voices of the Taken will send chills up your spine. 

The only flaw in the sound design is the music.  It's beautifully composed, and the licensed tunes are used to great effect, but in-game the dynamic music often ends abruptly.  Most of the game is filled with ambient noise, which is fine, but the transition is often a little jarring.  Taken are signified by a very specific tune, but once the threat has been eliminated the music quickly fades. 

In the interest of being objective, I'll also admit the controls can be a little slippery at times.  They're generally very responsive and you'll learn to compensate for Alan's momentum when walking or running, but there were a few instances where he'd slip right off a platform after a jump.  Luckily, there isn't much platforming that needs to be done, and the game does auto-steady you on narrow walkways such as logs or wooden planks, so these instances are rare.  This isn't Uncharted or Tomb Raider and you won't be scaling any cliff faces or making death-defying leaps.

The game is broken up into six episodes, like a television serial, and this is also a love-it-or-hate-it design choice.  It does break the flow of the story somewhat, and I don't understand why they didn't just leave it as all one continuous tale, but it also echoes the in-game Twilight Zone stand-in, a television show called Night Springs that was Alan's first professional writing gig.  Scattered throughout the game are TVs you can switch on that will usually play a short episode of the show.  These are actually filmed with live actors, not polygonal character models, and are a blast to watch. 

In addition to Night Springs, you can tune into local radio host Pat Maine's show on various radios in the world, and you'll collect pages of Alan's forgotten manuscript as you fight to save Alice.  There are several fun references for fans of Remedy's past work, such as two pages from Alan's novel The Sudden Stop which mirror Max Payne's story - both read by none other than the voice of Max himself, James McCaffrey.  Head writer Sam Lake even makes an appearance on a TV show, pulling off his infamous Max Payne smirk.  These little touches are like love letters to the fans and are much-appreciated.

What you think of Alan Wake ultimately depends on what you think of the story.  The gameplay is solid, if a bit repetitive, but the story is what will keep you playing.  The mystery is intriguing, but the ending may leave you feeling hollow if you're the type with no imagination that likes everything spelled out for you.  For me, Alan Wake is one of those special games that sucks me into its world.  It's hard to stop playing once I've started.  I want to explore every nook and cranny of Bright Falls.  The graphics are so good I feel like I could almost touch the bark of the trees, and the sound makes me feel like there are leaves crunching beneath my feet.  Sadly, it seems like we may have seen the last of Mr. Wake now that Remedy has scrapped the sequel in favor of Quantum Break, but the original has been written into my memory forever.

Alan Wake was completed on an Xbox 360 with no cheats.