A troper is quite insistent on making an entry for this:
- So Okay, It's Average: The consensus on the gameplay is that it's solid but unremarkable. Critical opinion of the storyline was more varied.
I flat out disagree with this for the following reasons: 1) The Trope page states clearly: "The fandoms tend to be about as subdued and pedestrian as the work itself, possibly because no one sees much point in getting worked up over something that doesn't particularly stand out. Interestingly enough looking at many sites that allow users to rank taste, it's far more common to see things ranked in the middle than at either end.''
This is plainly not true for Spec Ops Line because people either love the game very much or passionately disagree about the deconstruction type. It has a devoted fanbase and it is controversial. The entry above is clearly just bashing the game based on arbitrary designations and is unrepresentative since the game had positive reviews, the likes of Errant Signal, Extra Credits and Yahtzee gave it glowing reviews. and it's considered one of the best games in the last cycle. And there are tropes for that reaction about the gameplay not being good, it's "Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game".
2) The gameplay being bad also depends on what people mean. Because the FPS shooting mechanics of Spec Ops The Line is quite solid, especially so for a third-person shooter. It's not innovative of course but if you consider the genre of third person shooters it's actually quite good. I mean a third-person shooting game is not a field that is super innovative to begin with it's like a racing game, you can introduce a few wrinkles and added difficulties (like say , Far Cry 2 with its jamming weapons and so on) but for the most part it's not so bad.
3) The problems of "Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game" as a trope is that if Spec Ops The Line works mainly or entirely on cutscenes...I don't think it does. The game does tell most of the story by mechanics and while the ending cutscenes work, most of it works through gameplay. Like White Phosphorus happens through gameplay and the cutscene shows the aftermath after that. Likewise, stuff like Walker going nuts, going from being professional to "kill f—king confirmed" also happens through gameplay.
...People have a right to quibble with the game and the entries for those quibbles and complaints are already listed here. I don't think people have a right to bash the game on spurious grounds. To avert an edit-war I am starting this discussion.
Cutting this and putting it here. Audience Reactions can't be subverted, and the second item is a Zero Context Example.
- Acceptable Targets:
- Subverted. The first enemies the player faces in the game are Arabs (leading the player to believe that the game is just like any other modern military shooter), but for the most part the player will be being shot at by other Americans. And no, killing Arabs is not presented as "acceptable" in this game. In fact, the only times you kill them after the initial portions of the game, it's treated as a Moral Event Horizon each time because you're massacring civilians.
- The first words out of their mouths? "Why? So you can kill us too?"
I wonder if Acceptable Targets is the right trope for that, yeah. The game definitely pulls the rug out from under the player by depicting vaguely Middle-Eastern "insurgents" and then having the vast majority of enemies turn out to be American soldiers, and the "insurgents" vaguely sympathetic. What Measure Is a Mook?, maybe? That example is a line spoken by the very first enemies you meet, the guys Lugo talks to in Farsi. That's one of their (untranslated and non-subtitled) lines.
You know, if I could click you, you wouldn't know a moment's peace.
Just wondering: Does Riggs count as a complete monster?
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Take it to the relevant thread in Special Efforts. I doubt it, though - he's got too much Well-Intentioned Extremist going on. A Complete Monster must be complete.
Edited by Iaculus What's precedent ever done for us?
The extremely long section about how Call of Duty is actually an anti-war series seems out of place, implicitly bashy towards Spec-Ops, and borderline off-topic, not to mention being based on an extremely surface-level and selective reading of that franchise's stories and the politics behind its development (IIRC the games since at least the original Modern Warfare 2 are heavily Backed by the Pentagon)
In fact the surface level reading and bashing of Spec-Ops is kind of a theme running through all of the game's pages; I feel like there's a consistent hyperbolic tone regarding the game's grim themes and the characters' actions (characterizing the game as a nonstop barrage of Take That, Audience! moments where Walker is the almost comically insane and psychopathic "real villain" of the story)
Edited by Dirtyblue929