Jesus Christ, Spec Ops: The Line made me feel like doodoo buns. Unfortunately, means that I'm going to get quite deep and heavy here, because there's no other way to talk about this game. Not only due to the contents of the game itself, but how the game is presented, and why it makes such a good game.
I'm trying not to hit the spoiler thing too hard - there is one point that IS DIRECTLY A SPOILER, so avert your eyes and skip to the next paragraph if you don't want it, but this entire thing definitely stretches the boundaries of what is and isn't a spoiler. I really recommend playing Spec Ops: The Line without spoilers because trust me, you won't ... well I can't say you won't regret it, but the emotional journey it pushes you through is worth it.
Oh gosh, did I go two seconds without mentioning Silent Hill, because I'll get right on that. What made Silent Hill a good game, I ask you? I ask because in general consensus of anyone whose fingers have experienced it, the actual gameplay of Silent Hill is frankly pretty terrible, and that is an understatement worthy of British envy. Silent Hill (at least the first three) had such awful gameplay that you really understood that these protagonists were just some people, normal people, who have picked up weapons with little or no training. A writer, some jackass, and a young girl. Who are not helpless, exactly, but are clearly not physically equipped for this situation as, let's say, Booker DeWitt and his arsenal of Imma Eff You Up, with weapons that he is clearly capable of using and using well. Silent Hill's gameplay was almost physically painful, and any sense of charm you may have garnered from the third bullet shot into the wall next to the advancing monster is probably some form of video game Stockholm Syndrome. And yet... And yet. I think Silent Hill 2 is a good game. I think Silent Hill 2 is a great game. I think Silent Hill 2 may be my favorite game of all time. It's a game that still, to this day, despite my repeated playings and my knowledge of almost every cue still makes me shudder involuntarily when I play it under blankets in the dark, no matter how many times I've seen the scares and tattooed them into my corneas with my terror.
As I have mentioned before, Silent Hill 2 is the game, THE GAME, with all the heart pounding emphasis and pained wistful facial expression that is implied, that taught me that games weren't just about pressing circle to slap a monster in the face. It taught me that it could also be about storytelling, about immersing the player into the environment in the way that absolutely no other medium can by allowing you input and control over the story. Granted, Silent Hill 2 and Spec Ops: The Line are both very linear games. Their various endings are dependent on fairly innocuous things that you do or choose, and the overall plotline doesn't change too extremely. You're more walking with the character through the story, but this communication and control that you hold make you part of it whether you want to or not. Without you, James would never go through the door, and Walker wouldn't slaughter hundreds of people. If you stop, they stop. The story stops.
And never has a game made you feel crappier for moving the story forward than Spec Ops: The Line. Did you think you were a good person? it asks, with a knowing, despondent stare that pierces through your soul, its lips pursed with the disappointment of knowing the answer. Well you aren't, it tells you, sidling closer, boring its eyes even further down through you, all the way to where you keep all your insecurities. You're no hero, it continues. You're less than worthless. It's all your fault. It's all your fault.
So you should play Spec Ops: The Line.
Which doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, even to me, but the game sets you up in a very specific way for you to run into this situation believing that everything is a-ok hunkiadorious with a plate of fresh Amurrica on the side. It entices you into a stupor of point at enemy, pull trigger, and yet soon the monotony of that becomes absolutely terrifying to you as you progress further through the game. Initially, it builds up to be a very simplistic story about a generic scruffy white guy who kills the brown people, sticking you with the usual snarky but sort of loveable white dude and a black best friend. You are coming to save Dubai, and indeed, that goal sticks with you throughout that entire game. But at what cost? How far are you willing to go? What decisions will you make? Why? Why? Why? I've never experienced a game that speaks so directly to the player, through the player character. The questions that this game poses, sometimes through implication, and quite often very plainly, are directed at the main character as much as it is directed at you. You, the one with the controller. This game knows you're there. It knows you're watching, it knows what you're doing, and for every step that you take, it's going to make you think about it.
The game begins so steeped in Amurrican heroism that it's almost difficult to distinguish it from any other game - which is its goal. Everything is so familiar that it's boring. It's just a game, your brain tells you. Aim, fire. It's okay because they're foreign + it's a game, etc. etc. Then, everything changes the moment you point your gun at an American soldier and pull the trigger. The veneer of glossy and saccharine patriotism shatters in seconds.
And it just keeps getting worse.
That monotony I was talking about? I mentioned that it was terrifying. Because why is it monotonous? The act of shooting people becomes boring. And doesn't that require examination of yourself? Of the type of games this one represents? Why were you lured so easily into the assumption that what you're going to do, it was all going to be okay? Are you so naive to think that this is always how it goes, that your decision is always correct, that heroes never do wrong and there are never any wrong decisions when you're American?
This game has some of the best ideas for choice making... I think almost in the history of gaming.
Silent Hill 2 was sort of cool; your ending depended on what you focused on, what you were fascinated with, etc. Though it certainly wasn't perfect, what I mean to say that its decision making was a lot more subtle, and not the "press a to kill, press b to pat on head", which has become the ubiquitous staple of decision maker games today. Bioshock, rather disappointingly in my opinion, suffers from the worst cases of these, mainly because the decisions are rather pointless and superficial - nothing is truly changed but the ending. The story doesn't change, and the choices don't really necessarily reflect you (i.e. the person you are), just the type of ending you feel like getting this time around.
In Spec Ops: The Line it was relieving and despairing to be able to take an active choice. I don't press b to follow Sidekick X into battle or not. I move Walker depending on my decision, I shoot the snipers or the victims and thus I am complicit in all of my decisions, leaving me no room to blame anything else when or if something horrifying happens (which it does! All the time). And Spec Ops: The Line makes a huge point of it. There's actually often a third or even a fourth choice that you can take if you try - it acknowledges tried gamers who go outside of the box, and it's always nice to be thought of. However, the choices don't effect the ending or the story at all - mostly what you get is the crushingly depressing commentary of your Achievement Unlocked blonker telling you that you're a good boy for following your horrifying orders, or saying that you were damned whatever you did. But you did it! You were the one who did it. You didn't press a button and watch - you did it. With your controls, Walker did those things. Because of you. You dirtbag. Unlike Bioshock, those decisions reflected you, and it turns out its you at your worst. Good work.
Almost everything in this game blended together seamlessly, though I'm not sure that's because even its flaws made me totally examine my moral groundings - and I hate military shooters. This game me examine why I even played Spec Ops: The Line. I was told it would be different - I wouldn't say I was told it would be fun, and it wasn't really. I was constantly forced to go through extreme soul-searching with every shot I took. Every squidge of satisfaction at a head exploding made me think about what I was doing, and by the end of the game, I was totally and utterly emotionally exhausted. [SPOILERS] The first ending I gave myself - because it was my decision - was the one where Walker commits suicide. I didn't even think there was any other ending. I, and thus Walker, had nothing left. There was no going back; there was nothing I could do to change what I'd done, and the game makes this perfectly clear to me. Take my own life or have it taken from me - the one decision I have left. [END SPOILERS]
Hmm. I know I'm not selling this game, but fun isn't what sells this game. This game is one of those experiences that you have to go through, not because it's fun, per say; it's not about fun so much as it's an examination of what you find fun and why, not to mention a total deconstruction of generic military shooters and basically the entirety of gaming itself. It's a game you have to play for the act of playing it. For the sense of security it lulls you into, the sense of generic shooter, the sense that it's going to all be okay.
And then the stark, blinding, suffocating realization that it's not.
Because of you.
Amurrica.
No comments:
Post a Comment