I see the combat as having been tuned this way because of how any alternative approaches would have effected the rest of the game. I think this mediocrity serves to highlight the exact opposite, though. Whether that is as a commentary on lackluster military shooters or as a way to numb you to video game style killing in preparation for what is to come, in all of these analyses, the mediocre shooting (whether intentional or not) is thought of as a purposeful addition to the game’s theme.
Many of the assertions by those who liked the game think it a proactive statement made by the game. Much has been said about Spec Ops: The Line‘s lackluster combat. In short, the mechanics come up just short enough that the fighting feels off and lackluster, while at the same time still tuned enough to accomplish the job. The game allows the player more finesse in lining up the next shot, but lacks just enough feedback to produce any kind of heightened sense of accomplishment in your previous success. Headshots produce a small burst of blood and slow down time for a second or two, which in other games would highlight the awesome nature of the skill needed to take that shot, but those two seconds in The Line serve as a muted appraisal of the player’s skill. The shooting itself lacks the kinesthetic feedback that brings visceral excitement to encounters. The enemies seem to exist in that space between being bullet sponges and bullet fodder. Most of the time the cover based mechanics work as intended, but approach the chest high wall at just the wrong angle and you’ll end up standing next to it instead of behind it. Entering and leaving cover is not always a sure thing. At best, the combat mechanics might be described as adequate. The combat in Spec Ops: The Line is not great, but it’s not terrible either. Spec Ops: The Line isn’t quite this extreme, as much of it still functions like a traditional third-person shooter, and instead operates under the same ethos but with a more subtle approach to sub-optimal design. These design choices were born of technical limitations, but as we saw over the years as the developers added better player control that the games lost what made them effective horror games.
The early Resident Evil games managed to cultivate a terrifying game with static camera angles and difficult to maneuver tank controls and other design choices that weren’t optimal in the traditional sense. Spec Ops: The Line seemingly borrows from horror games, particularly early survival horror games like Resident Evil. Instead I want to focus on a design technique.
I can see the argument for it, and yet, I don’t know if I could fully subscribe to it. The kind of horror that makes one look inward at an obstacle course of torture of one’s own making.
If one was to call Spec Ops: The Line a horror game, it wouldn’t be monster horror or gothic horror, but the strange twisted nightmare of psychological horror. The hallucinations, the harsh treatment of the player, and the symbolic imagery of hell would be enough for a player to come to that conclusion regardless of anything else that the game might be doing. It’s easy to see why one would describe it that way after playing it. Since its release, quite a few people have described Spec Ops: The Line as a horror game.
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