acquired this game spec ops: the line through some means
i am truly goddamn sick of these call of duty type game, unironically glamorizing the idea of mass institutionalized slaughter. i tolerated them for some time since there was enough conscious thought in the narrative progression for me to feel ENGAGED or DOING SOMETHING, but i pretty much wrote them off entirely after the last call of duty game. there's a limit i reached where i just can't justify investing time in something so empty and meaningless.
this game the line is not perfect, but is refreshingly different from that mold. they made it reasonably clear that the game was inspired by conrad's heart of darkness, but by that they actually meant coppola's apocalypse now, although i don't really think that mattered substantially. i tracked the game down after hearing this, coupled with the fact that that zero punctuation guy talked about how much the game's story upset him emotionally. that's usually enough for me.
anyway, the game is pretty good. it kinda has this fundamentally ironic take on the way games work, where normally games like this give you tasks to do in order to give you a rush or something, ever reaching for something those awful people that haven't been phased out of humanity's gene pool would deem EPIC WIN, but instead the designers of this game pretty much worked the whole game in a way to make you just feel awful about everything you've done in it. there's some lamebrain hollywood cheapness in the story, although i don't think it really damages the way it all works, but i think someone at some point needed to confront the idea of violence in games knowingly, and with some degree of vigor, and this is the first instance i've seriously seen of it.
not a ton more to say about the game i guess. i think its effectiveness exists somewhat more in light of the fact that storytelling in the medium is profoundly lacking in critical self awareness, that it makes convincingly grotesque the thoroughly ignoble things about games that get romanticized. kinda says a lot about how genuinely awful videogames are that it needed this game, the first true FEEL-BAD game i've ever played, as an antidote to all the bullshit.
independent of the game's relation to other games of its ilk, it's still a mostly-interesting, modernized version of a worthwhile, still relevant story. i feel like most of the gameplay elements kinda worked ironically, so they probably aren't worth talking in too much detail. the music was interesting, really suggested as big of an influence from apocalypse now as anything else in the game. jake busey was pretty good in it. kinda wanted to see more of his character, which is rare for a game.
i don't know if this is something i'd suggest to a lot of people, but i liked it. it's kinda fun how the game's fighting and running around and blowing shit up will kinda get you in the moment, and then follow it up with reason to hate yourself for ever finding yourself excited by the game in the first place. a couple times i stared blankly at the screen, asking WHY THE FUCK DO I EVEN BOTHER, which is exactly what they wanted me to think. there's a lot of really hypercynical people who post here, so probably it's worth your time if the idea of a morbid/upsetting videogame sounds like being something up your alley. if that doesn't sound like the sort of game for you, then you DEFINITELY are the sort of person that needs to play this game: you have it too fucking easy and should go work in a saltmine or something, learn the true meaning of disappointment, and hopefully realize that if there is a god he actively dislikes you and will probably reincarnate you as an intestinal parasite, but only if you're lucky and amend your ways now and try taking some steps towards being something other than some gigantic fucking drag on the human race.
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