Introduction

The final video is hosted on Dailymotion because Youtube put out a copyright strike on my account for the song that plays over the credits, muting the whole video in the process. Just figured I'd let you know/warn you.





Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person cover shooter developed by Yager Development and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide in June 2012 for PC, PS3, and 360, except in the United Arab Emirates, where it was banned for its depiction of Dubai. Spec Ops: The Line follows the story of Captain Martin Walker and his 2-man Delta Force squad, sent on a reconnaissance mission into the sand-destroyed ruins of Dubai. Their goal is to look for survivors, find the colonel leading Dubai's American military outpost, and exfiltrate. Soon, however, things take a turn for the more dramatic, and Walker and his buddies are thrust into a mission to save their fellow Americans before they are killed by radical insurgents.

This game is what happens when you give a competent group of developers a whole bunch of money and tell them, "make whatever you want".

Originally, Spec Ops was a series of "meh"-worthy shooters on the PS1, widely known for being batshit hard and particularly primitive in nature. The games got middling reviews and the series was canned shortly after the launch of the PS2, when the team behind the franchise realized that the first person shooter genre was pretty much covered by the big swingers of the era and thus there was no longer any money in it. There was one game in development, picked up very briefly by Rockstar Vancouver, but it was lost to time ages ago.

The beta game and the Spec Ops franchise were passed around from hand to hand all throughout the early 2000s and eventually landed in the lap of Yager Development and publisher 2K Games. Yager rewrote the franchise to the point where the game has nothing to do with and barely even resembles its past counterparts; it is a Spec Ops game in first-title only. They presented their ideas to 2K after being released from previous publisher/developer Take-Two Interactive and only restriction the team was given by 2K was: Make the game military-based. So they did.

But they did more than that, much more. As you will see.



Spec Ops: The Line is a fantastic game. Many people have trashed the gameplay but I think it's very fun and pulse-pounding. They make it feel very dangerous, as if you are in Walker's shoes and you too are on the brink of death at any moment. The story is absolutely fantastic, something that many video games try and fail repeatedly at. There are choices that, while they do not affect the gameplay, are cause for debate and genuine thought that I hope the thread toils over alongside me. Overall I love this game and I hope you see it through with me to the bitter, bitter end, because even if you know how it ends already, the journey matters just as much as the destination. Doesn't it?



No. Do not talk about things we haven't seen yet, even in spoiler tags.








Warning: Beyond here there be only demons... and massive spoilers. This is a live stream of Spec Ops: The Line on the hardest difficulty. I am joined by a bunch of friends of mine. I die, a lot, but it's a lot of fun and a good chance to talk about and analyze the game.





This is an ongoing list of any bonus features I make for the LP. Bonus videos, story explanations, info dumps, fan art, and the soundtrack will be posted here.



Intel is an important part of Spec Ops: The Line. As the sole collectible, intel documents and items provide extra world building and lore that do not fit anywhere in the gameplay. They provide an insight into what happened in Dubai before Walker and co. arrived. Please watch these only after you've seen the relevant videos so as to not spoil anything for yourself.






This game contains a lot of awesome licensed music. All of it is listed here in order of appearance with the episode it appears in noted in the banner. All links are via polsy to avoid Youtube recommendations or comments spoiling everything, so these are safe to click even if you have not reached the relevant episode in the LP yet.