not your typical military shooter, but something better.

The Spec Ops saga may not be too well remembered until the blow on the table that gave the narrative in The Line but let me remind you a little of how was the shooters in the mid 2010s, every time we were sent to Battlefield or Call Of Duty zones we could expect action of the good stuff, no cutscenes and no second thoughts, killing for the simple fact of wanting to do it and enjoy it, it was a genre from which it was very difficult to stay out of with each installment more spectacular than the previous one, perhaps this curious milestone made the Yager team wanted to give a very different approach to both a saga and what could really happen if we saw ourselves in the middle of a war. We are not heroes, we are soldiers in The Line, one of the most surprising titles of a few generations ago and that innovates in the most necessary, the way of telling the story of war and its consequences. Welcome to Dubai.

At first glance you can see what Spec Ops: The Line, having standard mechanics of all modern shooters of that time (such as the uncut action of Uncharted, the cover system of Gears) but falls short by not being able to show something more than its argumental power and its ambience, the gameplay is too relegated to the background (although it does not bother me at all) to tell us what is happening with Captain Martin Walker, who is sent along with his team on a rescue mission in a Dubai ravaged by sandstorms and drought and very quickly the mission turns into a journey of no return through the city that has been hit by both weather catastrophes and a the militias that reside because of the political conflict in the city.

At the helm of this adventure was the now defunct Yager but at that time debuted and was composed of veteran names in the industry having in mind something clear, compete against names like Call Of Duty or Battlefield required personality and resource management at a superlative level, everyone in the industry tried to match these games and failed, Yager had a different intention that is defined with the following statement: if they glorify war and make it look like a sin free ride, we will take the player in the opposite direction, to the abyss.

The city is perhaps the best "character" of the game, Dubai is a location that is defined little by little and that at first may seem like an uncontrolled chaos in charge of the militia gangs that abound in the area but perhaps the most interesting element that we are presented is Colonel John Konrad, initially he is the target we must save after Konrad has disobeyed the last orders to leave the city and decided to stay to help civilians but as we move forward we understand a greater role in the city on Konrad's part, to the point of venturing into the city to learn more about it.

I'm not going to talk about the surprises in the script because they seem to me perhaps what gives a certain charm to this shooter but I can say that it plays a lot with the original idea that has the video games about the wars, here we are presented with a more raw, serious and focused to make us see that not everything is as easy as we want, although I think that many of the subplots in which we get to lengthen the game lack relevance or very rarely try to deepen, most of the secondary characters do not last more than a chapter and only serve to give us indications of where to go or who to talk to later. It's all much more fleeting than I would like but I understand that in a game of almost 8 hours it is difficult to tie up all the loose ends especially when the essence of the game is to constantly advance through the areas and the story without thinking too much. Although I must say that this game treats its script a thousand times better than the shooters of that time, maybe even better than the modern ones, and that is a point to consider to play it.

In terms of gameplay The Line makes a combination of different mechanics to deliver a shooter that is comfortable and dynamic without being too new in this aspect, the conventional covers of other games in which we can regroup and shoot more calmly are here and the shooting controls and cover are accurate and even there, something that if innovates is perhaps its system in which we can make our allies attack certain enemies as we require so if there is a sniper in the area, We can get rid of him even without carrying us with a sniper (although in some areas we must be alone for plot requirements), there is also a melee mechanics that takes us out of the classic shooting moments and noted for the brutality of their executions, Yager proposes a comfortable and familiar shooter without too many complicated mechanics, the gameplay complies with giving us moments of action and be entertaining.

A small parenthesis to highlight the enemy artificial intelligence that can be quite competent especially in the higher difficulties where the game becomes a real challenge, where the most standard enemies can be a real headache when they hide behind cover or where we always have to be attentive to the shot of a sniper who can kill us with one shot, There were times when the game was too much for me and I had to lower the difficulty to pass an area, although I must also say that the level design is a bit discreet and unimaginative since most of the time we can only move forward by opening fire and beating our enemies.

Spec Ops The Line is an intelligent shooter that knows where to aim and moves with a well-designed story and a resounding message in the genre of military shooter, we have rarely seen a story like this in the game and so directly, after all we are the ones who take the actions ... or not?