If we analyze the situation, we can confidently say that worldwide and global catastrophes, apocalypses, and other Armageddons have already become tiresome for gamers. How many times can we be subjected to invasions of zombies, aliens, and mutants, perish from nuclear winters and viral epidemics? Enough already with dreaming of the global annihilation of human civilization, especially since many cataclysms described in games repeat each other year after year. Players are tired; they want something new! However, this 'new thing' is exactly what they received in the form of a local-scale catastrophe (just) in a project called Spec Ops: The Line.
The development of this third-person shooter was supposed to be handled by the well-known company Rockstar Games (to be precise, one of its divisions), but later the rights to develop smoothly migrated to Germany, where the Berlin studio Yager Development took on Spec Ops: The Line. The game was announced back in 2009, but interest in Spec Ops: The Line did not wane until the very release. The game was released in the summer of 2012 on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The publisher was the company 2K Games.
So, what can Spec Ops: The Line boast about? As you might have guessed, no global catastrophe has happened on our 'blue planet' – people live and thrive, oceans have not overflowed, no toothy Martians have arrived, no epidemic of a deadly disease has occurred, and the cities remain exactly where they stood. Although one city did suffer, and its name is Dubai. The symbol of oil dollars and indescribable wealth was almost destroyed, but not by people or anyone else, but by Mother Nature herself. The megacity, located among the sands, was finally buried by this very sand, and so heavily that an emergency evacuation of the residents was organized. Naturally, the honor of conducting the rescue operation was given to the valiant soldiers of the American army. Colonel John Conrad, who commanded his soldiers, for some reason did not return home, remaining in the semi-destroyed Dubai.
In the United States of America, they could not understand what had happened to the colonel and his infantry division for a long time. It was decided to send a special unit, Delta Force, led by Captain Martin Walker, to the sand-buried Dubai. Landing in the desert megacity, the special forces discovered that John Conrad (or someone else, for a time unknown) was not wasting time – there were hangings on lamp posts, corpses in piles of garbage, and crazed desertions wandered through the city streets, driven mad by the heat and drought.
By the way, there is a lot of sand in Spec Ops: The Line, an awful lot. Dust storms occur in the game, worsening the dire situation in Dubai. On ceilings, roofs, and floors of buildings and skyscrapers, a huge amount of hot sand accumulates, threatening instant collapse of the entire structure under the known force of gravity. Players can use this in tough situations when enemies are surging, and there is only one paltry bullet left in the magazine. You just need to find the weakest point in the room (for example, a glass ceiling), after which to make a hole in it, watching how the reddish-yellow rustling mass buries the screaming combatants beneath it. Horrifyingly beautiful.
Spec Ops: The Line is based on a quite old but still 'combat-ready' Unreal Engine 3. Occasionally, the game produces such magnificent frames that it makes you want to pause for a moment and take a few screenshots. In any case, Spec Ops: The Line is a gripping, albeit linear, shooter, with a well-developed storyline, an abundance of weapons, enemies, and... sand.