Spec Ops: The Line is perhaps a game that you won’t have heard a lot about until the past month or two and you’re probably thinking this game has come out from nowhere however,  it’s been living under most  of our gaming radars for a good number of years now. First announced in 2009, Spec Ops: The Line is being developed by Yager Development and published under 2K games, those lovely chaps that brought us Bioshock and Borderlands.

Since 2009, it has been dipping in and out of coverage here and there and even I had forgotten about it until I searched for it on online forums and I don’t think I could have picked a better time to seek it out. The Spec Ops series first graced our PC’s before moving onto the consoles by making its debut on the Playstation 1 in 1998 and continued the shift onto consoles until 2002 where it seemed to dwindle out and into history. Now in June 2012, we’re getting closer to the release of the return to the Spec Ops series.

I can assure any people who are, like me, new to this series that Spec Ops: The Line has no story continuation from any of the previous games in the series. In the game, you play as Captain Martin Walker who has been sent into a post-catastrophic Dubai alongside his two squad members, Lieutenant Adams and Sargent Lugo. Between the three of them, it was clear in the demo of this game that there is definite chemistry between these soldiers and they provide some humour to the player as well that doesn’t have a layer of cheese over it.  Lugo instantly had me laughing not long after starting to play through it.

The reason these three men are out in a sand ridden Dubai is that they are searching for Colonel John Konrad. Before the sand had hit Dubai, Konrad and his team had been at a training facility whilst the city was being evacuated and he refused to be along those escaping the terror that was about to hit the city and instead, decided to stay behind and help those who could not evacuate.  Weeks had passed with no contact from Konrad’s team until a weak signal has been picked up and leads the US Army to believe that Konrad is still out there, and it’s up to Captain Walker’s team to locate him, if they survive themselves.

This third person shooter offers a similar playing style of that that is offered through the Gears of War games with the use of cover and shooting although, there’s a slice of tactical shooting has been seen throughout it as well. By ordering your squad members to shoot a sniper up high, this game starts to move away from some of the bigger shooter titles. Although the commands that you can hand out to the squad members are basic, the AI in this game has proven to be smart and intuitive on what’s happening to them around them so you’re not spending your time playing this game swearing and cursing them for being so stupid.

As mentioned before, the sand is all around you which during the game, your wits will have to be with you as whenever a sandstorm comes in and your vision is limited, you will have to make the quick decision on where to go for your teams’ safety and survival.  It’s not all doom and gloom though and you can use that sand to your advantage for example, with glass containers filled up with sand during the storms, these make perfect weapons themselves against your enemies. With a couple of shots at the glass, the sand can bury and kill you opponents in an instant and allow you to focus on the other guys that are coming towards you guns blazing.

As you can already see with this preview, Spec Ops: The Line isn’t looking like it’s one of those regular shooters that have become so famous within the gaming industry.  Although the game will offer a linear experience, the characters themselves will change their feelings and views on various things, depending on the decisions that you make throughout the game and what’s happening in their environment.  During the game, there will be a moment where you have to make the dire ‘life or death’ decision and where most gamers will think that there will be two outcomes from this, there will actually be four! Something that I’m still trying to get my head around on how that’s going to work but I guess we’ll have to wait and see

Adding into account that the game is being loosely based on the book ‘Heart of Darkness’, we can be sure that Spec Ops: The Line will capture the audience in the journey that they embark on through the use of the environment and the narrative that Spec Ops: The Line offers you. It’s clear to anyone that Yager is trying to put themselves on a different shelf, away from the regular shooters that are on the market just now.

I’ve talked a lot about the single player of this game but fear not, there will be multiplayer for this game which is being developed separately by Darkside Game Studios.  Spec Ops: The Line is said to have a free DLC coming out soon after the initial release of the game which will offer co-op multiplayer but it will feature the typical classic deathmatch, team deathmatch as well as a mode called ‘Rally Point’ and a unique mode called ‘Buried’.

The multiplayer will feature class-based progression system across two fractions -The Damned and The Exiles- both of which will have four classes and a unique class that will offer important gameplay bonus for the player’s team.

With no achievements being offered for multiplayer, there might not be much appeal for the multiplayer to begin with however I’m sure DarkStudios has made the multiplayer well worth putting in some hours playing and will reflect the promising experience that the single player has to offer.

There’s no shadow of a doubt that Spec Ops: The Line will offer something that shooter fans haven’t experienced before and could be a break through act between the normal shooters that have taken the crown in recent years between the Call of Duty and Battlefield series’.

Spec Ops: The Line is out June 26^th in America and June 29^th in Europe and will be available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC and the demo is currently available now to download for free for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC as well.

Remember and check back next month for my review on the game itself and check out my thoughts on the game!