Spec Ops: The Line PC
User Score
8.0 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 570 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 474 out of 570
  2. Mixed: 58 out of 570
  3. Negative: 38 out of 570

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  1. Orctownorc
    May 8, 2013
    3
    Mediocre or worse in every department, INCLUDING the story. A so-called 'PC game' that feels so totally like it was made for a Playstation 2. A straightjacket of incredibly narrow spaces and choices. A 'Man's game with all men character's, unending-until-you-puke mach- monologuing by all the characters. Terrible camera. Terrible level design. Terrible shooting mechanics. Terrible cover. Terrible controls. Terrible 'moral choices'. The story is pumped full of overbearing male testosterone and its pretensions of moral depth are an exercise in vapid nihilism. Games like this are basically a waste of a time. Go for a walk in the park, read a book, see a concert, climb a mountain, drink with friends. Anything is better than this game. Compared to its genre competitiors, like 'Gears of War', 'Halo', 'Call of Duty', 'Battlefield' or Far Cry this game is complete garbage. An FPS game lives or dies according to its combat controls and these are easily the worst in that department in recent memory. 'Oh but you must play to the end, because the end redeems the horrible game' cry many reviewers. They lie. The journey is the destination. One would have to have a huge separation from the real world to find this story interesting. I'd rather play dating games with my gay squad members-Bioware style than endure another playthrough of this. To kill or not to kill? The answer won't be interesting if the question is not real. And its not real!… Expand
  2. Brumbek
    Aug 10, 2012
    4
    **** GAMEPLAY **** As far as gameplay, the cover-based shooting is below average. The aiming is imprecise and you often get stuck sticking to cover or flailing about out of cover. The squad commands are nice, but more often than not you have to sit behind cover waiting to heal due to stupid AI and faulty cover. It just isn
  3. awdrifter
    Jan 26, 2013
    1
    The game mechanics in this game is severely flawed! I don't care how good the story is, the moment to moment gameplay is a torture. Who the f though binding the sprint, cover, and action button to the same key is a good idea?! I died countless times snapping into cover when trying to run away (and you get shot in cover too!). This game is a broken pos hiding behind it's story. AVOID!
  4. Snarky
    Nov 27, 2012
    1
  5. lefiath
    Oct 16, 2012
    1
    Horrible, from beginning to the end. Awful controls, abysmal story (whoever things this is a good storyline should go check a doctor, because this is hardly D movie material), mess from beginning to the end, worthless and pathetic characters (I believe main hero is a terminator), ridiculous on every moment (many situations were written by 6 years old) and it looks like **** as well. Oh and it's a very limited corridor shooter. There is nothing redeemable on this one - not even worth 10 dollars.… Expand
  6. wizegamer
    Jul 9, 2012
    1
    could have been a great game but the lack of strategy , story ideas , and my ability to play it in 7 hours. leaves me wishing i had waited for it to drop in cost.
  7. BigRieg
    Jul 18, 2012
    0
    All cutscenes and no play. Just as it starts to get fun and you get into it, you guessed it, another cutscene comes up that you're not allowed to skip. Not worth even 10 dollars. I got about a dime's worth of play out of it. Wish you could sell PC games like you can console games.
  8. El_Barto
    Jan 5, 2013
    3
    This game is a console based game and although keys are functioning the entire game is made for game-pad.
    This game has a refreshing storyline and environment, what went wrong?

    - 1 : because third person view (f.ex the game Hitman let you switch between first to third-person which is a missed opportunity in this game)
    - 2 : bad aiming, this is just terrible and let not even talk about     the sniper rifle
    - 2 : save points, I am an adult, I decide where I want to save, some pieces of fights take up to 8 min, you die you can start all over again and let's not even talk about the 'skip movie', enter is not working so when you die you can watch over and over the 2 min movie before you can start playing instead of doing savepoints after the movie.
    -1 : cover/vault seems to have a mind of it's own, sometimes you are stuck to a wall in cover mode which you can not get out of.
    - 1 : Squad has a mind of it's own, move forward and decides to get shot, you have limited time to heal them or they just stand do nothing while you fight and die.    … Expand
  9. puxili
    Aug 31, 2012
    3
    The main selling point of this game seems to be the story, especially how mature it is. Well...its not. But first a few words about the gameplay: The mechanics are extremely generic and weak, the shooting feels flimsy and gets tedious extremely fast. The weapon sounds support the weak feel of the guns and there is nothing fun or exciting about it. But most critics will tell you the story saves the horrible gameplay, but honestly, its just crap. It might be mature, but that doesn't make it any good, for the first 14 chapters the story just drags on and on without resolve anything or keeping you engaged, and the last mission is supposed to resolve anything, which makes the first 3 hours and 50 minutes even more pointless. It blatantly rips off Heart of Darkness and any generic psycho-thriller movie. Its just a generic boring shooter with chest-high walls that hides its crappy gameplay mechanics under a story that most critics find "mature" and "interesting".… Expand
  10. wolverine67
    Aug 12, 2012
    1
    I've played the demo from steam and, rage quit because how bad the controls and console port it felt. Well after waiting after release to see if things would get better and people raved about how great story the game was decided to buy the game at lower price on Amazon. Well my first impressions of demo still stands bad controls and bad port to pc, and the MP is one of the worst i've ever played heavy lag disconnects and finding a game good luck. I have a high speed cable connection 50mb a sec. I hate to be the one to be so harsh but that's how i feel. I usually try and be fair to alot of games but this game just is overhyped. Dont waist your money there are better games out there.… Expand
  11. evild4ve
    Jan 30, 2013
    3
    I played the first few levels of this, up to a point where a civilian dressed in a burqa ran into my line of fire and I accidentally shot her. The game had been heavy-handedly building up the civilian tragedy aspect and the justifications for this sort of thing happening - but it seemed completely out of character for the morally ambiguous protagonist to yak on and on in the cut scenes about stuff like how "it's okay not to follow orders if we can save an American life" and then not have anything at all to say for himself after mowing down an innocent woman with a machine gun. And I was left thinking "oh well, I guess that probably happens all the time in Iraq" - and decided I had probably felt guiltier the first time I ran over a pedestrian in Grand Theft Auto.

    The gameplay mechanics are atrocious - there are no consequences for getting shot so long as you can hide behind a conveniently placed rock for a few seconds until the bloodstains clear from the side of the screen. Red Steel on the Wii (!!!) had a similar depth of realism and tactics. It's completely linear - the guns all feel and sound the same - which is a complete mistake in the case of the AK47 and M14.

    A rail-shooter is pretty much the last sort of game that should take on moral questions.    … Expand
  12. azrael888
    Jan 17, 2013
    0
    This review contains spoilers. No, Just no. If you play a game for a thrilling story line and an engaging back story like I do then **** THIS GAME. I cannot believe the rubbish of a story this game has and then you got all these people painting it like it's a top notch novel that just blows you away at the end. The ENTIRE STORY just seems like a bunch of gun hating, soldier bashing, liberals, got into a room and just start throwing **** at a wall until they came up with a game that would only interest you because of the hype they drummed up. This game totally paints all soldiers/people who like guns as retards and in the end kill everyone because it's sooo awesome. I mean FFS, I didn't try it, but at the end of the game you have the choice to shoot yourself or if you don't then you have the option to KILL MORE ****ING SOLDIERS as they come to RESCUE you! WTF?! I think it's just one big social experiment to see who the **** would want to do it. There is no DLC and there never will be because there's no way they can continue this crap story.

    One other thing. Again at the end. (and I think they mention it near the middle as well) They keep telling you all you had to do was stop. All you had to do was just stop pushing forward. WTF?! Why would I pay 60 bux for a game just to stop playing it? I feel really bad for those that paid FP for this game cause they got ripped the **** off. In fact I think most of those people that did buy it at FP probably got on here and reviewed it as awesome just so dumb ****s like us would be like, **** it can't be all that bad. Look how many good review it got!" No they just wanted us to drink the GD kool-aid too cause they didn't want to be the only ones...

    If the game was just me running around shooting /randoms with no story I'd give it a 5. It's not a HORRIBLE shooter, but JFC, I cannot for the life of get over the fact that the story was so utterly terrible. Charles Barkley tuurrribel even...    … Collapse
  13. bdy0003
    Feb 4, 2013
    3
    Positives: Storyline and some of the choices are very good, not excellent. No other positives.

    Negatives: Controls are terrible!!! I've never seen so many buttons to do stupid things. Also, some buttons don't respond when you press them. Programming is shotty as getting the first shot on an enemy does nothing some of the time; absolutely horrible. Achievements or buildups to achie    vements are just given at random.

    I am very disappointed with this game. I want my money and my time back.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
76 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 16 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. Pelit (Finland)
    Oct 13, 2012
    80
    Spec Ops: The Line tries new and interesting ground on storytelling, but falls short on the action department. Still, it's worth playing through for the atmosphere and few different endings alone. [Aug 2012]
  2. PC Master (Greece)
    Aug 31, 2012
    89
    Were it not for some technical issues and console-related shortcomings (gamepad controls and no anti-aliasing), Spec Ops: The Line would be one of the best games for 2012. But, things being as they are, it remains merely a diamond in the rough, destined for wicked crazy status within the following years. Definitely superior to the related series of Kane & Lynch, it proves that, with a steady vision and soul, a genre so clichéd like military shooters, can not only surprise us pleasantly, but totally overwhelm us. [August 2012]
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Aug 10, 2012
    70
    Expectations were greater than game could have achieved. Yet the new Spec Ops game is a good excuse to stay home and play. [Issue#220]
See all critic reviews »