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 Release Date NA -June 26, 2012 EU -June 29, 2012 Platforms PC 360 PS3 Story You're Martin Walker, captain of a three-man Delta Force team sent into Dubai after the U.S. military received a distress signal from Colonel John Konrad. Konrad who was previously thought dead, stayed behind during the failed evacuation as devastating sandstorms swallowed the city. This is the very early premise of the game, as it's heavily narrative driven via both cut-scenes and in-game events. Remember to use [spoilers] when appropriate! Why the Heart of Darkness Reference? The story attempts to differentiate itself by it's heavy madness and morality theme. As such, you'll likely come across many references that influenced it. The most obvious of which being Conrad/Konrad. And while not a horror shooter, there are intense and explicit images throughout.  Gameplay Spec Ops is a third person shooter akin to Gears of War and Army of Two. You are supported by two A.I. teammates whom you can tell to take out if one guy's being a real headache. There's also a context sensitive flashbang order you can give if you become suppressed. Oh yeah, there's also a choice system for a bit of added replayability. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4nw4u-KgHw Length 5-10 hours Screens                     Didn't see a thread so thought I'd throw up a quickie. Make a thread in PGS if you want to discuss multiplayer/co-op.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 00:30 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 06:45 |
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When is this supposed to be? I'm pretty sure Dubai isn't covered in sand at the moment.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 00:47 |
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Boiled Water posted:When is this supposed to be? I'm pretty sure Dubai isn't covered in sand at the moment.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 01:06 |
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I could've sworn the Steam page for this had some spiel about "how your choices REALLY MATTER" or some nonsense to that effect and now I can't find that tagline anymore. At any rate this looks like an extremely derivative title and those who've played the PC demo don't sound very enthused.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 01:15 |
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This seems kind of cool, I just played the demo a bit.. I only wish there was COOP so I could have one of my pals be AI team mate or something. To be more clear, if this game had no competitive multiplayer I would buy it right now on steam, but since it does not, it has gone into the WAIT pile. JoshVanValkenburg fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 03:08 |
| # ? Jun 25, 2012 03:05 |
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Yeah, the demo really did not give a good impression of it - with neither moral choices nor sand combat from the full game represented, the only thing it really showed off were the occasional cool views which you only really get to look at for about 10 seconds before you have to go back to covering/shooting. Could be OK with co-op though.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 03:43 |
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I don't know about the PC version but I thought the Xbox demo played very well. I'll probably pick this up.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 03:45 |
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Why does this really unknown game that people who tried the demo didn't really like deserve a single player exclusive thread? Do you also plan on making a multiplayer thread in the future? So this is Gears of War only even dark and grittier and edgier?
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 03:48 |
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^^^^^ Apparently the writers of this game are trying to let it be know that war is actually, you know, Really Really Bad. The things I'm hearing about this game's narrative are really piquing my interest, cause either it actually pulls it off or is Army of Two the Third. Either way, I'm down.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 03:48 |
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The first few times I saw the commercial for this on TV I thought it was for the new Call of Duty game. ZackHoagie posted:^^^^^ You can tell they went with this by the screenshots of the soldiers all looking sad and depressed-OH RANDOM ARAB GUY BOOM HEADSHOT WOO +XP
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 04:15 |
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Why even bother with a single player campaign if you're gonna put all your effort into the multiplayer? It's gonna be a melodramatic mess like all the other modern military shooters, only this one has its head so far up its rear end that it's coughing up poo poo.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 04:24 |
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I'm not a fan of 3rd person shooters but I'll give this a shot if it goes on sale. Those screenshots have enough style that I'm genuinely curious about how it'll avoid or subvert the trend of cheap, overwrought drama that seems to be in every shooter these days.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 06:01 |
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mcvey posted:You can tell they went with this by the screenshots of the soldiers all looking sad and depressed-OH RANDOM ARAB GUY BOOM HEADSHOT WOO +XP Actually the entire game has you killing US Soldiers so they dodged that bullet.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 06:08 |
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I was able to play this through pre-release because my girlfriend works at a video store. Long story short, it's a 5-6 hour campaign with beautiful art direction juxtaposing Dubai's bright colors and sleekness with harsh desert. There is a vivid color filter in the options that sort of makes it look like Bulletstorm, of all games. Nice to see something other than the usual various shades of brown/grey in this genre. The guns feel really great and the mechanics are solid, it really is like a competent Gears clone. One really nice thing about this game is that, at least on normal difficulty, your squadmates are effective soldiers. You can give them basic orders, so if a sniper has you pinned down, and you order them to kill the sniper, they will actually do it. Neat. I don't really think it's a game you're going to come back to again and again, though. For me, it was a definite one-and-done. I think people should play it through at least once in a rental period to experience the story. It sort of falls apart near the end, but of all the "war is hell" moralizing in military shooters, this one comes the closest to being effective at that without turning into some up-its-own-rear end indie game. There are some branching decisions near the end that you can easily replay via checkpoints to get the different outcomes. Some really jawdropping poo poo (for video games, at least) happens in this game, and it's not always in cutscene format. The game tries to make the player feel complicit, and the fact that it even sort of half-accomplishes this without dumbing down the action is to its credit. The premise of the game also has the benefit of being unique within the modern warfare subgenre. I don't know how much of this is just PR common knowledge, so I'll spoil it: Basically, sandstorms hit Dubai sometime during Obama's presidency and turn it into a humanitarian crisis, like some kind of desert Hurricane Katrina. The military is sent in to help with evac, until things get too dangerous, and they all pull out. One company, the 33rd, defies the order to continue evac, led by this kind of crazy officer who you ultimately learn has declared martial law and taken over the city with his men. Eventually, you run into the CIA. There's a Dubai rich people aquarium that is basically being used as the emergency water source. You help the CIA take the water to take power from the 33rd , only to have it destroyed. You find out that was the plan all along - the CIA was sent in to make sure everyone in Dubai died of thirst, because if the rest of the Middle East found out what the rogue company did in Dubai, they would band together to fight the US in a war we couldn't hope to win. The entire middle act is you being used as a pawn in a US government cover-up to ultimately kill refugees via thirst. From there, it kind of goes a little batshit crazy until the denouement just sort of leaves you going "huh, well...", but I give this game credit for bringing something new to the most popular shooter subgenre. You'll still get the same kind of usual complaints that games "aren't equpped" to "handle" stories like this or whatever, but this one probably comes as close as any ever has. bloodysabbath fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 06:50 |
| # ? Jun 25, 2012 06:47 |
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the demo of this game looked and played like something that was going to be released in 2008 but was forgotten in storage until recently. no colors, bland shooting, braindead ai, it's as basic as it gets for a cover shooter. another of the thousands of examples of why the video game industry should give up on pricing every game u$60.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 07:12 |
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ritcheyz posted:Why even bother with a single player campaign if you're gonna put all your effort into the multiplayer? It's gonna be a melodramatic mess like all the other modern military shooters, only this one has its head so far up its rear end that it's coughing up poo poo.  What is with the absurdly hostile reaction towards this game? I'm hoping it's not just because you don't get to shoot up scary foreigners and America does bad things in it.I don't think we should just judge a game by its demo, they're often bad, and the only person who's actually played the full product here seems to like it. NoneSuch fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 08:30 |
| # ? Jun 25, 2012 08:23 |
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NoneSuch posted:
Besides, if you want to preorder it you get Duke Nukem Forever FOR FREE! 
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 08:39 |
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Captain Tolerable posted:Besides, if you want to preorder it you get Duke Nukem Forever FOR FREE! An irresistible offer
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 08:45 |
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NoneSuch posted:I don't think we should just judge a game by its demo, they're often bad, and the only person who's actually played the full product here seems to like it. demos are supposed to entice people to buy the game. whenever someone in a thread says "but maybe the full game is good" rest assured the game is going to be poo poo. see: duke nukem forever. the thread for it in these forums was full of people in denial until release. bloodysabbath enjoys every terrible action game that comes out, so his opinions can safely be ignored. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 09:01 |
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My issue with this game is that it continually robs it's story of gravitas by being a game, and as such being beholden to making the player feel like a badass. Slow mo zoomin to reward headshots in this game? Really? Some of the rockier elements of the soundtrack are really out of place too. I don't think it's terrible or anything, but it does sometimes seem a little confused.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 09:09 |
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GUI posted:demos are supposed to entice people to buy the game. whenever someone in a thread says "but maybe the full game is good" rest assured the game is going to be poo poo. Fair enough, I don't think this game looks like anything wonderful but I'm atleast willing to give it the benefit of the doubt just because of the story. I've found most demos to be rubbish even for good games especially when the story is a pretty important thing.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 09:50 |
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bloodysabbath posted:like some kind of desert Hurricane Katrina Sounds like I am not alone in that I will give this a chance because it sounds like a cover based shooter that is actually trying something new. Vanquish and Binary Domain are perfect examples of your standard cover shooter being flipped around in a great way by trying something new.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 10:36 |
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ZackHoagie posted:Actually the entire game has you killing US Soldiers so they dodged that bullet. I may have to get this based on this strength alone.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 11:19 |
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Played the demo. Impressions, no story mentioned: One of the enemy's randomly got out from cover, ran straight at me, actually ran down a line past both my squad mates, and got right up to melee range on me. He then died before I found out what his plan was. For the record, this was not one of the knife enemies, he was a smg user. (The game has knife enemies specifically programmed to suicide periodically too) There was also an incident in the demo where I simultaneously, with my squad commands killing one and myself killing the other, killed 2 guards on a stairway, with our silencers on. No noise. This proceeded to immediately alert every guard in the area, even though no one had visuals on the enemy I killed. And then there was a time where 2 enemies ran past me as I was shooting them, and proceeded to take cover against a cover point behind me. They took cover on the same side I was on, so I just shot them in the back. They were obviously programmed to run to those cover points no matter what, regardless of player action or position. That's awful. I also had multiple generic instances of an enemy, who had been safe in a cover spot for a very long time, randomly running out into the open to switch cover, and promptly dying. You can argue a demo isn't accurately showing off some aspects of the game, and that can be true. But there's no way that isn't an accurate representation of how busted the AI in this game is. I love cover based shooters, I don't think I could play a game with AI this fundamentally broken. Good things: Shooting feels nice. Squad mates are actually useful and (almost) always responsive to your orders. Art style nailed, it's probably the prettiest brown desert shooter I've seen. edit: Random annoyance, when you quit the demo, it forces you to watch the trailer that just played upon beating the demo. It didn't seem like I could skip/quit it, short of end tasking the game. gently caress you game. LibbyM fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 11:49 |
| # ? Jun 25, 2012 11:42 |
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Al! posted:I may have to get this based on this strength alone. The entire game is killing U.S. soldiers, CIA-armed militias and unarmed citizens. Unfortunately the game contradicts itself by having to be fun, while not relishing killing. This is something games will always have a hard time tackling and I think the reasons are obvious. I was able to separate the two so I enjoyed it quite a bit, but your mileage may vary. I'm also a fanboy of the third-person shooter genre and the old mediocre 'Spec Ops' games for the PS1. After playing so many games that shed torture in a positive light and encourage things like dragon's breath, it's nice to play something that tells you "hey, using white phosphorus is heavily regulated by humanitarian law for a reason". I'd love to see these story elements and game direction supported, while the bland but enjoyable shooting mechanics shunned. \/\/\/ The dynamic sandstorms are a lie. I'm pretty sure every time they occurred was a scripted sequence. rizuhbull fucked around with this message at Jun 25, 2012 around 12:21 |
| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:06 |
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Based on the hype and the demo, this game really feels like it shouldn't be a full price release. They've been hyping up the dynamic sandstorm and battlefield stuff as well as the plot and "DECISIONS", though none of those were present in the demo. Until reliable reviews come in, I'd write off all the promises of dynamic/unscripted events as pure PR bullshit and expect them to all be just scripted fluff. The sand dynamics will most likely boil down to scripted sequences and things like the bus full of sand at the demo, i.e. glorified exploding barrels. As for the DECISIONS and the plot with horrors of war, well... Every action game that uses their plot as a hype method has turned out to pretty much suck. And horrors of war... Remember Homefront? Shellshock? Press E to jump into a mass grave etc. The UE3 based graphics also look very dated. On console, I guess that's not such a big a deal, but playing on PC at 1080p it really doesn't feel contemporary. More like 2007-2008. Compare to Sniper Elite 2, and it looks pretty terrible, especially texture-wise, not to mention to graphical powerhouses like MP3. That said, the simple act of shooting enemies is serviceable, and the setting is pretty cool, although somewhat hamstrung by the current convention of boiling everything down to the narrowest corridor possible, logic be damned. As far as covershooters go, it's better than most, thanks to there being no bullet sponge enemies. For 30 bux I might consider getting it, but as it is, I'll wait for the inevitable Steam sale.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:16 |
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A smug sociopath posted:As far as covershooters go, it's better than most, thanks to there being no bullet sponge enemies. I don't know. I'd play a lot of games with enemies that take a bit too long to kill before I'd play a game with AI as bad as what I experienced. It's not like the lack of bullet sponge enemies made the encounters any faster than your average cover shooter cause you just had several waves of them instead.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:20 |
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LibbyM posted:I don't know. I'd play a lot of games with enemies that take a bit too long to kill before I'd play a game with AI as bad as what I experienced. It's not like the lack of bullet sponge enemies made the encounters any faster than your average cover shooter cause you just had several waves of them instead. Yeah, I guess it's more of a pet peeve of mine. I can't stand bullet sponges, and it's the reson I literally cannot play games like Gears of War. If a shoot someone in the face, I expect them to die.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:24 |
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A smug sociopath posted:Yeah, I guess it's more of a pet peeve of mine. I can't stand bullet sponges, and it's the reson I literally cannot play games like Gears of War. If a shoot someone in the face, I expect them to die. Yah that's fair enough. How did you feel about the bullet sponge enemies in uncharted 1? They were super spongey in the body, but they still died from a headshot.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:26 |
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LibbyM posted:Yah that's fair enough. How did you feel about the bullet sponge enemies in uncharted 1? They were super spongey in the body, but they still died from a headshot. Haven't played it (been meaning to, but haven't gotten around to it), but that sounds a lot like Far Cry 2, where you could plug multiple AK-47 rounds into people's chests with no reaction but one shot them with a headshot, and I found that to be a bigger nuisance than the respawning checkpoints.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 12:33 |
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GUI posted:demos are supposed to entice people to buy the game. whenever someone in a thread says "but maybe the full game is good" rest assured the game is going to be poo poo. Okay, I'll feed the troll: This is not a terrible action game, at all. It is a pretty competent Gears clone that does some fairly interesting things with story. You can blow through in a weekend easily, so, you know, maybe rent it if you want some bright colors and interesting story bits in your Gears. Again, if it wasn't clear, I DO NOT THINK YOU SHOULD BUY THIS AT FULL PRICE. The single player is short and the multiplayer is going to be dead in a month like every other game that isn't CoD or Halo or Gears. I'm sorry that I enjoy shooters and will sometimes pay seven dollars during a game drought to rent something with the understanding that it is going to be a B-list or even C-list shooter I can beat in a weekend. quote:It's no masterpiece, but it does tons of things I think warrant at least a rental or a borrow from a friend. There. There's a quote from someone else who has played it that says the same thing I did.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 15:02 |
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bloodysabbath posted:This is not a terrible action game, at all. LibbyM posted:... there was a time where 2 enemies ran past me as I was shooting them, and proceeded to take cover against a cover point behind me. They took cover on the same side I was on, so I just shot them in the back. They were obviously programmed to run to those cover points no matter what, regardless of player action or position. I wholeheartedly disagree with your statement.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 15:34 |
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It's a nice game, as long as you paid under 5 bucks for it. Otherwise, you got scammed.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 16:18 |
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On the topic of COOP, one of the developers was on Weekend Confirmed last week and mentioned that there will be some free COOP DLC coming out soon after release. He of course didn't give any details about it, but it sounded more like special coop missions and not making the whole campaign coop playable.
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 16:39 |
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LibbyM posted:I don't know. I'd play a lot of games with enemies that take a bit too long to kill before I'd play a game with AI as bad as what I experienced. It's not like the lack of bullet sponge enemies made the encounters any faster than your average cover shooter cause you just had several waves of them instead. Could it be part of the reason the single-player campaign is so short? Bullet sponges and cover-based firefights are usually cheap ways to make a game longer. So if you take easily-killed ennemies and super-effective teammates AI, does it make the game a breeze to go through?
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| # ? Jun 25, 2012 21:25 |
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Wow, this game is really unfun and the PC port is loving horrible. Mouse sensitivity is 1-10 with NO slider or way to set it really low, and even when I lower my Windows sensitivity and mess with my mouse's DPI controls, I still get like 4" for a 360. Not to mention the loving black bars because they couldn't be arsed to make it so the game actually supported proper resolutions. gently caress this game.
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| # ? Jun 26, 2012 02:47 |
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I must say, the TV commercials did an extremely good job of making the animations - to even the most minute things, like his eyes moving - look robotic and lovely.
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| # ? Jun 26, 2012 02:59 |
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Well I remember this from E3 last year (or maybe the year before) and am curious about it. The story and setting seem cool, and if it can deliver on the dynamic stuff and have an interesting enough story then I may pick it up. BTW thanks for the single player thread, I'm not a multiplayer gamer and find myself put off going into other threads due to the sheer amount of multiplayer discussion. I wish more games had a single player thread
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| # ? Jun 26, 2012 20:50 |
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Ok, I've played for around 2.5 hours and am enjoying the game so far. Some creepy poo poo is going on, and my seemingly professional squad seem to be breaking down a little. Nice atmosphere, interesting story, ok combat...worth picking up.
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| # ? Jun 27, 2012 18:16 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 06:45 |
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I'm enjoying the game a lot. The shooting is satisfying and the story has me hooked but goddamn the texture pop up is goddamn awful. I'm playing the PS3 version and the textures pop in slowly in cut scenes. Reminds me of the Battlefield 3 beta jank. Anyone playing the 360 version and experience awful textures?....it's so bad that when you pick up an intel item the simple texture of the intel object pops in a few seconds after the dialog menu is shown.
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| # ? Jun 28, 2012 05:19 |
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