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The final video is hosted on Dailymotion because Youtube put out a copyright strike on my account for the song that plays over the credits, muting the whole video in the process. Just figured I'd let you know/warn you.  Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person cover shooter developed by Yager Development and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide in June 2012 for PC, PS3, and 360, except in the United Arab Emirates, where it was banned for its depiction of Dubai. Spec Ops: The Line follows the story of Captain Martin Walker and his 2-man Delta Force squad, sent on a reconnaissance mission into the sand-destroyed ruins of Dubai. Their goal is to look for survivors, find the colonel leading Dubai's American military outpost, and exfiltrate. Soon, however, things take a turn for the more dramatic, and Walker and his buddies are thrust into a mission to save their fellow Americans before they are killed by radical insurgents. This game is what happens when you give a competent group of developers a whole bunch of money and tell them, "make whatever you want". Originally, Spec Ops was a series of "meh"-worthy shooters on the PS1, widely known for being batshit hard and particularly primitive in nature. The games got middling reviews and the series was canned shortly after the launch of the PS2, when the team behind the franchise realized that the first person shooter genre was pretty much covered by the big swingers of the era and thus there was no longer any money in it. There was one game in development, picked up very briefly by Rockstar Vancouver, but it was lost to time ages ago. The beta game and the Spec Ops franchise were passed around from hand to hand all throughout the early 2000s and eventually landed in the lap of Yager Development and publisher 2K Games. Yager rewrote the franchise to the point where the game has nothing to do with and barely even resembles its past counterparts; it is a Spec Ops game in first-title only. They presented their ideas to 2K after being released from previous publisher/developer Take-Two Interactive and only restriction the team was given by 2K was: Make the game military-based. So they did. But they did more than that, much more. As you will see.  Spec Ops: The Line is a fantastic game. Many people have trashed the gameplay but I think it's very fun and pulse-pounding. They make it feel very dangerous, as if you are in Walker's shoes and you too are on the brink of death at any moment. The story is absolutely fantastic, something that many video games try and fail repeatedly at. There are choices that, while they do not affect the gameplay, are cause for debate and genuine thought that I hope the thread toils over alongside me. Overall I love this game and I hope you see it through with me to the bitter, bitter end, because even if you know how it ends already, the journey matters just as much as the destination. Doesn't it?  No. Do not talk about things we haven't seen yet, even in spoiler tags.             Warning: Beyond here there be only demons... and massive spoilers. This is a live stream of Spec Ops: The Line on the hardest difficulty. I am joined by a bunch of friends of mine. I die, a lot, but it's a lot of fun and a good chance to talk about and analyze the game.          
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 12:07
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 This is an ongoing list of any bonus features I make for the LP. Bonus videos, story explanations, info dumps, fan art, and the soundtrack will be posted here.  Intel is an important part of Spec Ops: The Line. As the sole collectible, intel documents and items provide extra world building and lore that do not fit anywhere in the gameplay. They provide an insight into what happened in Dubai before Walker and co. arrived. Please watch these only after you've seen the relevant videos so as to not spoil anything for yourself.    This game contains a lot of awesome licensed music. All of it is listed here in order of appearance with the episode it appears in noted in the banner. All links are via polsy to avoid Youtube recommendations or comments spoiling everything, so these are safe to click even if you have not reached the relevant episode in the LP yet.           
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 12:07
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 Status: Chafed. You may notice during the opening cutscene that my audio is not cut out because I forgot to do so and rendering and uploading these videos in high quality takes a long time so I said gently caress it and just left it. It's not really that distracting anyway, although I guess it does immediately invalidate the thing I said about not talking over the cutscenes, technically. I, uh, went to get something to drink. Ah well. Future videos will not have such unfortunate mistakes.
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Jun 4, 2015 12:08
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I'm one of the fairly unapologetic lovers of this game: the shooting is servicable and the story can and will get cheesy, but the environment and atmosphere are utterly fantastic and definitely but it way above the average military shooter. Looking forward to experiencing this game again.
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Jun 4, 2015 12:48
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Looking forward to this. Never played Spec Ops The Line but heard plenty about it.
Mekchu fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 13:17
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Specops the line is a truly fantastic game. I appreciate almost everything about it. Even if the combat isn't particularly good, it's not bad either, I feel like it kind of fits.
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Jun 4, 2015 13:34
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I'll pull up this video as soon as I get home! I'm a fan of this game and will definitely enjoy having a new avenue to talk about it fresh.
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Jun 4, 2015 13:40
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I for one am completely unspoiled about this game, though I've heard its story is pretty darn good and even subversive, somehow. So yeah, I'm going to enjoy this very much.
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Jun 4, 2015 13:48
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This game is loving amazing. Such a fresh perspective on the genre that was desperately needed.
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Jun 4, 2015 14:12
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Yes. Yeeeees.  I really enjoy the gameplay and the story on this one, and I look forward to how deep the rabbit hole is gonna go. Speedball posted:Something that's not a spoiler: The guys who made this game made it frigging gorgeous. Also this. I didn't think a game based around a whole lotta sand would be a good thing for aesthetic purposes, but holy hot drat did they do a wonderful job of making this look amazing. IBlameRoadSuess fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 16:15
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Something that's not a spoiler: The guys who made this game made it frigging gorgeous.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:19
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"First Episode" posted:Ah, that guy wasn't even shooting, he was just watching. Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha!  ha ha...  ...  Your, shall we say, "enthusiasm" is going to make this game very interesting.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:32
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Was just talking about this game with a friend yesterday. It has one of the best game plots I've played, and is an excellent reaction to all the other war games that have been pumped out this decade.
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Jun 4, 2015 16:34
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Speedball posted:Something that's not a spoiler: The guys who made this game made it frigging gorgeous. Glad these guys took it a step further.
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Jun 4, 2015 17:37
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It also helps a lot that Dubai is a gorgeous city to begin with.
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Jun 4, 2015 17:53
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Is it just me, or the video is very, very quiet?
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Jun 4, 2015 18:47
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Gantolandon posted:Is it just me, or the video is very, very quiet? I agree, the game is a little bit quiet. Other than that all good.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:13
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The game audio clips pretty hard in the helicopter segment (despite me turning the audio volume down to like 5 lol), so I guess when I ran the auto duck on it with my commentary audacity freaked the hell out. I'll do what I did for Dead Space 3 and run a compressor on the Spec Ops audio before I do the auto ducking to equalize it a bit, so that it doesn't freak out and make everything super quiet because of one super loud part. Hopefully that'll fix the game being quiet. See, I tired doing a straight-up auto duck with no volume modifications, but the game's general volume is just so loud that you couldn't hear my commentary without me boosting it a bajillion db, so I went the opposite way to avoid the clipping and lowered the game's volume instead. I'll try it the other way for the next vid.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:19
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Yes. Yes, good. I, too, love this game, and look forward to the adventures of Isaac "add ME to the war crimes counter" Clarke in it! Every time I see that "Special Guest" bit in the opening,  I really only had two problems with the combat gameplay. 1. Mouse acceleration. Sometime after my first playthrough I did find out how to turn it off and immediately went into FUBAR laughing like a Grineer Manic. 2. Console port contextual control stacking. Admittedly, I do have a slight issue with really strange control schemes and button panic, so at least some of this is on me personally. Ultimately, these wound up so trivial compared to everything else about the game that I was just "yeah whatever it's a little janky so what WE CLEARLY NEED TO CONTINUE ONWARDS" CJacobs posted:Walker can only take about fifteen bullets before he dies. You know, very realistic! Although headshots will kill him pretty quick! Also friendly fire always being on is great and totally needs a counter. When an associate first streamed the game, I was the friendly fire counter. I eventually lost count.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:28
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Not a spoiler: this whole thing is Carver and Norton's fault.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:43
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Speaking of FUBAR, yes I will be doing a run through of it. Maybe once the LP is over. Maybe live! We'll see how my school schedule works out.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:46
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Add me to the count of people who genuinely love this game. I honestly don't understand the criticism that the shooting is bad; the shooting feels like just about any other cover shooter to me, but with more atmosphere and better art direction to give it some more umph.
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Jun 4, 2015 20:09
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pkfan2004 posted:Not a spoiler: this whole thing is Carver and Norton's fault. Blame it on Rico Velasquez.
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Jun 4, 2015 21:21
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I know zip about the series but drat the game looks so pretty. I'm in.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:18
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The shooting and combat is serviceable, yet unremarkable. It all works well enough, but doesn't really have a lot to separate itself from most other shooters. Spec Ops doesn't have as monstrous a budget like most other Triple-A military games, so most of the money went into polishing the story, which worked out pretty well for itself.
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Jun 5, 2015 00:34
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Looking forward to a thorough analysis, I "enjoyed" The Line a few years ago but I'm sure I missed a lot of... things.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:51
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I most likely will be doing an analysis video when it's all over (since I feel like it'd be kind of insulting to do an anime music video finale wrap up for this game), but if anyone wants to do an infodump or whathaveyou in media res then I definitely wouldn't object.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:54
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i'm already a monster OP, where does that leave us?
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Jun 5, 2015 02:04
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Putty posted:i'm already a monster OP, where does that leave us? We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but here - here you could look at a thing monstrous and free.
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Jun 5, 2015 02:07
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Uh, that's a quote from Heart of Darkness. I guess what I'm saying is that this is a safe zone for monsters. I dunno Joseph Conrad was kinda off his rocker. Safe Ops: The Thread
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Jun 5, 2015 02:07
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HomestarCanter posted:Ha ha! He's playing the game the way it was meant to be played 
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Jun 5, 2015 03:04
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CJacobs posted:Uh, that's a quote from Heart of Darkness. I guess what I'm saying is that this is a safe zone for monsters. I dunno Joseph Conrad was kinda off his rocker. Better than Kafka
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Jun 5, 2015 03:10
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I think I see what you're going for with this LP. I hope I'm right, anyway. If I am, it'll make things very interesting as we go along. Anyway, I thought the gameplay in The Line was perfectly fine, but I also have played basically no third-person shooter games that came out between Gears of War 1 and this aside from Binary Domain, and none of them ever seemed that drastically different or amazing anyway, so I don't see how much there is to be annoyed at in a cover-based third-person shooter.
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Jun 5, 2015 06:34
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The whole "the shooter part of this is pretty much normal and fine so that means the gameplay is an unfun disaster" thing that got latched onto all over the place was just weird as hell. I'm tempted to blame Extra Credits for starting that, with their whole video on "the running and gunning has been reduced to a banal slog", but really don't remember the timeline of it spreading. I have some further thoughts on the subject but I'll save it for when a certain loading screen pops or the LP is otherwise sufficiently advanced into the game.
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Jun 5, 2015 08:23
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Well here we go again. Another game where a character voiced by Nolan North arrives in a ruined desert landscape looking to be a hero only end up making things utterly, horrifically worse for everyone involved. Good times
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Jun 5, 2015 08:37
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nine-gear crow posted:Well here we go again. Another game where a character voiced by Nolan North arrives in a ruined desert landscape looking to be a hero only end up making things utterly, horrifically worse for everyone involved.
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Jun 5, 2015 09:16
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Along with gameplay, one major criticism I see (predominately from the "It's not THAT good, guys" camp of negative people) is that the story is derivative and basically just not actually gonna spoil that fast, guys in video game form. My usual response to that is "So is everything else." It's virtually impossible to find a story that isn't derived from a past work or even unconsciously inspired by it, or a story so simple that it's been retold a million times. What makes a game, movie, or book story good is HOW it tells the story. I like the story in Spec Ops: The Line not because it's brilliantly original, but because the creators did a very good job in telling it. A good example would be Mad Max: Fury Road. Is the story original? Eh, not really. Hell, it's intentionally simple enough that it can be followed with absolutely no dialogue. But Miller does an exceptional job telling it through good characters and actors and heavy use of non-verbal cues to the point where story developments and characterization continue through over half an hour's worth of car chases. It's an impossibly epic action movie, yes, but it's engaging precisely because it makes you care about the characters and feel engaged and immersed in the world even if the story is such a simple tale that people who don't even speak English can understand it just by the acting and framing.
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Jun 5, 2015 16:50
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Also seriously just look at Ruined Dubai. The environments in this game tell a hell of a story by themselves and they're absolutely amazing.
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Jun 5, 2015 16:58
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I really love the aesthetic of this game, by the way CJacobs you are routinely a great Lp'r and I don't know if I have said that. You do a great job with this stuff and I am looking forward to your take on this one.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:22
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chitoryu12 posted:I'll pull up this video as soon as I get home! I'm a fan of this game and will definitely enjoy having a new avenue to talk about it fresh. I still find it sad that "Being a soldier sucks" is a fresh take on this genre, but I'm glad at least someone is taking that road.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:26
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