Preview by: Neilie Johnson

Dating back to the late ‘90s, the Spec Ops franchise has the right to call itself “venerable”, but quality-wise, can't exactly claim to be consistent. Despite its checkered past, 2012 might just be the year the series turns itself around, that is, if 2K's recent demo of Spec Ops: The Line is any indication. Recently in downtown San Francisco, the publisher gave members of the press two hours of hands-on time with the game and from what we saw, the game's set not only to show gamers the exciting side of war, but its traumatic effect on humanity.

The Line is set in Dubai, a surreal, money-soaked Middle Eastern playground for the rich and famous. With its super-modern skyscraper hotels and sparkling shopping complexes, Dubai makes Vegas look like a trailer park—until a massive sandstorm blows through and nearly covers it. As usual, the U.S. Army is on the scene after such a disaster and during the evacuation, an officer named Colonel John Konrad stays behind, ostensibly to protect the remaining citizenry. The army loses contact with him and in a narrative that strongly references Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, you (as Captain Martin Walker) are sent to Dubai to look for him and whatever remains of his unit, Delta Force.

During the demo, we were shown a couple of fairly cool video montages that illustrated the incredible visuals built into the game but of course, the best part of the session was the time we were allowed to play the game. After surviving a hair-raising helicopter gun battle through the wrecked high-rises of Dubai, we (me and my two support soldiers—Lugo and Adams) landed on an empty sand dune outside the city and started jogging through the debris. We discovered the bodies of some American soldiers among the overturned vehicles and soon after, the silence was broken by gunfire. We fought our way toward the city through an unidentifiable group of guerrillas and before we knew it, our simple recon mission had become something much more complicated.

Although the game features three difficulty settings, 2K's representative suggested we play the demo on “Easy” (it appears there's an ongoing debate at Yager regarding the final difficulty settings) which included an obvious aim-assist. We were told gamers looking for more challenge can avoid aim assist altogether in higher difficulty modes and can also adjust aim sensitivity in the options menu. For our money though, the aim-assist feature will prove very useful to those of us who regularly struggle with thumbstick aiming. Aside from aim-assist making shooting enemies easier, the game's simple control scheme works well; there's nothing ground-breaking here, but it's so easy to shoot, swap weapons, reload and take cover, you immediately feel like a badass.

In addition to the basic controls being reassuringly familiar, the game's squad controls are as simple as can be. (We were told us the squad controls were originally more complex, but that the micro-management required by that more intricate system took away from the action so was swapped for a more streamlined approach.) As your back-up, soldiers Lugo and Adams not only provide amusing banter between fights, they provide much-needed guidance and support when the bullets start flying. Their help was definitely useful when we encountered more guerrillas and what turned out to be a splinter group of CIA agents who seemed bent on blowing our heads off. By pressing RB in context-sensitive situations, I was able to direct Lugo and Adams to throw stun grenades, to scout ahead or to take out marked targets. Doing so was as intuitive and easy as tossing a grenade and my guys were gratifyingly responsive. In general, enemy AI also appeared to be fairly—but not overly—intelligent, perhaps as a result of the Easy difficulty setting.

As Yager and 2K repeatedly emphasized, Spec Ops: The Line is meant to tell a mature war story. What that means is that it's more than just another run-n-gun; it's meant to make gamers feel the real human cost of war. During the demo, we definitely saw how that's conveyed in several disturbing areas featuring imagery that echoed the most frightening real-life news footage from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dead bodies, horrifically wounded soldiers, the sound of agonized moans from people burning after a napalm-like attack; it was tough stuff to see and impossible to be emotionally unaffected by it. At one point, we were put in the position of choosing between completing a military objective or saving civilians and throughout the time we played, we were confronted with situations like those, were we could either reduce, or add to, the collateral damage.