Now, I don't really want to get into the habit of reviewing games, there are already too many blogs and websites that do that, but there is a reason I wanted to indulge myself just this once, and for the most part, this isn't really a review as much as a mourning, and an indication of what the gaming world is kinda coming to. Let me explain.
The Line starts off like pretty much any third person shooter. You play the token white guy with a shaven head in army scrubs, with the token smart ass in a cap, and the token black guy. Everything is token, including the token enemies with token scarves and token AK47's, and a brief jump to a token helicopter scene.
So far, so token, and it would be easy to dismiss this game because of that, the controls aren't perfect and are so vanilla in flair that it's actually detrimental to the experience, but something different happens as you progress, and a story develops.
Now, anyone that has either read Jospeh Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness", or watched "Apocalypse Now" will recognize the story, and so you should, because the writers have pretty much categorically stated that this is 'heavily inspired' by the book. You get called in because a platoon of soldiers has pretty much vanished with no contact and when you get there you slowly find out that they have gone feral, and the leader of the platoon is now some sort of kingpin after having gone insane. There are war atrocities everywhere and he needs to be taken out so you can rescue the residents of Dubai.
Oh, the game is set in Dubai after a catastrophic sandstorm. I should have mentioned that.
Your character is actually a character in this game, not a vessel for you to project yourself onto, and this is a great thing.
Too many games these days have the silent guy, which is generally a trait in MMORPGs, in order to let you feel like you're involved, but as a story telling device it's bloody awful.
I don't have to make the decisions between good and bad when I play the game, I don't have to care that I accidentally killed a load of civilians, because it's part of the story, it's not like I'm doing it, or my character, it's all part of the narrative.
And the thing is, The Line does a really great job of making you realize you aren't a hero, and the characters actually become compelling and believable, I became really interested in where it was all going.
The self-loathing dragged on a little too much, if I had to complain, a little like Max Payne 3, Max constantly bitching about how rubbish he was after slowing down time to shoot 5 people in the head in under a second.
The real issue came at the end, so you can consider this a spoiler warning, but honestly, I'll be doing you a favor.
At the end of "Apocalypse Now", you face off against the rebel leader, who gives a long, dark twisted speech, and then you stab him. In "The Line", it is revealed that the leader was all in your head, and scenes you saw with living people were really with corpses and so forth.
You see, drawing inspiration, or doing an idea that has been done before is fine if you do it well, and from decent material, which this game did. It took an existing story and brought it to a modern audience, which it should be applauded for, however, THE SECOND that the writers deviate for the plot, they ruin it with some non-sensical twist bullshit.
It's like making a perfect cup of tea, two sugars, milk, and then stirring it with a week old white dog shit. They spent so much time building up around this old story and making it great, and then they add their touch and ruin the whole thing.
We didn't need a twist, we didn't need it at all, the game would have ended fine, better than fine if we just faced off the captain, even without a proper fight, it would have made a truly great story.
Instead, and sadly, it's such a terrible twist that it ruined the entire experience for me.
But, that being said, I really hope they make another one, this time with less pseudo-twist M. Night. Shyamalan bullshit.
