I don't think you could make a good demo. As everything is connected in the game, picking a level at random hardly works.

i understand that. a storyline is difficult to represent in a demo.

but i thought it was odd that they claimed to be so different from the average military shooter only to have you shoot down a dozen helicopters and kill 100 enemy soldiers within the first few minutes.

it sounds like the gameplay and the storyline are disconnected from each other, i.e. you're playing an average military shooter while the storyline says the opposite.

i'll give the game chance, but not at full price. i guess i won't wait for 75% Steam deal, either, though.

True enough. Same thing with a novel I guess. The best they're could've done was..well..the beginning of the game. :P

So yeah the demo, while not a good representation, is the best that could be done since the game is a novelisc in story approach.

zeropunctuation seemed to like it as well:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6021-Spec-Ops-The-Line

That convinced me, that the gameplay is a fairly usual modern shooter stuff, because Yahtzee never manages to finish any other kind of games for reviews and spends minutes mocking their titles (Nier, Mortal Kombat, Witcher 2 (2 swords? incomprehensible!)).

Don't watch that. Apart from the fact that youtube is a horrible way to show gaming it will probably spoil to much of the game.

Honestly, boastful schmocks with a youtube account are probably one of the biggest scourges of modern gaming.

Yahtzee only uses stick figures to illustrate what he's saying, he doesn't show gameplay. And he says very little about the story in this video.

Also, I am dead serious when I say I consider him one of the few gaming critics (in the best sense of the word) around. You just have to look past the dick jokes. (EDIT: Yes, in this case the fart jokes.)

Just play the game already!
I am the first to admit that I'm an ignorant and arrogant dick ( and I enjoy dick *beat* jokes), I did not know he only uses stick figures. But I want to read! I honestly can't stand video "reviews".

The only ones I like are those "extra credit" vids.

Well, that's just his spiel, and he's more or less locked into it by now by his audience, for better or worse. Each Tuesday, he also follows up the previous video with an "Extra Punctuation" column, which is a more in-depth analysis of something he found interesting about the game and often a very good read.

I should probably abstain from commenting in this thread, since I haven't played the game nor tried the demo. But I read everything RPS posted about it (interviews, hands-on impressions and more, watched the developers' diaries, etc), and there's one thing that interests me about your stance, Simon.

This is quite a hard question to answer, I know, but I think it would be interesting if you tried to: Do you think the fact that you came to the game completely blind has coloured, for the better, your opinion of it? I've noticed in one of your first posts you intentionally avoided mentioning the name of that Konrad character. From your point of view, having no idea about what the game was 'really' about, I'm sure that was a very intriguing hint and a significative spoiler. But for someone like me, that learned it was 'loosely inspired' by Heart of Darkness almost since the first time I heard about the game, that was a pretty innocuous bit of common knowledge.

What I'm trying to get at is this: I'm under the impression that if you'd knew beforehand that The Line isn't supposed to be your thread-of-the-mill military shooter, the storyline wouldn't have wowed you to the same high levels. Not even close.

And I'm not saying the game is mediocre or bad or anything like that. As I've said, I haven't played it, so I can hardly judge it, even if I've always felt more possitive towards it than most people that were dismissing it like 'another third-person cover shooter'. But the calls you are making ("best gaming storyline since PS:T") are indeed very big, and I'm honestly under the impression that what is happenning here is the reverse effect of hype dissapointment: a game isn't the worst game in history because it failed to live to the hype surrounding it; but also, a game is not the best game in history because everybody expected it to suck* and it ends up being quite good.

*Or, in this case, because you had no expectations, either good or bad, about it.

While he does make a lot of good points, I still consider him more of an entertainer. His whole show is based around slamming every game he comes across. He does often nitpick or harp on things that aren't as bad as he makes them out to be, but it's all in good fun. I greatly enjoy his show, but I would never take his Zero Punctuation vids as the final word on a given title's quality.

Defiantly. The games narrative structure is one of it strengthens. I usually never read about games I haven't played. I am aware of them and I check the surrounding factors (eg, who made it) But I don't read, eg, reviews. (As most reviews are usually not doing anything for me. Bad MP? boohoo...). I can't tell much without giving important points away, but the storytelling is working on a "meta approach", addressing you as the gamer directly. Not only the main character is experience the journey, but also the player.

Yet, once you are done with it, and look back at what happened, you can actually see and appreciate how impressively this game was woven together. I really looking forward to my next playthrough, to see it from the "other side".

Asa n example, I think everybody knows that the game offers "choices". But those choices are very subtle build in this game. It's not "press either "a" to save burning orphanage or press "b" to drown a bag of kittens" it is much more subtle than that.

All in all, the game is a threaded experience. You need to dive in and experience it. Nobody makes "reviews" of books were they print the occasional page.

I would even say, that if you didn't anything know about the deconstruction this game offers (By calling it eg "Modern Medal of Honour Warfare 6: Dubai), you would get even more out of it (at least if you are mature enough to see what is going on). That is also what makes this game so enjoyable. It isn't some pretentious indy game with "artsy graphics" (which are actually just plain bad) and interesting (as in shitty) gameplay that offers a unique (as in pseudo intellectual) experience. It is a freakingly awesome action movie, which takes you through one hell of a ride. If just wouldn't be for that nagging feeling....

And about that Heart of Darkness spoiler. Joseph Konrad are literally the first words spoken in this game, therefore hardly a spoiler. But from that point on I (and everybody who has looked at any book sideways at least once in his life) knew were this was going. But it goes deeper than that.

The comparison to PS:T is that this also basically an awesomely fun game, with great humor and good gameplay. But it basically deconstructed a whole genre single-handedly without breaking a sweat or sacrificing any "fun" in gameplay. Same goes with Spec Ops.

Edit:

This is probably redundant by now, but the soundtrack is also pretty damn good. And it also works great.

Holy. Fucking. Krap.
Tried the demo (first level+going down the skyscraper in Chapter 5). These bastards opened the game with the exact same chopper blade sounds as Apocalypse Now. They drop phrases like "that voice" and put up a song in the background seemingly for one single line "we got out of the boat". Actually, the I'm loving the acoustics - firefights sound different in different environments.
Shooting's nice, for cover based TPS. Beaten half the demo with the pistol, then shit got real.
Oh, and it ran with occasional stutters on Athlon X64 6000+, GF9800 GT and 2GB RAM... I knew I don't need to upgrade for good multiplatform stuff this console gen.

Damn, I have to buy this. Cursed be the power of demos.

As a sidenote, it seems like another Blade Runner trilogy. Book-Film-Game. All share the same basic ideas, but have different stories, with the game borrowing from both predecessors. All use the strong points of their medium (inner monologue-visual language-choices), staying within established genres. Fuck, yeah.

…I hate you guys.

Now I just hope it shows up in the Steam sale so I can stop thinking about it and just buy it.