A Spec Ops: The Line demo is out now, 2K Games has announced.

It’s currently available to all PlayStation 3 users and Xbox Live Gold subscribers, but will open up to all Xbox Live members on May 15.

The demo includes portions of two early chapters of the Spec Ops campaign, which sees Captain Martin Walker search for Colonel John Konrad and his missing battalion in war-torn Dubai.

 

Gameplanet: In a narrative sense, what’s the goal for Spec Ops: The Line?

Cory Davis: I think as far as the narrative goes, what we want is to try and push this thing in a new direction, sort of the direction that film went after [the] Vietnam [war], when a lot of these heart wrenching and emotional stories came home from the soldiers that were there; a lot less of the “Go USA!” heroic types of stories that were being told. Films came out like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter. I think these films really changed the industry for the better. They didn’t necessarily portray war in a realistic sense, but they caught the essence of what people felt there. That’s what we want to do. We want to try and capture the essence of a lot of the stories we’ve found through our research and through discussions with our military advisor, and push that to the forefront of this game. You follow these characters as they go on a very difficult journey. But it also touches on themes that are very important to us as developers. We want to touch on those in a new way that hopefully gives people a new look at these things in an interactive medium.

So that to me is really interesting: in Spec Ops: The Line we have a chance to get our hands dirty with some of those situations that soldiers find themselves in on the battlefield, situations that don’t have a positive outcome either way, and a lot of times they’re situations that have to be made on the fly in the worst circumstances, and you have to live with those consequences. So I think it’s really interesting to use interactivity in a way that helps the player to feel what our characters are feeling, which film often can’t do – it’s a unique thing for us as game developers.

 

Cory Davis looks like he could be a roadie for Metallica. But if appearances can be deceiving, the humble lead designer at Yager is the perfect candidate to enthuse about Spec Ops: The Line. At first bob, Spec Ops is spectacularly unspectacular: burdened with an underwhelming franchise title, it's a third-person shooter featuring another squad of elite American soldiers puncturing the Middle-East with more high velocity rounds than a Rambo flick.

The player’s character, Captain Walker, is a stubbly-chinned American of European extraction voiced by Nolan North. North is an actor whose credits include Uncharted 3’s Nathan Drake, Arkham City’s Penguin, Black Ops’ Dr. Edward Richtofen, and Assassin’s Creed’s Desmond Miles. He is quite literally the digital everyman, this industry’s answer to Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise.

However, Spec Ops: The Line’s lukewarm first impression belies a game with staggering ambition, a game that, should it manage the ascent, will assume its place in gaming Valhalla. Or one that will falter magnificently.

 

Eric Hirshberg has a bone to pick with the public. On the subject of Call of Duty, the Activison CEO said, “There's a sense that games are more exploitative in a way that The Hurt Locker – which also was designed as a form of entertainment – isn't.”

“The producers didn't create The Hurt Locker as a public service,” he continued. “It was a piece of entertainment that they sold tickets to and sell DVDs with. And, yet, that's not viewed as exploiting current events. It's viewed as somehow artistically interpreting and commenting on current events. The creative process of making that movie and making our games is very similar, but they're received differently.”

True enough, but Hirshberg misses the point. Modern Warfare isn’t interpreted the way The Hurt Locker is simply because it can’t be: Modern Warfare doesn’t have anything important or interesting to say. A cast of two-dimensional characters take a slick rollercoaster ride through adversity to arrive at the inevitable triumph of the West over freedom-hating foreigners. Watch your step as you exit. Modern Warfare is “git sum” media, Navy Seals, an empty spectacle – the very kind of thing film critics praised The Hurt Locker for transcending.