Best Game of 2012.

I realize the time is late for me to come up with my own best game for 2012, but the usual line up of top fives and year’s best of the best mayonnaise have gotten to me this year, amongst all this noise and ranting forums, I retreated and waited for the dust to settle.

After this little time, I finally came up with the game that, to me, was the biggest surprise for 2012, in this case, none other the Spec Ops: The Line.

This choice can seem strange considering some of the great titles we have been graced with this year.

Between the closure of the great Mass Effect saga, the amazing Dishonored, the surprising Halo 4 and the frenetic Far Cry 3, to name only some of the biggest ones, there are numerous other, more relevant candidates.

As a matter of fact, Spec Ops: The Line is not that memorable in terms of gameplay nor graphics, it’s third person shooter action, borrowed from Gears of War was dated and flawed, you can reach into my review of the game for details.

Spec Ops: The Line stands out on another ground, it’s premise and story, which are properly disturbing to a point where very few games dared to venture.

Whereas everything starts as your average military shooter, with the usual honor amongst warrior and fighting the good fight philosophy, the game’s apocalyptic environment is where the game starts to do it’s trick, by putting the player in an familiar environment, yet completely alien and hostile at the same time, the player is placed in a position where he expects anything to happen.

However, nothing can prepare you for what transpires in Spec Ops, the utter, complete chaos and violence of the situation is drawing the hero into a succession of encounters, and quickly, the lines are getting more and more blurry, until the line is finally crossed, after a game section that is a close reminder of the very popular AC130 section in Modern Warfare.

The results however are different from what could be expected;

Even the clever use of decisions in the game, is pushing into that direction, you simply can’t win and every decision you make leaves you with the feeling that you did something terribly wrong.

In the end, the fact that really got to me is that Spec Ops uses the same morality and logic  used in so many military shooters and to which we are used to and then lets you deconstruct it, piece by piece.

Spec Ops has left a very deep emotional mark, in an environment where heavy military shooters are still king of the hill for the shooter genre, Spec Ops message was delivered like a sucker punch to the very fragment of classic video games structures and has definitely changed the way I look at games.