If this sounds like an ordinary contrived narrative created to let you shoot loads of dudes, then you’d be right – at first. A certain Captain Walker and his two stereotypical generic troops enter the city to figure out what happened. A commander named Konrad and his legion of troops enter the devastated city to help the survivors and, subsequently, mysteriously disappear. Instead of Africa or Vietnam, however, Spec Ops is set in Dubai, which has been ravaged by massive sand storms. The game itself is a modern retelling of Apocalypse Now, which in itself is an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s legendary Heart of Darkness – in fact, in a less-than-subtle reference, the game’s villain is named Konrad. And while the gameplay is nothing special, and the narrative features some truly atrocious plot holes, the sheer ambition of the developers make this a shooter worth playing.

In fact, this is a good way of describing the entirety of Spec Ops: The Line – the game asks extremely uncomfortable questions about war, and the consequences of following orders, and does not give you any easy answers that will help you sleep well at night. Wishing to replay a previous chapter, I waited idly with controller in hand, expecting the loading screen to feature some useless tips on game controls – instead, the provocative question stares at me in the face, unflinchingly. I do a double-take, making sure that I read the loading screen correctly.

Spec ops the line loading screen text