Spec Ops: The Line to Be Picked Apart in Upcoming Book Criticism

By now, military shooting games might be one of the most saturated sub genres. Earlier this year, 2K threw its hat in the ring with Yager's Spec Ops: The Line. While the game won't be challenging Call of Duty or Battlefield anytime soon, it did have a surprisingly-good story.

Speaking of which, our own Brendan Keogh will try his hand with long-form criticism book titled " Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line."

So just what will the book be about? In a post on his blog, Keogh states, "While with most other games I could perhaps sum up their themes and how they conveyed them in a thousand words or so, I found this to be impossible with The Line. I think this is largely to do with the unique way that The Line is structured. Most videogames have narratives that work in a kind of looping fashion, going in complete circles one after the other, and you can talk about any of one of these loops in relative isolation. The Line, meanwhile, is one long, slow, gradual arc, and it is truly difficult to talk about any single bit of it without talking about all of it. So to analyse The Line, then, I needed to analyse all of The Line, from the opening menu screen to the end of the final epilogue. I needed to look at every single little bit of the game from start to finish to see how it all goes together in such a way to make me ask the questions I asked. So that is what I have done. "

Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line is due out on November 21, and will be priced at $2.99 for the first month, and will be available $4.99 after promo period. The book will be in PDF format with iOS and Amazon versions planned in the future. You can check Keogh's site for updates and availability once it's out.

Brendon's latest feature for the site is a fascinating look at Binary Domain which you can read here.