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With Spec Ops, Yager Developments and 2K Games have delivered a thought-provoking, intelligent third-person shooter - one which cleverly blends dark humour with a more serious side that depicts the horrors of war and the effects they have on the human psyche. Morally grey decisions taken by the player affect the characters, rather than just the outcome of the story, while the Call of Duty-style 'stop and pop' shooting is counter-balanced by some chilling scenes of cruelty towards fellow soldiers and Dubai's civilian population. The Middle-Eastern setting also provides some entertainingly varied scenarios, with the use of sand and the ravaged environments giving players a variety of different gameplay options.On a basic level, sandstorms obscure the player's vision and serve to create large set-pieces in which key parts of the environment are destroyed. Light is shifted around, colours become distorted and enemies morph into silhouettes which blend into the chaos of the storm. The use of sand is also used to influence how combat scenes play out, so if you shoot out a pane of glass then the sand dunes beyond come crashing through, killing enemy soldiers and opening up a new path to follow. Most of the large events are heavily scripted but still feel organic, upping both the spectacle and intensity of the action as the game progresses.
The use of lighting and various alpha-based effects - sand, dust, smoke - really help to immerse the player in this challenging environment. However, in creating such a spectacle, there have been a few compromises made to the graphical make-up of the game on the console platforms, while the PC version doesn't appear to have had anything like the kind of optimisation it should have, resulting in some real performance issues.
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