Video
games can be many things to many people, so the idea of proclaiming a
single one as the best of 2012 strikes us as a little limiting. This
year, instead of screaming at each other for hours in a sweaty,
smoke-filled room until we emerge with a handful of winners, your
friends at 1UP have decided to forsake categorization and write about the
experiences that brought us the most enjoyment this year
— and that’s the point of playing video games, isn’t it?
To be perfectly frank, video
games about war generally don’t have a whole lot to say. Your
protagonist is usually an infallible American hero who can give and
take damage like the lead in a summer blockbuster. Your guns are
generally pointed at some various shades of foreign invaders with
backstories as shallow as a kiddie pool. And then there’s the
plot…well, the less we say about the plot of most action
games, the better. It’s with this low bar that I entered Spec
Ops: The Line. After I was done,
everything had changed.
