It's tempting to give The Line a thumbs down, given that I did not have a good time and it seriously bummed me out. But the thing is, that's pretty much the point of the game. Ever watched Platoon and thought "damn, I wish that was me"? Well, maybe find a good psychiatrist, but also definitely try Spec Ops: The Line because it will scratch that itch without the considerable distress of having to be Charlie Sheen.

So while it initially seems to be yet another piece of Modern Warfare-style hooah military porn, it doesn't take long for a metaphorical nun to enter the room and punish you for vigorously exercising your assault rifle. (That's a metaphor we can all relate to, right? No, just me? Alrighty then.) Turns out The Line is more about the horrors of war than the thrill of whipping out your beefy gleaming weapon in front of a bunch of guys.

Pretend I'm narrating the rest of this review in Al Gore's voice, because from here on out it's super serious. The set-up is that Dubai has been partially evacuated before an apocalyptic sandstorm, leaving the remaining population isolated and starving. A US army battalion disobeys orders and stays in the city to look after its residents, but as supplies dwindle, the colonel institutes martial law and starts executing civilians. You play a Delta Force operative sent in to investigate the city's comms blackout and renegade battalion. You arrive to find a hellscape of bodies, fire, ruination and blinding sand.

And that's the happiest part, before your actions descend the Delta Force team into a pit of trauma and moral degradation. I won't throw any spoilers in here, but The Line forces you to do some pretty horrendous things that made me feel sick. You're usually given some degree of choice, but only enough to feel even worse about it. There's also the fact that the enemies you're gunning down in droves aren't invading aliens, demons, mad cultists or endangered wildlife poachers, they're American soldiers who tried to do the right thing and ended up stuck in the moral pit that you're teetering over. While the shooting dynamic is fine (third-person cover-intensive linear shooter - think Call of Duty crossed with Gears of War), you can never wholly enjoy it because of who you're fighting. In fact, it's often hard to tell if it's your enemies talking or your squadmates.

Like Apocalypse Now, it's loosely inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, and has that film's sense of surreal horror too. It's more like Platoon in terms of the feeling you get, and the way camaraderie can give way to hate. The campaign is short, less than five hours, but the choices you can make along the way add a little variety to things, including a Mass Effect-style final level that allows several different endings (four according to Wikipedia). There's multiplayer and co-op, but given that the game has been out for a while, those are best sampled with friends rather than waiting to hook up with a rando.

Feels bad, man, but it's a unique game that aspires to emulate some of cinema's most powerful projects. I'd much rather hide behind the level of dissociation you get from watching this sort of thing in a movie, but if you really want to feel that horror on a personal level, here's your game.