I am an awful, awful person.


This is how Spec Ops The Line made me feel on one specific occasion, I won't go into details for fear of spoiling things for some of you lovely people. Let's just say that at a certain point in the game things all seemed fairly video game routine... until the battle was over, once the smoke cleared I encountered something that truly did horrify me. Even on my second play through knowing exactly what to expect I still had the same feelings of shock and horror when encountering the scene. 

I don't need no sticking bullets.

Not only were there feelings of horror but there was real anger, only fleeting on this occasion as it was swamped by regret fairly quickly but it was there and it reared it's head again later in the game. There is another scene, that I shall not talk about (good this ain't it!), that once the shock wore off left me fuming with rage, left me wanting to do things that I would normally shy away from and after staring at the screen for what seemed like hours (but was more likely minutes) I managed to restrain myself from enacting bloody murder.... just.

Why didn't I blow on the pie.

There are other moments during The Line when I found myself placed firmly in the shoes of Captain Walker and what he must be experiencing at the time, I have played games before when I have felt connected to lead character, games that made me smile or laugh, games that have caused feelings of fear and tension but never anything as intense as I did playing The Line.

Ahh the feelings, they are good.

Journey was another game that surprised me with it's level of emotion, but these were all subtle feelings compared to The Line, a little bit sad, a little bit scared and a lot happy at the end it was a brilliant game and I rate it highly but the emotional memory faded after a few days. I'm sure there are other games that escape my amazing powers of recall at the moment that have elicited feelings of joy or sadness in me, oh like that bit in Red Dead Redemption near the end, you know the bit, yeah I was sad then. But these feelings have been fleeting and far from the intensity The Line managed to evoke, the feelings passed and certainly didn't return when I played the games again, but the feeling of regret I got from The Line stuck with me for days. It's still there if I think about it, just like now, see.

Second saddest moment in gaming about to happen.

I really hope to see more developers attempt this level of emotional intensity, not all games should be like this of course we still want to have fun playing our games and feel good when we finish our campaigns/missions/quests, but in a strange way it certainly was refreshing to have the mental and emotional sh*t beaten out of me while playing The Line. 

Guess I should finish with a question, seems like the done thing. 

So what have you played that left you with a goofy grin on your face or left you a blubbering mess sobbing into your blankets?