9 Video Games That Used Everything You'd Learned Against You

4. Spec-Ops: The Line Makes You Question Morality

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2K Games

There's a lot of killing in gaming. In the case of shooters, that's the basic premise of the game; you stick a gun in the general direction of the bad thing, you squeeze the trigger, and you kill it dead.

It's very rare that games actually take the time to make you question why you're actually doing this, but in the case of underappreciated gem Spec Ops: The Line, it makes you question everything you've ever learned about shooting games.

What Spec Ops does particularly well is giving context to your actions. At one point, you're charged with bombing a town with white phosphorous, which you'll do in typical shooter fashion without any consequences. After that, you'll be presented with a next scene which showcases the horrors of what you've done; killing several innocent hostages just to kill the bad guys.

From that point on, Spec Ops completely subverts the story you'd expect from a shooter, telling a tale of PTSD and the mental toll that warfare can have on soldiers.

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Contributor

Dan Curtis is approximately one-half videogame knowledge, and the other half inexplicable Geordie accent. He's also one quarter of the Factory Sealed Retro Gaming podcast.