9 Video Games Where You Lose No Matter What

5. Spec Ops: The Line

Max payne 2
Yager Development

In Spec Ops: The Line, you play as Captain Martin Walker on a quest to find the truth about what happened to Colonel John Konrad. Walker, with his fire team consisting of heavy gunner 1st Lt. Alphonso Adams, and sniper and linguist Staff Sgt. John Lugo enters a storm-destroyed Dubai.

In the course of the bitter quest you manage to drop white phosphorous on a group of civilians and the American soldiers who were trying to protect them (from you). You then have a psychotic breakdown and begin talking to a broken radio.

You doom the city to death by dehydration by mistake, ultimately falling for a ploy by the CIA to kill everyone and cover up the war crimes the Colonel's forces committed.

Lugo gets lynched by an angry mob and after you get ambushed by the last of Konrad's soldiers, Adams fights to the death to let you escape and get to Konrad. You discover that Konrad died by suicide weeks before your arrival.

Whether you also die by suicide, surrender to an incoming military convoy, kill the whole convoy, or die in a final shootout - you still failed the mission and everyone around you died.

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Author of Escort (Eternal Press, 2015), co-founder of Nic3Ntertainment, and developer behind The Sickle Upon Sekigahara (2020). Currently freelancing as a game developer and history consultant. Also tends to travel the eastern U.S. doing courses on History, Writing, and Japanese Poetry. You can find his portfolio at www.richardcshaffer.com.