Spec Ops: The Line

The player can select from four difficulty levels: Walk on the Beach, Combat Op, Suicide Mission, and the hardest difficulty, FUBAR, which is only unlocked after completing the game on Suicide Mission. Various new weapons and equipment become available as the game progresses, some dropped by downed enemies. These include several different rifles, handguns, and machine guns. Some offer alternate firing modes, like attaching a suppressor or using a telescopic sight.

Players can also acquire and make use of grenade launchers, hand grenades, and rocket launchers. However, the player can only carry two weapons at a time. Supply caches can be found in different parts of the game, allowing the player to refill their ammo and grenades. Whenever the player successfully shoots an enemy in the head, a slow-motion mode is activated for a short period of time.

Six months prior to the game's events, the worst series of sandstorms in recorded history began across Dubai. The city's politicians and wealthy elite downplayed the situation before secretly evacuating, leaving countless Emiratis and foreign migrant workers behind as the city was overwhelmed by the surrounding desert. Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad (Bruce Boxleitner), the decorated but PTSD-troubled commander of the 33rd Infantry Battalion of the United States Army, was returning home with his unit from Afghanistan when the storms struck. Konrad volunteered the 33rd to help relief efforts, defying orders by the Army to abandon the city and its refugees and deserting with the entire battalion.

The storms intensified and a massive storm wall engulfed Dubai, disrupting surveillance, air travel, and all but the strongest of radio broadcasts. Struggling to maintain order amid 80 mph (128 km/h) winds, riots, and dwindling resources, the 33rd declared martial law and began committing atrocities on the civilian population. Aggrieved by this, the staff of the 33rd staged a coup d'etat against Konrad, leading to a brief civil war between the "Exiles" (loyal to the staff) and the "Damned" (loyal to Konrad). The "Damned" 33rd emerged victorious, and Konrad executes his own staff with white phosphorus.

Following the release of several Spec Ops games in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the series met with low sales and poor reviews, causing a halt to the production of successive games. In 2003, Take-Two mentioned in their financial results that Rockstar Games was working on the franchise, but in 2004 the project was cancelled. It was later revealed that Rockstar Vancouver would have developed the canceled project, with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme working on the soundtrack.

From 2005 to 2009, the series remained largely unmentioned, with the rights still fully belonging to Take-Two. In 2006, German-based Yager Development pitched a cover-based shooter to publisher 2K Games, who rejected the original concept of futuristic soldiers without Dubai as a setting. However, 2K offered them a chance to develop a reboot for the Spec Ops series, promising that they would have a lot of creative freedom. Development began in early 2007, with most other fundamentals of the initial game intact. While the game is an installment in the Spec Ops series, the team chose to use new ideas and intentionally avoided using existing elements of the franchise.

Reviews of Spec Ops: The Line were mostly positive, with many critics praising the narrative, themes, and the provocative take on violence in video games, but noted that it failed to innovate, present a strong multiplayer component, and felt tonally uneven. Many critics consider it to be underrated, or overlooked. Previews of the game, as well as the game itself, were banned in the United Arab Emirates for the depiction of Dubai in a state of destruction.

The overall gameplay received mixed reviews. Some critics believed that the gameplay was enjoyable, serviceable and acceptable by modern standards, but most others agreed that some of the gameplay mechanics, such as the cover system, lacked polish and were flawed. Some critics considered the gameplay generic due to its inclusion of typical shooter elements such as on-rail and turret segments, and stated that such mechanics are unable to help the game differentiate itself from other shooters such as Gears of War, and give it an identity crisis. Some critics lamented that gameplay occasionally disconnects players from the story, creating tonal dissonance.