It seems that Virtual Programming has been rather busy with their porting efforts. What is even more surprising is the quality of these recent eON ports. Spec Ops: The Line is one of them.
Spec Ops: The Line developed by Yager and published by 2K is a third-person cover-based shooter where you play as Captain Walker, the leader of a small delta force squad deployed to the city of Dubai, which has ended up in a state of complete isolation due to weird sandstorms. Your mission of search for survivors takes a quite horrible turn quickly though when it becomes clear that Dubai is in a state of complete chaos.
As you might be aware, I changed the video format just a bit and went with a post-commentary style instead of live commentary. This was to eliminate spoilers and to experiment with new formats. Make sure to leave your feedback and ideas in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFeX2H7Er-M
At first Spec Ops: The Line seemed like a very average and very ordinary third-person shooter. The game starts with you arriving in Dubai during your mission to search for survivors. Quickly it becomes apparent that things are not right and you have to take on locals that are less than happy with your presence. You could very easily mistake this game for your regular old Americans vs the terrorist scenario but as the story progresses you will find out that things are not quite as simple. In fact the game will make you question your loyalties and presents you with choices that with no clear good option. In fact the game attempts to bring the madness and horror of warfare right to you.
The storyline of Spec Ops is just full of surprises and plot twists and it actually goes a lot deeper than it would first seem. I believe the developers wanted exactly that: make the game seem simple and quite unoriginal at first and then turn everything upside down. While the story certainly has its clichés I found it enjoyable and the ending was just something so unique and so mind bending that I can't quickly think of anything that could match it.
In the gameplay department the game doesn't really shine though. I dislike cover systems in general and I always feel like I'm being glued to a wall or a box when I need to press a button to stay in cover. I'm also not a huge fan of the third-person view and would prefer first-person any day of the week. I found the controls to be a bit clunky and I feel like they were originally designed with a controller in mind. However, I refuse to play any shooter that involves actual aiming with a controller, so I ignored the option entirely.
Spec Ops really likes its covers and is quite unforgiving if you let an enemy flank you or stay out of cover for too long. You can only take a couple of hits before you die and grenades are a bane of your existence. I can guarantee you die at least a couple of times during your campaign if you play on medium or hard difficulties. But the difficulty wasn't too much that I felt like I was stuck and couldn't progress while the game still offered me plenty of challenges to overcome.
The game also has a squad system that it often encourages you to use. It's very simple and often times not even all that useful. You can order your squad mates to focus fire on a certain enemy and in some situations throw stun grenades against enemies in cover. I quite happily skipped the squad functionality altogether and would only really use the heal ability to get my squad back on its feet. And that only to avoid failure, because you need to bring every one of your squad mates with you. Considering how often the squad AI messed up and ran at enemies instead of following me and taking cover, I would have gladly let both of my squad mates bleed out in the sand but alas it wasn't an option.
Spec Ops worked very well in eON form. The performance was all around extremely good, exceeding 100 FPS during most of the game and remained above 60 FPS all of the time. Considering that I had the game fully maxed out and running at 1080p I'd say that is quite a nice achievement. I had some visual glitches with certain shadows but it was extremely minor and didn't affect my experience at all. I did also encounter some stutter which was apparently caused by content streaming. This was however rather easy to fix. One of our commenters noticed that changing PoolSize from 140 to 256 in ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/SpecOps_TheLine/Engine/Config/BaseEngine.ini got rid off the stuttering and made the experience smooth again. It seems the same trick can be used with Bioshock Infinite too. Another problem was with the main menu, which for some reason got slower after each time you ran the game. I didn't notice that last time I launched the game so I guess it was either patched or it fixed itself. In any case it only affected the main menu and the problem would fix itself after a couple of minutes.
So all around eON was able to give me a nice 8 hour long game experience. I would probably go as far as to say that Spec Ops: The Line is one of the best shooters I've played recently. Of course that's mostly for the story, if I were to rate is based on the gameplay it would be really average. I'm a guy that likes stories and I often value them more than gameplay and graphics. I didn't test any of the stuff outside of the singleplayer campaign, so I don't have any experiences with the multiplayer or the co-op. It seems though that the co-op missions are separate to the main campaign, so keep that in mind if you want to play with your friends.
The overall experience was very good and the game deserves a recommendation on the GOL rating spectrum of “don't buy”, “wait” and “recommended”. Even though the gameplay might very well be the weakest part of the game, it doesn't ruin the experience and the story very much makes up for that.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Spec Ops: The Line developed by Yager and published by 2K is a third-person cover-based shooter where you play as Captain Walker, the leader of a small delta force squad deployed to the city of Dubai, which has ended up in a state of complete isolation due to weird sandstorms. Your mission of search for survivors takes a quite horrible turn quickly though when it becomes clear that Dubai is in a state of complete chaos.
As you might be aware, I changed the video format just a bit and went with a post-commentary style instead of live commentary. This was to eliminate spoilers and to experiment with new formats. Make sure to leave your feedback and ideas in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFeX2H7Er-M
At first Spec Ops: The Line seemed like a very average and very ordinary third-person shooter. The game starts with you arriving in Dubai during your mission to search for survivors. Quickly it becomes apparent that things are not right and you have to take on locals that are less than happy with your presence. You could very easily mistake this game for your regular old Americans vs the terrorist scenario but as the story progresses you will find out that things are not quite as simple. In fact the game will make you question your loyalties and presents you with choices that with no clear good option. In fact the game attempts to bring the madness and horror of warfare right to you.
The storyline of Spec Ops is just full of surprises and plot twists and it actually goes a lot deeper than it would first seem. I believe the developers wanted exactly that: make the game seem simple and quite unoriginal at first and then turn everything upside down. While the story certainly has its clichés I found it enjoyable and the ending was just something so unique and so mind bending that I can't quickly think of anything that could match it.
In the gameplay department the game doesn't really shine though. I dislike cover systems in general and I always feel like I'm being glued to a wall or a box when I need to press a button to stay in cover. I'm also not a huge fan of the third-person view and would prefer first-person any day of the week. I found the controls to be a bit clunky and I feel like they were originally designed with a controller in mind. However, I refuse to play any shooter that involves actual aiming with a controller, so I ignored the option entirely.
Spec Ops really likes its covers and is quite unforgiving if you let an enemy flank you or stay out of cover for too long. You can only take a couple of hits before you die and grenades are a bane of your existence. I can guarantee you die at least a couple of times during your campaign if you play on medium or hard difficulties. But the difficulty wasn't too much that I felt like I was stuck and couldn't progress while the game still offered me plenty of challenges to overcome.
The game also has a squad system that it often encourages you to use. It's very simple and often times not even all that useful. You can order your squad mates to focus fire on a certain enemy and in some situations throw stun grenades against enemies in cover. I quite happily skipped the squad functionality altogether and would only really use the heal ability to get my squad back on its feet. And that only to avoid failure, because you need to bring every one of your squad mates with you. Considering how often the squad AI messed up and ran at enemies instead of following me and taking cover, I would have gladly let both of my squad mates bleed out in the sand but alas it wasn't an option.
Spec Ops worked very well in eON form. The performance was all around extremely good, exceeding 100 FPS during most of the game and remained above 60 FPS all of the time. Considering that I had the game fully maxed out and running at 1080p I'd say that is quite a nice achievement. I had some visual glitches with certain shadows but it was extremely minor and didn't affect my experience at all. I did also encounter some stutter which was apparently caused by content streaming. This was however rather easy to fix. One of our commenters noticed that changing PoolSize from 140 to 256 in ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/SpecOps_TheLine/Engine/Config/BaseEngine.ini got rid off the stuttering and made the experience smooth again. It seems the same trick can be used with Bioshock Infinite too. Another problem was with the main menu, which for some reason got slower after each time you ran the game. I didn't notice that last time I launched the game so I guess it was either patched or it fixed itself. In any case it only affected the main menu and the problem would fix itself after a couple of minutes.
So all around eON was able to give me a nice 8 hour long game experience. I would probably go as far as to say that Spec Ops: The Line is one of the best shooters I've played recently. Of course that's mostly for the story, if I were to rate is based on the gameplay it would be really average. I'm a guy that likes stories and I often value them more than gameplay and graphics. I didn't test any of the stuff outside of the singleplayer campaign, so I don't have any experiences with the multiplayer or the co-op. It seems though that the co-op missions are separate to the main campaign, so keep that in mind if you want to play with your friends.
The overall experience was very good and the game deserves a recommendation on the GOL rating spectrum of “don't buy”, “wait” and “recommended”. Even though the gameplay might very well be the weakest part of the game, it doesn't ruin the experience and the story very much makes up for that.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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20 comments
Nice review :)
BTW, increasing the PoolSize is a good practice for all UE ports, native or not.
BTW, increasing the PoolSize is a good practice for all UE ports, native or not.
2 Likes, Who?
natewardawg Jun 7, 2015
I really enjoyed this game too, and while I didn't use the squad system much either, there were a few areas in the game where you can use it to quietly clear an entire area, which I found to be a very fun way to use it. So, if you like to use a stealth approach where possible it's very handy in those cases.
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The performance for me isn't good. I'm using the radeonsi driver in a R9 290 and there are stuttering all over the place, not matter the size of the PoolSize. And the game crashes a lot, in a way that I have to reboot the system. The FPS is always below 60. The joypad support is ridiculous. You have to do full 360 circles in the analogs to work properly.
This is a DirectX 9 game, way inferior in graphics compared to Valve games like Portal 2 or Left 4 Dead 2, that my system handles well at 120 FPS. I'm praying to God that all of the others big names that will launch in the near future, like Grid, Batman or Witcher 3 will be out of the hands of these incompetent programmers at VT.
This is a DirectX 9 game, way inferior in graphics compared to Valve games like Portal 2 or Left 4 Dead 2, that my system handles well at 120 FPS. I'm praying to God that all of the others big names that will launch in the near future, like Grid, Batman or Witcher 3 will be out of the hands of these incompetent programmers at VT.
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I'm praying to God that all of the others big names that will launch in the near future, like Grid, Batman or Witcher 3.AFAIK Grid and Batman are already confirmed to be native. No idea if anything's been officially confirmed about W3 despite Valve's teasing. Besides, I very much doubt VP programmers are incompetent. Unless you think wine developers are incompetent as long as wine isn't perfect. The performance "penalty" is just the price of wrapping instead of actually porting, and this decision wasn't made by VP.
2 Likes, Who?
linux_gamer Jun 8, 2015
Besides, I very much doubt VP programmers are incompetent. Unless you think wine developers are incompetent as long as wine isn't perfect. The performance "penalty" is just the price of wrapping instead of actually porting, and this decision wasn't made by VP.
I totally agree and for homework I would like to see M@GOid writing that port (or any other AAA-game that hasnt been ported yet). He wont need the source code as it should be a wrapper and he already owns the game, so he has no further expenses and is ready to start.
BTW: SO:TL runs at 30-40 fps at maxed settings on my 650M with Poolsize increased and prop. driver. As in most non-native the CPU seems to be limiting factor.
2 Likes, Who?
The performance for me isn't good. I'm using the radeonsi driver in a R9 290
There's your problem right there. I'm sorry, but the current state of affair is that ATI on Linux is a no-go. Sure, the Source engine may run well on it (apparently), but it should be widespread knowledge by now that ATI is not a valid alternative if one want gaming with a decent performance on Linux.
Unfortunately!
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The performance for me isn't good. I'm using the radeonsi driver in a R9 290
There's your problem right there. I'm sorry, but the current state of affair is that ATI on Linux is a no-go. Sure, the Source engine may run well on it (apparently), but it should be widespread knowledge by now that ATI is not a valid alternative if one want gaming with a decent performance on Linux.
Unfortunately!
Agreed. I virtually have stopped gaming on Linux altogether - my 290x acts like it's my old 5770. In Windows I can downsample the Witcher 2 from 1440p which combined with FXAA makes for virtually un-aliased, sharp image, maxed everything out (no ubersamplign though) and forced Tessellation and Anisotropic Filthering, use dynamic V-sync from RadeonPro and still have solid 60fps (except for cutscenes but they're bugged). At the same time in Linux the game runs like I'm playing it on a potato with texture rendering glitches all over the place (mesa 10.7+llvm 3.7 + kernel 4.1 RC3) and still that beats the proprietary driver. I'm sorry but at the moment, it you have an AMD card, especially 290/290x - game on Windows. I can hardly find the experience in Linux enjoyable. And with AMD's AMGGPU kernel being exclusive for the new architecture and knowing AMD's track record, I'm 99.99% sure they'll just throw all of their other customers (i.e. 95%+) under the bus saying something on the line: "Yeah, well, you know - we're trying to concentrate on bringing the best possible user experience for the upcoming cards and are very excited about the great features we'll be able to provide to gamers. Here at AMD we're dedicated to providing our users with the best and most immersive gaming experience blah, blah, blah..."
PS They won't...
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Nvidia has a huge and growing market share, I think Nvidia is at 85%.
With some irony, the worst closed source and sometimes seemingly sneeky company actually plays really well on the most opensource platform.
If SteamOS takes off, Nvidia ( and intel with their decent cheap IGP's ) will have the entire market cornered within a decade. It might then be possible for intel to be allowed to compete in the GPU sector finally with AMD gone.. that might be better for everyone.
With some irony, the worst closed source and sometimes seemingly sneeky company actually plays really well on the most opensource platform.
If SteamOS takes off, Nvidia ( and intel with their decent cheap IGP's ) will have the entire market cornered within a decade. It might then be possible for intel to be allowed to compete in the GPU sector finally with AMD gone.. that might be better for everyone.
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@tuubi
Well, actually, Wine performance is better than the VP ports. And Wine works with all kind of software. VP is only working with 3 or 4 games.
@linux_gamer
So I need to be a programmer to have the right to criticize them? I don't think so. Besides, they are selling me a program, I pay for it. They are not a hobbyist working in spare time in a opensource program. I'm playing The Witcher 2 and the game don't crash and the joypad support works as they should. So by now their ports should be better, but looks like they are not making much progress. Why we still have to make modifications in configuration files?
@Beamboom, mao_dze_dun
The opensource driver works very well, if the port is well made an limited to Opengl 3.3. Not only the Valve games run at full speed, Metro LL and the Borderlands games too. Actually, if you use Gallium9 with the respective patched version of Wine, you can beat the performance of the game in Windows, but that's kind of cheating...
The Nvidia drivers are not perfect, and at every launch of ports made by VP, you can see people using them complaining.
Well, actually, Wine performance is better than the VP ports. And Wine works with all kind of software. VP is only working with 3 or 4 games.
@linux_gamer
So I need to be a programmer to have the right to criticize them? I don't think so. Besides, they are selling me a program, I pay for it. They are not a hobbyist working in spare time in a opensource program. I'm playing The Witcher 2 and the game don't crash and the joypad support works as they should. So by now their ports should be better, but looks like they are not making much progress. Why we still have to make modifications in configuration files?
@Beamboom, mao_dze_dun
The opensource driver works very well, if the port is well made an limited to Opengl 3.3. Not only the Valve games run at full speed, Metro LL and the Borderlands games too. Actually, if you use Gallium9 with the respective patched version of Wine, you can beat the performance of the game in Windows, but that's kind of cheating...
The Nvidia drivers are not perfect, and at every launch of ports made by VP, you can see people using them complaining.
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I had serious problems with this game and I'm running nVidia. I've reported everything to the porters and you can find the thread here: https://github.com/virtual-programming/specops-linux/issues/5
But all things considered, it wasn't a huge problem and it didn't stop me from completing the game. Worth 4 euros I paid for it.
But all things considered, it wasn't a huge problem and it didn't stop me from completing the game. Worth 4 euros I paid for it.
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@tuubiWell, actually, Wine performance is better than the VP ports. And Wine works with all kind of software.Wish things were that rosy with wine. Please, try playing the games VP has ported with EOn using wine instead and report back. A look at wine's appdb sure doesn't bode well.
There are tons of old games that work great with wine, but often require a lot of fiddling and - well - some luck. Sure, I hear POL makes things easier, but hardly as easy as installing a pre-wrapped game and just playing. Personally I'm not attached enough to any windows-only games to find it all worth the effort.
IMHO EOn is better than nothing for older games, even if it is the easy/cheap way out. In any case VP is not the one to blame here. It's the game's developer or publisher paying VP to do their thing.
EDIT: typo
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Segata Sanshiro Jun 8, 2015
I like the new format a lot. The only thing is I would have it even shorter, like in the 10-15 min area, just from personal experience if I'm looking for a review or something on YouTube, that's generally around the length I look for.
I really liked the game too :). The story was awesome and really like how deceptive the game is in presenting itself as the bog standard shooter, but then throwing in all the Heart of Darkness stuff. Agree completely with the cover-based stuff as well, got pretty bored with the gameplay and was just waiting for the next bit of the story.
I really liked the game too :). The story was awesome and really like how deceptive the game is in presenting itself as the bog standard shooter, but then throwing in all the Heart of Darkness stuff. Agree completely with the cover-based stuff as well, got pretty bored with the gameplay and was just waiting for the next bit of the story.
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I have already written it in the "Spec Ops: The Line Released For Linux, Initial Port Report Included" thread, but I will write it once again - from my point of view this game is must to have in Linux games library if Virtual Programming improve the port.
I have finished this game few days after it was released for Linux and I have to say that for me it was great time. The only problem was that I had serious drops (to 1 fps) on location changes.
Today I have decided to run the game once again and I was unable to even run it. It freezes in menu with 1 fps and it happened even after restart.
I believe that Virtual Programming employees learns a lot while working on Witcher 2, Bioshock and Spec Ops, but issue with Spec Ops persists for almost a month, and issues with Witcher 2 were not solved very fast either, so I'm affraid I have to agree with sentence written by @M@GOid:
"I'm praying to God that all of the others big names that will launch in the near future, like Grid, Batman or Witcher 3 will be out of the hands of these ..." (guys from VP)
It's sad, but this ports do not work very well yet...
And just to give you guys I guess important information - I have NVidia 540m and I use NVidia proprietary driver and I've increased Pool in the config file. So problems with this port are for sure not "AMD cards related".
I have finished this game few days after it was released for Linux and I have to say that for me it was great time. The only problem was that I had serious drops (to 1 fps) on location changes.
Today I have decided to run the game once again and I was unable to even run it. It freezes in menu with 1 fps and it happened even after restart.
I believe that Virtual Programming employees learns a lot while working on Witcher 2, Bioshock and Spec Ops, but issue with Spec Ops persists for almost a month, and issues with Witcher 2 were not solved very fast either, so I'm affraid I have to agree with sentence written by @M@GOid:
"I'm praying to God that all of the others big names that will launch in the near future, like Grid, Batman or Witcher 3 will be out of the hands of these ..." (guys from VP)
It's sad, but this ports do not work very well yet...
And just to give you guys I guess important information - I have NVidia 540m and I use NVidia proprietary driver and I've increased Pool in the config file. So problems with this port are for sure not "AMD cards related".
1 Likes, Who?
I have already written it in the "Spec Ops: The Line Released For Linux, Initial Port Report Included" thread, but I will write it once again - from my point of view this game is must to have in Linux games library if Virtual Programming improve the port.This seems very similar with the bug reported by Morbius:
I have finished this game few days after it was released for Linux and I have to say that for me it was great time. The only problem was that I had serious drops (to 1 fps) on location changes.
Today I have decided to run the game once again and I was unable to even run it. It freezes in menu with 1 fps and it happened even after restart.
https://github.com/virtual-programming/specops-linux/issues/5
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Well, actually, Wine performance is better than the VP ports.Can you give some details?
Bioshock is out of the question while for Witcher 2 the eON port works better now (tested myself). It was indeed inferior at launch.
So it must be Spec Ops, what version of Wine did you used for testing?
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@dubigrasu I made it possible to run the game thanks to @morbius post few minutes before You wrote Your answer, but anyway thank you for your advice. @mobius thanks for that information also.
At least it is good that VP guys stays in touch with users of their product.
At least it is good that VP guys stays in touch with users of their product.
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@dubigrasu I made it possible to run the game thanks to @morbius post few minutes before You wrote Your answer, but anyway thank you for your advice. @mobius thanks for that information also.Oh, good.
At least it is good that VP guys stays in touch with users of their product.
You know, there is something else that can be deduced from that bug report, actually a speculation from my part.
At one point vpltd-peterm says:
"We will take a look at this when we can!"
To me this sounds like they are really busy with something else, a new port perhaps?
(I know, they are not doing only Linux ports, but one can hope they some have something good cooking for us.)
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Yeah, everyone complaining about high performance game not running good on Radeon...I am RadeonSI supporter, but I must admit - de facto Nvidia is light years ahead and AMD doesn't give even good enough performance. Either they don't care or they have incompetent management.
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