A review by emnii
Killing Is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line by Brendan Keogh

4.0

I'm going to say that what this is is probably more important than what is within it. This is a serious critical analysis of the game Spec Ops: The Line. Not many video games approach the subject matter within Spec Ops: The Line (largely to do with player agency and holding up a mirror to what modern military shooters have become), and even fewer people are writing books about it. Granted, the number of games warranting critical analysis is small, but it's a growing number. The author attributes this to video games existing in a post-Bioshock era. Bioshock certainly wasn't the first to question player agency, but it certainly did so in a phenomonal and very overt way. What is lacking here is that the author shows you the dots, but fails to connect them. Each chapter is analyzed in detail, but there is no analysis of the analysis. It's certainly worth reading if you've played Spec Ops: The Line (kind of necessary here), but anyone playing a modern military shooter should play that game, and the book doesn't serve much purpose unless you have.