What Does A Marine Think Of Spec Ops: The Line's Criticism of
War?  It's coming up on the end of the year, which means it's
time to start looking back. And amid the Kickstarter campaigns
and DRM-debates that kept 2012 so interesting, one game keeps
coming back up: The brutal Spec Ops: The Line. It was a clever
game that despite its hum-drum 3rd person shooter trappings was
also a surprisingly successful look inside the mind of a killer,
and an at-times subversive critique of the military shooter
genre. (Our review here.)  But what would a guy who'd actually
served in the military think of it?  Critic Kris Ligman got in
touch with a friend of hers, who goes by "R." who had done two
tours in Iraq with the Marines to ask him what he thought of the
game. Their conversation is pretty good stuff. (It also contains
some pretty big spoilers, so be warned. These excerpts still
have spoilers, but not the big ones.)  R.: and now I'm dropping
white phosphorus on friendlies. Kris: did you immediately give
the order for th