While the single-player experience of Yager Development’s Spec Ops: The Line was highly regarded by fans and critics alike, the same sentiment did not spill over into the game’s multiplayer.
In fact, the game’s lead designer Cory Davis feels the same way, confessing to Polygon that they never wanted to include multiplayer in the first place. According to Davis, it was only at 2K’s demand that the game had this additional mode.
The publisher was determined to have it anyway. It was literally a check box that the financial predictions said we needed, and 2K was relentless in making sure that it happened – even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game.
Davis went on to say that the Darkside Studios developed multiplayer was “an overall failure,” calling it a “low-quality Call of Duty clone in third-person.” As a result, Davis believes that this “cancerous growth” of an addition ended up taking away from the quality of the single-player.
The designer did however tip his hat to 2K for taking a chance on a new IP that “other publishers would not have had the balls to take.”
You can read up on our thoughts of Spec Ops: The Line in our review.
