So.. I played through Spec Ops: The Line. I put it on my list of recommended games before without having played it first.

Long story short. I was very dissapointed.

It could have been all the hype about it.
It could have been that I came to it expecting what the game advertised (A shooter designed to challenge players' morality by putting them in unspeakable situations) instead of what it looked like (just another modern military shooter).
It could be that I spend more time playing indie games with meaning than perhaps their main audience of people who play mostly AAA modern military shooters.

I don't know.. It just felt like AAA developers were just like "hey look at us, we can make artsy games with deep meanings also".
and then the review sites jumped on the band wagon cause it was a safe way to say they had more substance.

I came into playing this game knowing what it had to offer.
I played this game wanting it to make me feel like crap for choosing to shoot all these people.
A lot of attention was put on player choice. Making you the bad guy for choosing the choice you did. Even if the choice you made felt like the right one at the time, that power to force your choice on others ended in terrible outcomes and you had to live with that.
The only problem was... the game didn't allow you to make those choices.
The first choices you make:
People are shooting at me? I will defend myself. They have families? Well so do I.
Allow me to injure them instead of killing them? I'll do that.
They're suffering too much and they'll die anyway? I'll put them out of their misery.

I went into every situation calmly and let them decide to shoot or talk. They always chose to shoot at me, so that leaves me with the choice to die or defend myself. As there is no moral obligation to let them kill me, defending myself is the only logical and even moral thing to do. No guilt, no connection, no feeling.

The first decision that could have been a "oh crap, i did that, i'm a terrible person" moment was the white phosphorus mortaring. That scene could have had so much impact, but no, they force it on the player. The choice is now to die and stop playing the game or to kill a bunch of soldiers/civilians with white phosphorus.
I guess this is the point where knowledge of the game is most critical. If you know that this game is suppose to make you feel horrible; If you want to experience this game because it's a "work of art" so-to-speak, then the developers aren't doing you any favors by saying, "hey, uh we know you want to experience our game's meaning, but uh.. we don't know how to make you kill all these people.. so uh... why don't you just kill them all or.. yeah, we're just not gonna let you play this game". I mean come on :/
The scene leading up to that too. I didn't tell adams to kill that guy without first seeing if he was a good guy. That was forced.

After that the main character and my connection to him just diverged. Soon it was just the main character making the choices; it was just the main character playing the game. The character's development pushed so much into making him a bad guy that even the choices they allowed me to make made it seem like the main character just "accidentally missed" instead of mowing down the crowd.

One other big point: Let's say you're watching this movie and it's supposed to be really great and it's supposed to move you to tears. If your friend is sitting next to you nagging at you and pressing pause every 10-20 seconds, you're not going to enjoy that movie at all. You will not be able to connect with that movie and feel what it was meant to make you feel. Am i right about that?
Well, the gameplay in this game was like that nagging friend pausing every 10 seconds. If every step I take in the progression of the story is littered with moments of me fighting the controls, then how can I pay attention to what's happening in the story? If that's how it is, all I'm doing at this point is just trying to finish the game and hoping that I can experience what the developers intended.

All in all, while I believe I understood what developers were trying to say, it was presented in such a bad way that there was just no connection between me and the actions I was doing, because I was forced into doing them.
you could argue that the biggest choice is choosing to play the game, but how would I be able to experience what the developers have to say if I don't play the game?

"My painting is about how sick of a person you are for looking at paintings. Wanna see? .. Ha! you looked at my painting!.. you sick person.."
Well uh, you made this art to be experienced by others.. if you want them to feel bad about looking at it, perhaps you shouldn't tell people that that's what it's for. cause viewers aren't gonna feel bad if they're going there to experience what your painting has to say.