To be perfectly honest, I generally despise military shooters. I don’t like what they represent and glamorize, the cookie-cutter, manufactured, nature of them, and their impact on the industry.

That said, I have been curious about Spec Ops: The Line since hearing about its nontraditional-for-the-genre narrative (and Nolan North voiced-character). With the game going up for free on Playstation Plus this week, I decided to give it a try.

While the gameplay is pretty pedestrian (get behind a piece of waist-high cover to peek out and shoot waves of dudes until the next checkpoint), the writing and story has me completely hooked at about two hours in.

So far, the story has had a very Apocalypse Now feel to it, as you track down a soldier in sandstrom-ravaged Dubai. There are equal parts uncertainty, tension, and horror, which add up to a surprisingly compelling experience in an incredibly stale genre. I’m eager to play more and see the story to its conclusion; I highly recommend checking the game out if you’re a PS+ member, even (especially?) if you can’t stand the genre.