Pixels or Death's Patrick Lindsey talks about how, in spite of critical praise, Spec Ops: The Line fails to achieve the profundity it was shooting for (bad pun, sorry):
"The biggest flaw present in Spec Ops: The Line is that it is still just a shooter. It tries to make a point about how horrible violence is within a genre that is at best apathetic about violence and at worst totally enamored with it. Throughout my playthrough of Spec Ops I killed just as much, if not more, than I have in any other shooter, and it was just as meaningless. Telling me it should hold more meaning doesn’t make it so."
That's all you had to say. I didn't have to read any further than that.