Spec Ops: The Line is a decent cover-to-cover war shooter that, gameplay-wise, does nothing too new. Some people are fine with that, myself included.

But that's not what you're here for.
SO:TL easily has one of the most emotion-driven storylines of ANY war-shooter, or maybe even any AAA game to come out recently. It successfully tells its story through gameplay, taking risks you usually only see in indie games. An excellent two-part critique video can be found on the Extra Credits website. Yup, a video series about game design and moving forward the medium devoted TWO episodes entirely to this game.

Be warned it's also not a very "positive" game. You won't reach the credits smiling, but I've often felt many experiences like that are worth it even so. At any rate, hats off to Yager not only for making a game that breaks the norm in so many ways, but disguises it all behind what the marketing and trailers would indicate is "just another shooter".