By Angus Deacon
While it was a met with groans of disappointment back in October, you could forgive Visceral for delaying this game by nearly five months.
After all it was following Battlefield 4, an award-winning game which sold seven million copies and is still going relatively strong today. It would be an understatement to say that the stakes were high - especially considering that Visceral were taking over the reins from DICE, the team behind the last Battlefield title.
It's important to note though that Hardline makes no attempt to be Battlefield 5, instead it feels like a side-step and an avenue to explore new territory within the framework of a beloved franchise. But have they created a game that Battlefield fans will immediately latch on to?
That's a matter of opinion.
While Battlefield 4 was an advanced military warfare simulator in sprawling open-air maps, Hardline is more of a fast-paced shooter in confined areas. Global wars involving communist forces and contested territories have been swapped for cops-'n'-robbers carrying big ole' bags of cash, driving sweet rides with the bass turned up.
With no tanks or fighter jets, Hardline is a much more personal, rudimentary affair - with most firefights getting up close and in-your-face. The matches are also a lot more frantic and fast paced, aided by smaller maps and quicker vehicles such as squad cars and motorbikes.
A blatant example of this increase in tempo is in the new mode Hotwire, where players must drive marked vehicles around at top gear, earning tickets for the length of time they are travelling above specific speeds.
It's basically Conquest, except the flags are now highly mobile. Other team-mates can hop in your rides, to try and protect it, or just cruise around listening to The Stooges or Public Enemy.
If this sounds like a bit of a departure from the series, there are other modes in Hardline which are more traditional. For instance, Heist sees the criminal side having to break into a cash filled vault (or blow open the doors of an armoured truck) and extract the booty to an extraction point; while the police must stop them by any means imaginable.
Blood Money is another mode where both sides try to retrieve money from an open crate in the centre of the map, and move it back to their respective side's armoured truck. Players can also steal money from the opposing team's truck and the first team to deposit $5 million wins (or the top earning team wins if the time limit expires).
The popular Conquest makes a return in Hardline as well, and still comes in two flavours, Small and Large. Very little has changed here, except of course for the smaller maps and change in theme. The game also includes the stock standard Team Deathmatch mode too.
However the other new modes in Hardline create a fairly unique experience thanks to their compact ten player setups. Rescue, is a short three minute long, 5v5 competitive mode where S.W.A.T officers must try to rescue hostages held by criminal forces.
The good guys win if they rescue the hostages, or simply eliminate all the criminals; while the bad guys just need to take out the S.W.A.T team. Every player just gets one life, so there are no respawns - and the end result is very similar to the classic shooter Counter Strike.
Crosshair is very similar to Rescue and maintains the competitive 5v5 team setup. Here criminals are trying to kill a player-controlled VIP (a former gang member turned witness who the cops need to protect).
The criminals win by killing the VIP and the cops win by getting the VIP to the extraction point. Again, this mode felt pleasantly nostalgic to a Half-Life Team Fortress mod, which of course is tied to the stand-alone Counter-Strike as well.
As in Battlefield, there are four classes to select from: Operator, Mechanic, Enforcer, and Professional. While named slightly differently, they will be instantly recognisable to fans of the series, except abilities and traits have been tweaked to suit the cops and robbers vibe.
The Operator is basically the medic, the Mechanic the engineer, and so on. Cosmetically, the differences are minor and on the battlefield, and in the heat of the moment, everyone looks like a target - whether they are a thief or a S.W.A.T member. However both sides are well balanced and asymmetrically fine-tuned for even matches.
There is no real stand-out map in Hardline, and some have even been lifted directly from Battlefield 4 - just adjusted and down-sized for faster matches, with less travel time to reach combat heavy areas. A couple of maps help make the action unique though, such as Bank Heist - a shotgun fanatics' paradise - featuring tight enclosed spaces and congested passages.
Another is Dust Bowl, which looks familiar at first, but when a sand storm sweeps through the area, suddenly aerial and long range visibility are reduced to zero. Without helicopters or snipers to contend with, it generates some intense close-quarter action.
While the weather effects are still in play in Hardline, a lot of the environmental damage and terraforming doesn't have the same impact as in Battlefield 4. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and one city-based map where a high-rise crane topples to conveniently create another thoroughfare is definitely a joy to witness, but it doesn't have that epic sense of destruction that the previous game had.
Over launch weekend, the Hardline servers seemed reliable and stable. Matchmaking was surprisingly quick, and I never waited long before being thrown into the action - especially in the Conquest modes which have garnered a lot of players due to its familiarity.
Game settings and customising your kit is similar to previous Battlefield games, except upgrade points have been replaced with in-game cash which you use to buy weapons, new traits, or gear. While you're in this menu, a countdown beep between every respawn makes you feel like you're in an episode of 24 with Jack Bauer. Amazingly, this hasn't become repetitive yet.
Which leaves us with the single-player campaign. Solo play has never been Battlefield's strong point, and many fans are left wondering why it's still a feature when that time and energy could be spent toward the multiplayer component - which is really where players will spend the bulk of their time. While this is still true, the Hardline story mode is surprisingly good.
It tells us the story of a rookie cop, with a possibly bent moral compass, caught up in a world of crime and corruption in Miami. The opening sequences of a drug bust gone wrong set the tone nicely, and from there you'll witness impressive set pieces, high-speed chases and plot twists with as many stereotypes, tropes and cop-show clichés you can handle.
The single-player also tries its hand at stealth, and despite how Battlefield is renowned for its solid gunplay, this non-violent approach holds up surprisingly well.
The graphics, sound and especially some of the facial detailing deserve a mention here too; on the surface it competes well with other triple-A, campaign-driven shooters. Despite it only clocking in at around seven hours, the single player in Hardline is definitely worth checking out. It's a well put together bonus, and a welcome distraction to all of the online carnage.
Hardline is certainly a different Battlefield experience, but it retains a lot of the core mechanics that should keep fans of the franchise content. The action is faster, less strategic, and less deliberate than its predecessor, but there is a reason why this isn't titled Battlefield 5.
Four stars.
NZGamer.com
Battlefield Hardline
:: Publisher: Electronic Arts
:: Developer: Visceral Games
:: Format: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
:: Rating: R16
source: newshub archive
