Battlefield Hardline Reviews
I'd love to see Rescue and Heist establish a community of players, because they're great modes done well.
The campaign pulls in some strong performances from its actors and earns points for its open-design. The campaign gameplay, however, leaves much to be desired. Still, it's a step in the right direction for future Battlefield games. Hardline may not revolutionize the Battlefield brand, but it fixes many of its biggest problems.
if you go into this wanting a Battlefield game? I guarantee you're probably going to come away disappointed. A shooter, this is not, and if you try to play it as a shooter you're going to find a pretty short, boring campaign.
[T]here's a lot to like about Battlefield Hardline, while there's stuff there that won't thrill you. It feels like Visceral really discovered the game they wanted to make during development, so you see some brilliant ideas that make for great gameplay, but while also being stuck with what is expected of the Battlefield franchise
Hardline both succeeds with flying colors, and fails miserably in various aspects of its game design but the good outweighs the bad with its sandbox style mission design, handful of addicting multiplayer modes, and rock solid Battlefield gunplay players know and love.
Battlefield Hardline takes the franchise to a totally new level with the inclusion of "cops" and "robbers" that is pure fun!
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 it's predecessor, but there is a reason why this isn't titled Battlefield 5.
There isn't anything particularly bad about Battlefield Hardline, it's solid enough, but one cannot help but lean towards those initial detractors who were very vocal in the run up to launch. Despite a clearly big effort and no doubt a ton of money, we are still without a decent Battlefield campaign and what we are left with is a Battlefield off shoot with no long term life in it.So there we have it, a Battlefield game with weak single player and solid if underwhelming multiplayer - absolutely no one saw this coming.
With the new opportunities available for a cops and robbers setting, Visceral didn't take enough chances and produce enough content to make this game truly great.
Battlefield games have always featured huge maps and plenty of vehicles. Hardline strays from that formula to provide a different experience that is still fun, but it would almost be more impressive if it wasn't a Battlefield game and wasn't held to the same standard. In other words, Hardline is a great game if considered on its own merits, but it's not the best Battlefield game.
A mighty fine bite-size Battlefield experience that takes a franchise synonymous with being a military shooter and establishes it in new territory. Battlefield Hardline is not as grand or epic as you'd perhaps expect a core Battlefield title to be, but it's certainly a damn fine alternative.
And Hardline could be better. There are shades of it here, now and then. Games in general can be better. But they never will be until we raise our expectations. When even the best of us feels limited to writing "narrative rosaries strung with beads of pure chaos," how do the least of us stand a chance?
Battlefield: Hardline offers both returning and new players a slightly more fresh take on the classic Battlefield formula. But where the game delves into new territory, it often returns to the classic formula after getting cold feet. The strongest points of Hardline are when the game tries to be something different, but the fallbacks to old ways are where the game keeps itself from being great, rather than just good.
Battlefield: Hardline can be ridiculous, with stealth and arrest mechanics that stretch the very limits of credulity. All the same, the single-player campaign works brilliantly as the video game version of a big, dumb action thriller. Cracking set-piece firefights are mixed with stealth, escape and exploration, and there's scope to play some sequences your way, not just follow the objective marker. Multiplayer, meanwhile, is fiercely enjoyable, and in Hotwired boasts one of Battlefield's finest hours. Look past Hardline's minor faults, and you'll find the best all-round Battlefield since the great Bad Company 2.
Minor gripes like the netcode and kill trades aside, the game delivers an online experience that can be cathartic, tense, and ultimately an adrenaline rush – something that echoes the core tenets of a "Battlefield" game.
There are some who can dominate Battlefield's multiplayer with an Olympian efficiency, but the overwhelming majority are marooned in the middle, where the concussive sound of bullets and the smoldering plumes left by grenades aren't signs of domination but reminders that you're still on your feet, not dominating the world, but surviving in it for another few seconds. There's genuine awe in these moments, a beauty particular to video games, demanding respect for scale and the necessary investment of thought, coordination, and time to accomplish simple acts like moving a duffel bag from A to B. It's a poetic antithesis of the game's story mode, proof that order can more easily come from conflict than from conflict's preemptive repression.
Hardline might not reinvent the wheel the series rolls on, but it certainly makes it spin a whole lot smoother. Speeded up gameplay, an opened-up single-player, and a robust suite of new multiplayer modes lends itself to the best Battlefield to date—though that's not saying much, a decade later.
Whether your a fan of the Battlefield series already, or looking for something new to try, you certainly can't go wrong with this one.
Even with a new setting and a new developer, Battlefield Hardline is still a Battlefield game which means it can be a rough road to travel for more casual shooter fans. The story campaign is fun but has zero lasting appeal once you beat it and the multiplayer is something you can only really enjoy for the long term if you're willing to invest in the game's Premium service or you have a dedicated group of friends to play with. Battlefield Hardline may have taken strides to shake up the core Battlefield experience but, in many ways, it's still more of the same old Battlefield, for better or for worse.
Visceral have create a perfectly good functioning Battlefield game in Hardline. It shoots as good as the best of them, the car-chases are fun, and the small tweaks made to the core formula are very welcome. But a little refinement does not mask that this is a very similar game to what we bought in 2013; despite the strong efforts to make a variety of new game modes, you can't shake the feeling of playing classic Battlefield. And quite honestly, Battlefield without tanks and jets is only half as fun. Curiously the single player campaign is the most interesting element, which is surely due to the studio's strength in solo-play design from their days on Dead Space. That's not enough to make it an essential purchase, though. Players new to the series may find the urban setting interesting and will certainly benefit from the refined mechanics. Series veterans, however, are best sticking to what they already have.