Battlefield Hardline Reviews
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.
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 is a semi-unique game in the Battlefield franchise that features an enjoyable, if forgettable, campaign and a great multiplayer mode. Those looking for the more traditional Battlefield experience will still find it here, as will those interested in Hardline's twist on the franchise.
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.
It wouldn't be a Battlefield game without a host of multiplayer scenarios, and Hardline is definitely no slouch in that department.
Ultimately, Battlefield Hardline is a solid shooter that controls well and marks a lot of the items off the FPS checklist. At the same time, it is also faced with the same problem that confronts any new shooter in this day and age.
Even with a shift in focus and a different studio behind it all, Battlefield Hardline doesn't feel all that different from previous efforts.
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.
There are people that say that Battlefield Hardline is just a DLC pack disguised as a new release, but that's not quite true. It feels familiar in terms of gameplay, but fresh enough in theme and heavy enough in content that it's worth its own release. It's a decent game that gets points for originality of concept, but how much value it has is down to how much you enjoyed previous entries in the franchise, and how much you'd like to see the Cop FPS genre become a thing.
'Battlefield: Hardline' puts a clever spin on the 'Battlefield' formula, but a serious identity crisis keeps it from being a solid step forward for the franchise.
At the very least, it's "more Battlefield", which is by no means a bad thing – yet – and at its highest points, it's a bit of silly, Vice-inspired fun. I do not think the world will care to remember Hardline very much in future, but for what it is, it's a good effort to be more than another disposable shooter, even if that's all it really is at its core.
Hardline's release was smooth, and although it did feel like a modified BF4, it also plays like something novel and worthwhile all on its own. If you have recently built a gaming PC, and you don't yet have Battlefield 4, I would recommend buying that title first, and then grabbing Hardline down the road when the price drops.
Battlefield: Hardline is a lateral move for the series. Even with a more ambitious single player offering, multiplayer continues to steal the show, offering best in-class gameplay when it works.
The single-player mode starts out promisingly, but bogs down into a rather weak stealth game whose action feels hit-and-miss. Multiplayer is where the game works best, especially on its smaller maps, which can deliver truly thrilling and intense action.
In areas where Battlefield has always excelled and pushed forward, Hardline presents experiments, rather than refinements or fixes. The result is multiplayer that feels very familiar, very quickly. But its campaign, while feeling not completely sure about what it wants to be, is more interesting and certainly all-around better than the last few years' worth of Battlefield games.
As Battlefield leaves the battlefield, Visceral Games tailors the series' distinct vehicular-based multiplayer for the crime-ridden streets of Miami and L.A. with mostly positive results.
While it doesn't feel as vital as Battlefields past, inventive new multiplayer modes and a fresh, if slightly unfocused campaign make Hardline the worthy TV spin-off to DICE's big budget blockbusters.
The cops 'n' robbers theme often does more harm than good to the Battlefield formula, but this peculiar spin-off has just enough tricks of is own to be worth a collar.
I'd love to see Rescue and Heist establish a community of players, because they're great modes done well.
While Battlefield Hardline is fun and has some cool set pieces, it's not really an improvement over Battlefield 4. Weak story, poorly written characters, and scaled down multiplayer make Hardline feel generic and rushed.