Rating 8/10
- $69.90 (PC), $79.90 (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, version tested)
- First-person shooter
The concession of battlefield always was about large military operations and mindless
shoot-them-all gameplay.. But its last iteration adopts a different approach.
Moving from the battlefield to the street, Battlefield Hardline concentrates on the eternal struggle between cops and criminals.
In the single-player campaign, you play policeman Nick
Mendoza who is framed by dirty cops in Miami for a crime he did not
commit. Now, it is payback time.
Like a TV series, the campaign plays out in 10 episodes, with a storyline that would make Jack Bauer proud.
You will be aided by interesting characters, including your
partner, Khai, played by American actress Kelly Hu of Martial Law and
Scorpion King fame.
Each character's facial animation and voice acting is
top-notch. You really feel in character when playing Nick, as you watch
him interact with friend and foe alike.
The storyline is rather linear, but the gameplay is not.
You can opt for stealth to knock out your foes and handcuff them. You
disable alarms to make sure that they are of no use should you be
discovered.
At times, I moved so stealthily to eliminate my enemies,
that I managed to go without firing a single shot for nearly an entire
mission.
But you can do it the "normal" Battlefield way and charge
into a mission, emptying the magazine of your gun in the blink of an
eye.
Each weapon handles and sounds different. You can
immediately tell the difference in the recoil and firing sounds between
a Glock G17 pistol and a Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun.
You are not always firing a weapon or knocking down
enemies. At times, you get behind the wheel for a high-speed car chase
or zoom around the Everglades in an airboat to follow leads and gather
evidence.
The single-player campaign will probably take you only 10
hours or less to complete, depending on the degree of difficulty you
choose.
There are also minor quirks, such as characters standing in
mid-air or auto save points that put you back in the firing line of an
enemy where you had died in the first place.
I wish the campaign could have lasted longer. Hopefully, an expansion is in the works.
There is plenty of replay value in the multiplayer realm.
Hardline offers you eight different multiplayer modes: Heist, Hotwire,
Blood Money, Rescue, Crosshair, Conquest Small, Conquest Large and Team
Deathmatch, which you can play as cop or criminal.
Heist, Blood Money and Hotwire are new. Heist mode requires
the criminals to break into a cash-filled vault and move the cash to an
extraction point. The cops have to stop them.
Blood Money requires both cops and criminals to take
control of a huge stack of cash. You can steal money from the opposing
team's vault and defend it till the time expires. The first team to
deposit $5 million into the vault, or the team with the most money
after the time limit expires, wins.
If you are a better driver than a first-person shooter, you
can opt for the Hotwire mode. You steal cars and drive them at high
speed to deplete your opposing team's reinforcement tickets. The first
team with zero tickets loses. Or the team with the most tickets wins
after the time limit expires. It might sound easy, but constantly
driving at high speed in a confined area with enemies firing at you is
no mean feat.
For those who prefer the more traditional multiplayer modes, there are the Conquest and Team Deathmatch modes to play.
Battlefield Hardline may not be the game of the year, but
it is entertainingly refreshing for a franchise which is in danger of
getting stale.
