For many gamers Battlefield 4 will still be high up on the week’s play count, so another iteration in the series, following the warfare mold would have felt a bit too much like a shameless cashing in exercise, but the creative cats at EA have teamed up with Visceral Games to create a whole new experience to add to the franchise. Cue Battlefield Hardline, the cops vs criminals reinvention of the hardcore first person shooter and you’ve got a smart new angle in gaming, that surprisingly has few comparisons.
It’s a smart move from gaming giant and their Dead Space renowned subsidiary and it’s easily one of the more exciting games to have featured heavily at E3 this year (check out our E3 2014 summary for more info on all the other ground shaking games announced). While still releasing a new title, they’ve managed to do something totally different, and we think that gamers will probably love them for it. Standing in stark contrast to the continuation of the COD gravy train in Call Of Duty: Advance Warfare, it’s a genuine breath of fresh air from Visceral.
Story
The storyline for the campaign element of the game sees you take control of United States police officer, Nick Mendoza, who goes on a vengeful rampage across the United States, to right all the wrongs, bring down organised crime and generally fuggle things up. With a massive arsenal in his kit bag and an even bigger hit list in his sights he heads out on one mother of a justice spree.
While the multiplayer gaming element of Hardline doesn’t tie in with the plot of the campaign as such it does have more of an element of storyline built into it than has previously been the case for Battlefield titles. The comes in the way of scenarios as you take to either side of the cops and criminals divide to compete in games that feature heists and hostage situations.
Gameplay
The gameplay for the single player campaign mode has a similar overall dynamic as previous games in the series with you taking the central role in roller coaster ride of first person shooter missions to take down the bad guys. The big difference though is that instead of full-on national level warfare you take the battle to the streets of the United States to fight it out with a massive mobilised, organised and heavily armed criminal underworld.
While you’ll still be equipped with military grade weapons to bring the noise with, you’ll also have tear gas, riot shields, tasers and hand-cuffs to add a little kinky beast to your arsenal on the police side, and sawed-off shotguns, ziplines, base jump shoots and grappling hooks when you’re in the criminal camp. It also means that instead of going out with a crack military team behind you, you’ll be supported by other law enforcement officers to set down the hard line of the law. However, it also means that instead of going up against highly trained armed forces, you’ll be facing off against mad and bad criminal gangs that are desperate to stop you in your tracks.
As ever, online multi-player is where the most significant portion of your game playing action will take place for Battlefield Hardline and with the new cops vs criminals concept it’s opened up a whole new set of online gameplay modes. Added to that is the fact that the latest game in the series introduces driving gameplay much more into the mix, creating a new dimension for Battlefield fun.
Your first job will be deciding which side of the fence you want to fight on, the police special response units or the criminals. Then the gameplay will depend on the game mode you select, with the option to go for either a security van heist job, with the criminals trying to steel the loot and get away with a robbery and the police trying to stop them (which you can check out for yourself in the 6 minute trailer below), a vehicle hot-wire job with a high octane chase over a huge map, a hostage situation to either rescue or retain the target, or a blood money job that sees two factions fighting over the cash of a job.
These are just the games that we know right now and we’re pretty sure there will be more to come that will probably go on to make the game an instant hit.
Graphics
Graphically, the game looks very intense and surprisingly it’s not being developed just for the new generation of games consoles and blisteringly fast PC gaming stations, so the team has done an impressive job of taking the visuals to the next level while still working on PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. What that means is that it has had to avoid dumbing down the development of the graphics for Xbox ONE, PlayStation 4 and PC gaming, and if anything revving it up for the new machines.
It’s not just that the graphics are good, it’s the scale of the detail in the massive environments that makes the game stand out so well visually. We could wax lyrical about the attention to detail, draw distance or the life-like ultra-reality that you’ll get when you play the game, but the long and short of things is that this is on hell of a good looking game.
First impressions
From what we’ve seen at E3 and the subsequent release of trailers and gameplay action, Battlefield Hardline is looking like it could turn out to be one of the games of the year. The graphics are as good as it gets, the gameplay is full throttle and the scale of the game is immense.
Taking the massive warfare concept that the series is famed for and bolting in the cops vs. criminals scenarios was no mean feet for Visceral, especially considering the fact that it’s their first release in the series, but they’ve pulled it off with destructive accuracy. One thing’s for sure; we can’t wait to taser the snot out of someone online after a long hard day in work.
