For the first time ever in the Battlefield series a new developer has stepped in to create Battlefield: Hardline and take us away from the traditional military background into a cops and robbers setting. Can Visceral Games (Dead Space) bring some life back into the series?
I’ve always had a thing for strategic online first-person shooters that promote team play and include some kind of vehicular combat which is why I choose the Battlefield series over Call of Duty. My real home has always been with the PlanetSide series but I’ve given almost every installment of Battlefield a go ever since the original 1942. The only real departure made by developer Digital Illusions CE from the usual military theme was in my favourite: Battlefield 2142. Now with a new developer on board EA have taken the series in a new direction with the cops and robbers inspired Battlefield: Hardline.
With closed beta in full swing I’ve been able to get my hands on a copy to find out if this new entry is refreshing enough to prevent the series from becoming stale. The battle now takes place in cities with the current playable map a replica of downtown Los Angeles, just in time for E3 of course. Instead of just the usual military-grade equipment and vehicles we also now have access to police gear such as tasers, handcuffs, and best of all: sirens! This beta version includes two of the planned four game modes that take place on the High Tension map.
Heist is as the name implies, the team of criminals break open and steal cash from wrecked security vans scattered around the city before rushing it to the drop-off point while the cops try and stop them. This is the more simple and currently less inspiring game mode: when the police do manage to stop the crooks, instead of securing the money it simply returns to the security vans making it bit unrealistic but understandable from a gameplay standpoint. However if the criminals manage to keep control of the loot it quickly turns into a game of chase to stop them before they reach the drop-off point. The more enjoyable mode goes by the name of Bloody Money and involves both teams grabbing money from a stash in the middle of the map and then transporting it back to their own vaults. A team wins by collecting enough money to reach the target, $5,000,000 by default.
This is the more dynamic mode because not only can you steal from the central stash you can also take it from the enemies vault making for some constantly changing gameplay. An interesting aspect here is that collecting money isn’t just grab and run, the longer players spend time at the stash the more money they collect. The drawback being they are exposed for longer and give their enemies a much bigger wad of cash to pick up from their corpse should they get taken out in the process. It adds the challenge of not being too greedy and overextending yourself while also trying to make the risk of exposure worthwhile. You could just grab $100,000 and run but spend a few more seconds to double or triple that up the maximum carry amount of $500,000. These kind of decisions give a bit more fluidity to the gameplay rather than standard capture-the-flag modes do.
With this new gameplay I’ve already witnessed some interesting strategies being played that resemble scenes from a movie with snipers in covering positions while their team storms in to steal the cash in a hit and run style. We now have some new gear that changes the gameplay slightly by providing some interesting tactical options in the forms of grappling hooks, ziplines and tasers. With the former two items we can now create new paths across the map, for example I was playing with creating new ways to escape after grabbing some cash by setting up a zip line from one building to another. Also grappling hooks can be used to set ropes for climbing up walls, although both shot can be down by enemy players causing passengers to fall to their death. A taser will stun a player with a single shot but hold downing the fire button can give a lethal shock but leaves the operator exposed in the electrocution process. It may only be used as a backup weapon in most situations but I can see it most often being used to humiliate players.
Gone are the frontal melee attack animations from Battlefield 4 that allowed victims a chance to counter, but attacks from behind still go through a lengthy kill scene. Choking a player using the cop’s baseball will allow you to handcuff and interrogate a criminal to reveal his team’s positions on the mini-map temporarily. Some gameplay issues that have always affected the Battlefield series have been dealt with: it’s no longer required to jump around and shoot at a team member to get them to drop ammo, you can simply walk up and grab it from their backpack. The same goes for health too, pressing the action key on their med kit will restore hit points but the traditional deployables are still available. One gripe of recent games in the series has been with the vehicle physics which have now been redesigned, it feels a lot more solid and heavily armoured trucks no longer skid around like the tanks did in Battlefield 4.
Vehicles no longer dominate the map with only two featuring devastating weapons as well as a machine gun eqipped SUV. Small arms fire will damage and destroy cars making them a much less powerful option than in previous games, but helicopters also return with some basic but powerful weaponry. Unfortunately armoured vehicles typically end up being used to mow down players for easy kills rather than tactical deployments. Finally, Levolution returns with a towering crane that falls and tears through buildings creating new ways of navigating the map as infantry.
In terms of character progression: items aren’t unlocked through the traditional Battlefield leveling up system but are purchased with in-game cash earned through obtaining, a welcome change from the series norm. It means that constant ranking up isn’t required to get the best gear; you can be more selective to fit your play style rather than having to grind a specific number of kills to get the unlock you want. A new feature within Hardline rewards players with bonuses when they’ve earned enough ‘Reputation’ by reaching certain unspecified performance thresholds. You can then select between two similarly alluring class-specific options that only last until the end of the match. While I haven’t yet come across any of these perks worth getting excited about I’m hoping they can provide a bit impact on gameplay in the final version.
Battlefield: Hardline hasn’t quite yet got the variety of similar games such as Payday but as there’s just under six months left until release I hope to see more fresh ideas before then. While there’s definitely something exciting about speeding around in a police cruiser with the siren blazing chasing the bad guys, I hope to see more unique ideas from Visceral Games that make this much more interesting. At the moment it feels like nothing more than a cops and robbers modification for Battlefield 4 than an actual standalone game.
If you would like to get involved you can apply for the closed beta here, I was invited to play it the very next day. However if, like me, you have played enough Battlefield 4 already you may find the gameplay feeling a bit too familiar to really enjoy. Let me know if you agree in the comments section below.
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