REVIEW: Battlefield Hardline

Flops and Nobbers: How to make an underwhelming multiplayer experience.

When my friend told me about Battlefield: Hardline, I was excited. Here were my favourite tactical shooter developers, Visceral Games, creating a fun game. The premise of this alone was enough to send little shivers of anticipation down my spine. The premise is simple: Cops and Robbers. Of course, they can’t call it that because of various political correctness mandates so it’s something catchy like “Tactical Response Team vs. Criminals.”

Like its sister game, Battlefield 4, BFH runs on the Frostbite 3 engine. “Levolution” as it’s called plays a big part in the game, creating new landscapes for the players to traverse whilst calling each other noobs. Combine these large scale reshuffles of the map with the tight, tactical gameplay and a fun premise and you have all the ingredients for a ram jam great time right? Wrong.

Something is missing from BFH. A certain Je ne sais quoi is lacking from the overall experience, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth, which is probably from swallowing too many gimmicks. The whole experience feels like it’s trying too many things at once. “Here” says BFH, “ride this motorbike, now steal that package, now destroy that crane, now steal this police car, now cook this egg, press R1 to juggle!” The whole game is like a never ending action sequence from a film – and whilst that sounds like a good thing in principle, it gets fucking boring.

[Tweet “Is Hotwire alone worth the huge price tag?”]

Anyway, I digress. Let me actually tell you about the game.

The single player experience is actually decent. Unlike all its predecessors, BFH incorporates a lot of stealth-based gameplay into its campaign, allowing for a different experience that you would usually only find in other FPS games. Whilst this is technically a good thing, it’s not really why I want to play Battlefield.

To put a fine point on it, I like playing the stealth-based campaign and I’m pleased that Visceral are interested in new things, but for the love of god if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The reason I’m alright with spending upwards of £40 on Battlefield games is for the huge experience, the gigantic maps, the tactical gameplay and the rewarding feeling of working as a squad. All of that is missing from BFH. It’s still there in part, but it’s not the major focus and is definitely not catered to in the majority of the multiplayer modes.

Speaking of multiplayer modes, we come to the only feasible reason to pick BFH over Battlefield 4 and that is HOTWIRE. Imagine a game of conquest where all of the control points are moving vehicles. THAT’S RIGHT IT’S FUCKING RAD. I know I whinged about too many gimmicks earlier but out of all of them, this is the money shot. I have spent 90% of my time on this game playing Hotwire, which in most cases devolves into a sort of 21^st Century jousting with assault rifles and Transit vans. Is Hotwire alone worth the huge price tag? I think not.