Battlefield Hardline is somewhat of a tie-in into the Battlefield series and is touted as a full standalone game with features and gameplay elements that are worth the same as a full priced AAA video game title. Contrary to what the developers and their PR staff say, Hardline is ultimately a full priced 'expansion pack' of sorts and I believe the only reason for its full price tag justification is because it's got a singleplayer story made tacked onto it.
But regardless of singleplayer, I'm here to review the multiplayer. I felt as if I've invested enough time into the game to warrant a full decision on the whole experience.
Hardline follows the unique formula of cops and robbers. The concept itself of having a cops and robbers theme is something that no game developers have done. To take upon this unique endeavor are the team who brought you the Dead Space series, Visceral Games, who were tasked, by EA of course, with the job of milking the Battlefield franchise.
Let's start with gameplay. The gameplay Hardline employs is a copy paste formula of what Battlefield 4 had. Same movement, same animations as well as some of the problems present in the old game into the new. Now granted the movement isn't completely horrible, DICE's use of the Frostbite Engine to create bad movement controls and animations seems to be a staple that the developers don't seem to want to fix. The majority of players are content with the movements but as someone who's played Call of Duty a ton, movement and control is a major factor of a first person shooter.
The movements in the game seem to want to 'realistic' more so than efficient. The reliance on the vaulting system to traverse different levels of terrain is my biggest gripe with the movement. It's inefficient and stupid. My player can't climb a wall because they're incapable of hauling themselves over causing me to have to take the long way round. Sometimes in cases where the next level up is an acceptable height and yet your character can't seem to traverse the terrain. It limits the movement and gameplay possibilities and damages the overall experience more so than improving it.
Another issue I have with movement is the unnecessary animations that occur inbetween other animations. The prone to stand, prone to crouch, falling to land to name a few. Each one of these movements will cause the player to do a unnecessary animation that causes a slight delay in the use of your weapon which can sometimes result in death. In most cases it's not much of an issue but it is an issue carried over from previous Battlefield games.
On the bright side, running around is great. Hardline takes into effect the need of rechambering bullets after you've expended a whole magazine but you don't need to do so if you reload whilst the bullet is still chambered. I've had this happen in Battlefield 4 where you would chamber a sniper rifle even when you've already chambered a bullet. Small things like this can greatly improve gameplay.
Because of the fast paced action present in Hardline, streamlining the gameplay experience is a must. Having inefficiencies with gameplay mechanics can cause frustration and I just think it's a poor design choice, limiting the player through uncontrollable instances within the game.
Now the map design present in Hardline is mediocre at best. The maps aren't large like the previous Battlefield games but the maps aren't as small as Call of Duty maps. They fit into the middle ground. In regards to the size of maps as well as the amount of players, it can sometimes get extremely clustered in some locations and the bad map design doesn't help in these cases.
Maps filled with 64 players can make the game feel like you're always walking through a mine field, not knowing where enemies spawn and such. The placement of flag points in Conquest are more inline with a square with a flag at each corner and this causes extreme chaos in the middle. This also forces the outskirts of the maps to be rendered obsolete unless you're a sniper in which case it's the best place. But because most infantry won't head in that direction, the snipers usually get a slight advantage in this case.
The maps do employ a small amount of destruction coupled with pace/game changing scripted moments such as a hole being blasted through the floor or a crane falling through the middle of the battlefield. These events do change the pace of the game but it doesn't mask the bad map design. The small amounts of destruction usually amounts in walls being blasted through soft walls such as the ones inside buildings but concrete walls 95% of the time stay up. This is especially bad when you're playing a map where vertically is key and you can't get to the higher levels of a tower because the only way up is through a choke point elevator that can easily be camped.
Maps are designed to have major points of interest at each flag spot with tons of choke points and camping spots. The inbetween pieces of land has a few pieces of cover but is usually not where you want to be. This sets the pace of the game to occur around the flags and at choke points between flags. Sometimes the choke points are linear in that one team plays a tug of war to push to the other side. Other cases it's an open battlefield with choke points on all sides making it hard to concentrate on one objective and makes deaths feel cheap when someone shoots you from an angle you weren't paying attention to.
The guns in the game feel great but their performance is otherwise. The game seems to want to reward players with the faster firing gun in most cases. I found myself being outgunned many times by a high fire rate weapon compared to my weapon which had a decent fire rate but much higher damage. Because the maps are so small, the damage to distance ratio is extremely small and assault rifles, even at 100m range, struggles to land shots on accurately or do any form of decent damage.
I do appreciate the fact that side arms are extremely useful in this game as they do pack a punch. You also have equipment to your disposal based on the class you choose. The medic class allows you to heal and revive teammates. The mechanic class lets you repair vehicles and take out vehicles with your grenade launcher. The sniper class lets you snipe, obviously, but set annoying trip mines at the doors so no one can reach you. And the support class which supplies ammo to teammates. Granted you get more than the designated class items. (Not quite sure what they are honestly, never really checked).
One thing that is a bad game design choice is limiting weapons to each faction, either the police or the robbers. A weapon you purchase and unlock from the cops side can't be used by the robbers and vice versa. This means you, in most cases, would need to purchase two weapons from each side in order to level the playing field with both factions. An example would be that each side has only one other sniper rifle you can buy and they both cost around $54000 which takes, maybe 3 or so hours to acquire. This makes it 6 hours to unlock two of the same weapons but different models for each faction. It just puts a strain on unlocking and really limits what you want to try out and purchase.
It also doesn't help that there are so little weapons in the game. Each class has no more than maybe 8 weapons for purchase of which are split up into for example, the sniper class has 3 snipers, 2 semi autos and 1 WW2 weapon. This is one of the biggest reasons people were upset with Hardline, the amount of weapons were so limited that you would usually buy one gun and stick with it throughout the game.
A quick rundown on some of the gamemodes; (I didn't get to play them all mostly because no servers were running them)
Conquest is your basic conquest of capture the flags and hold them for more points.
Blood Money has you verse the other team is trying to grab the most cash from a pile in the center of the map and bringing it back to your base. An OK game mode, nothing to special but nothing too bad about it other than most players just camping the cash stash for kills.
Heist is where the robbers are trying to steal 2 packages and get them securely back to a specified destination. In most cases the police will always have one placed locked down so hard that it's near impossible to win because there is usually one choke point to the objective.
Team Deathmatch, self explanatory.
Hardline isn't worth the price it's asking for. It's basically filler content for players until the next Battlefield game comes out, it being Battlefront. I do believe that there are still more players playing BF4 than Hardline on all systems. Hardline ultimately, to me, feels like a tacked on experience with minimal effort to improve on the given formula but instead treads towards the deep end of shit of somehow making an OK formula slightly worse. The price it's asking for is shameful at best. With the amount of content you are given at release, the game isn't worth the time unless you're FPS starved like I was. Through all the complaints I will say the game works and it runs well on PS4. I don't think it has gotten any support in terms of major patches to fix bugs and glitches but we'll have to see.
6/10
