Good things come to those who wait. For the past seven years, mega-publisher EA has tried to compete with the annual release of Call of Duty games every holiday season. With Battlefield 3 released in 2011, Medal of Honor in 2012, and Battlefield 3 in 2013, EA was counting on a smaller studio, Visceral Games, to release a new spin-off to the Battlefield franchise: Battlefield Hardline.
Hardline wasn’t ready, Visceral said, and shocking fans and haters alike, EA actually listened, and postponed its release. Those ~4 months have paid off, and for the first time in several years, I’m actually very happy playing a Battlefield game.
Hardline is not another “modern military shooter” even though it uses the same “Frostbite 3” graphics engine developed by the Swedish studio, DICE, for the Battlefield series. No, Hardline focuses on a different battlefield, the Drug War, specifically set in southern Florida. Yes, it’s “cops versus robbers” in a slightly over-the-top, melodramatic, cliche-ridden, 7-8 hour single player campaign, and a frenetic, belief-suspending, 10-64 player warzone in online multi-player matches.
For a Battlefield game, the campaign mode is surprisingly well done, featuring gorgeous graphics, great game mechanics, and well acted characters. One of the many surprises Hardline provides is that most of the game can be completed “guns blazing” or by employing stealth and other tactics to non-lethally subdue the criminals. That open nature in the game play can’t be praised enough, especially as year after year “modern military shooters” flood the market with their uninspired “shooting gallery” mechanics. Sure, some of the AI in Hardline is a little suspect, even on the hardest difficulty, but I give Visceral Games props for giving players freedom like that.
The multi-player suite has its own surprises, as the standard Battlefield game modes like Conquest and Team Deathmatch are available, but Hardline capitalizes on the “cops versus robbers” theme and totally justifies its purchase: Heist, Blood Money, and Hotwire modes feature intense Battlefield conflicts, including signature ground and air vehicles, amped up to higher octane levels, with Rescue and Crosshair modes offering 5v5 no-respawn “Counterstrike” type experiences.
Perhaps the best way to summarize Hardline is to say it’s full of surprises. The campaign mode provides player freedom to shoot or arrest enemies, and what sounds like a silly gimmick – exchanging military forces for cops and robbers – actually gives the shooter genre some exciting new modes and game play experiences. The biggest surprise, however, comes with such a SMOOTH LAUNCH of a BF game with super stable servers, steady 60 frames per second, and ultra-quick matchmaking right out of the box, hopefully converting many nay-sayers and fence-sitters into fans of Hardline.
Battlefield Hardline was released March 17 for PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, and PS3, and is rated ‘M’ for ‘Mature’ for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Use of Drugs. eBash Video Game Centers offer BF Hardline only on Xbox One and PS4 consoles.
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