Battlefield: Hardline Multiplayer Review

This spawn fucked, glitchy piece of shit with flagrantly overpowered weapons is actually pretty fun. It strays away from the traditional Battlefield franchise’s formula of modern warfare and provides gamers with entertaining, fast-paced, close quarters gameplay.
The new premise of the game entails a fight between Cops and Robbers, set in metropolitan and suburban locations, with new game modes in addition to the classic Conquest and TDM modes. Each game mode is relatively straight forward and new players will have no issues stepping in. A quick run-through of how to play each mode is as follows:

• Heist – Criminals set charges to vault. Criminals steal bags of cash. Criminals escape with bags of cash to drop off zone. Cops stop them. Gas grenades everywhere.
• Blood Money – Game mode involving a pile of cash in the centre of the map. Players generally adopt one of the following strategies:
  1. Run back and forth between home base and cash pile.
  2. Run back and forth between home base and enemy base.
  3. Camp cash pile
  4. Camp enemy base
  5. Camp home base
• Hotwire – Cars are now capture zones. Get into a car. Drive around and around watch your cash increase. Get blown up by some fucker camping with breaching charges. Repeat.
• Crosshair – If you’ve ever played VIP on Counter-Strike, well, it’s like that
• Rescue –Similar to Search and Destroy but rescuing hostages.
  Tip for Police: Watch out for tripmines near the hostages, and sabotaged doors
  Tip for Criminals: Place tripmines near the hostages and sabotage doors.

The principal point I wish to convey is that you can have lots of fun with this game if you look past some flaws, relax and just enjoy it as Visceral envisioned. Battlefield Hardline is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a fun addition to the franchise – a refreshing addition. There are many easter eggs – such as a drivable couch and a 1/10,000 chance of a cool reload animation, or a purchasable Dinosaur mask once you’ve saved 10 mil in cash.The game provides fun first person shooter mechanics and rounds can be very rewarding.

A huge difference between previous titles is the weapons in the game. Weapons are limited and class specific, and must be purchased with cash earned through playing. There is a very quick TTK (time to kill) and there are currently a few overpowered weapons – pretty much unrivalled when used in most situations. The M416 and m16a3 are the most expensive and powerful for the operator class, however cash isn’t a problem after a few rounds of hotwire. The k10 has the quickest TTK when in close quarters (80% of the time) however these will be patched pretty soon. Take the time to try out different guns though, as they all feel unique and different. The taser and different melee weapons are also fun additions to the game.
Vehicles have also changed massively. No longer are there jets or huge tanks capable of blowing up buildings, but only an assortment of cars, a boat, hovercraft, and helicopters as the only form of air vehicles.
Lastly, so-called “Levolution” (where the map is altered by some event like an earthquake or when it starts raining men, hallelujah) is lacklustre at best. It’s non game-changing, unnecessarily shakes up the screen a shit tonne, and is more of a gimmick than anything.
To be honest, I feel guilty pointing out the flaws in the game – as I really have enjoyed most of the 36 hours logged in the game. But looking at it from an overarching point of view, the game ultimately feels like a big expansion pack (like Farcry: Blood Dragon was to the Farcry series). It is too easy to pick apart any game and rag on its flaws. Nevertheless, a patch fixing spawn points, weapon balancing and boosting in Hotwire game modes could go a long way for this game.

• You’re a fan of Battlefield but want something fresh from BF3 or 4
• You have a few friends to squad up and play a new shooter with
• You are DYEGB team members Zach or Yanni and buy every new release without evaluating if you’ll even play/like the game
• You are cheap and willing to wait for it to come down in price

If you do buy the game, I’d recommend you do it sooner rather than later while the servers are still populated, as a large segment of the current player base will probably move on to other titles or back to BF4. I personally found the game refreshing and fun and plan to keep playing for the next few months, but I know I will be falling back to BF4 every once in a while when my RQPM (rage quit per minute) goes up. My money is on the fact that the game servers will be a desolate wasteland once the big AAA titles are released later this year.

Wait til Battlefield 5 I reckon.

Also, Battlefront II HYYPPEEE.