Motherfucking Battlefield Hardline
Battlefield Hardline is the kind of game that you go in to with a heap of expectations, and you come out of the other side of it with a mountain of heartache. This isn't to say that there isn't anything good about the game, but it leaves you feeling underwhelmed and wondering if the game you just played was actually part of the Battlefield franchise, or if it's a retooled repurposed Call of Duty with a fair amount of vehicle-based combat and a lack of military hardware. Battlefield Hardline feels too fast-paced and claustrophobic to earnestly say that it's a Battlefield game. I can give praise to the insane multiplayer game-types and maps, and the reshuffling of the game's gear and four classes to create the police/crime element of the game that replaces all-out warfare, but the lackluster campaign and apparent lack of the Frostbite engine weigh down on the game's potential for greatness.
Battlefield Hardline relies entirely on urban combat, eschewing from the sprawling fields and deserts of the franchise's previous entries. The majority of the maps are comparable to the medium-sized maps seen in Battlefield 4, but the game's modes fit perfectly within them. Heist, in particular, takes full of advantage of the close-quarters gunfights and delivers more than a few white-knuckle moments as both cops and criminals. The game's iconic four classes have been clipped down as well; rocket launchers and machine guns are replaced with grenade launchers and shotguns, but every class has access to close-to-mid range weapons like PDW's and carbines. Save for sniping, long-range fire fights are now a thing of the past, as well as the tanks and buggies that formed the core of the franchise's vehicular insanity. Hardline replaces them with gun-toting SWAT vans and muscle cars and even sports a derivative of Conquest where the control points are a number of high-octane cars that are due to be repoed.
The game's focus on compacted close-quarters chaos is it's double-edged sword, though, since despite all of the room for innovation the game has, it's severely lacking in it. The change in focus takes away the memorable and iconic room-to-room firefights that were in the franchise's past entries and replaces them with moments that are more generic and, at many times, very one-sided. True progression in multiplayer is replaced with a currency-based system which allows players to purchase anything in the game, which throws class specialization right out of the window. DICE's iconic Frostbite engine also has far less of an impact on gameplay this time around. Save for a few scripted events scattered across the game, the sheer destructibility that has been heavy-handedly marketed to players is mysteriously, and distressingly, missing. Grenade launchers leave scuff marks on walls as opposed to tearing them down, buildings rarely come down, and bullets and buckshot no longer cut through paper-thin pieces of cover. The campaign's dumb AI, bland stealth sequences, and painfully typical and forgettable plot get thrown into the mix with the almost-missing physics, making the singleplayer aspect of Battlefield Hardline almost a chore to play.
The rewarding nonlethal takedowns in Battlefield Hardline deserve the respect of its players, though. Too much of the game is overloaded with a sense of “scramble here, shoot everything that moves”, but the takedowns let players actively pursue a welcome break in the typical shooter modus operandi while rewarding themselves and their teammates by revealing enemy positions for a short time. That being said, Battlefield Hardline would have been better served as a multiplayer DLC that received the same amount of care and attention that Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam had. The chance for real innovation seems to be squandered away for something that's a derivative of so many other games dominating the first person shooter industry.
It's honestly hard to believe that Visceral Games spent the three years working on this game; it just feels rushed and wholly incomplete. The haphazard (mis)use of the Frostbite engine is the most disappointing aspect of Battlefield Hardline. Perhaps I'm spoiled, but when I see DICE's logo on a video game case, I expect things to go boom, not withstand every ounce of punishment dealt to them. Again, when that gets coupled with the hyperfocus on close urban fighting, it feels like I'm playing the main competition to the Battlefield franchise, rather than a member of the series itself. The faster vehicles, game-types, maps, and the conscious shift in the game's kit are to be applauded, but that isn't enough to make this a great game. Knowing that DICE has a certain juggernaut sci-fi shooter on the horizon makes it all OK, though.