Battlefield Hardline: sure you’re still shooting stuff, but it’s quite the departure. How have you been finding the game so far?
Reviews have been decent, but drifting far closer to ‘mediocre’ than EA might have liked and most complaints seem to be that the game struggles when it doesn’t take enough risks with the Battlefield template. You can understand the reluctance. Moving Battlefield from usual ‘shoot people in the desert’ fare probably felt like a big enough risk. Combining that with a complete rejig of how the game plays might have felt like a step too far for a studio having their first go at making a Battlefield game.
But it’s got me thinking: if asked to choose between a reboot of the game’s setting and a reboot of how the game itself played? I’d probably preferred that Visceral had chosen the gameplay route. But why not have both? There’s a sense that Visceral may have been better going all in with this game. Rebooting the setting is a big enough risk: why not go the whole way?
What are your thoughts on the game so far?
Comments
30 responses to “Community Review: Battlefield Hardline”
Really enjoying it, other than a glitch that was preventing me from completing episode 3, restarting the episode and running through the whole thing again worked. On episode 6 now, should have it finished hopefully late this afternoon, then I’ll be jumping into the multiplayer tonight.
Sadly enough the beta was enough for me to not purchase it. It has it’s little differences from what I have played (in beta and final copy) but was not enough to justify me buying it. I think Battlefield is a few games away from becoming the next COD franchise. It seems inevitable that this cycle happens to games eventually. Very unfortunate. I’m happy to keep playing BF4 until the numbers dwiddle out to nothing while the general populous moves over to Hardline.
Interesting, I don’t really believe that all games degenerate over time, I just think it comes down to ideas. We’ve seen franchises such as Halo and Uncharted do well over the years.
As for BF, I can’t really say too much as BF4 is the first one I’ve played much of, but I really enjoyed the Beta for Hardline, I just found Hotwire such a nice change.
Haha, I still play Uncharted 2 online with a friend of mine. I disliked BF4 for a while, and it didn’t do a whole lot to improve in my eyes really. Bit soured from it and feel bad for Visceral having to stamp out the negativity that BF4 induced.
The gun balance is currently atrocious, they also modified it so you cant use guns as both factions now until 1250 kills where in the beta it was only 300. I’m sure they will sell unlock kits in a few weeks to let you skip the grind for a few dollars.
The thing that made me return it though was day one DLC. Its unbelievable that they can launch the game with less content than BF4 had at launch and expect people to pay an extra 10 dollars if they want all the weapons.
If you want all the weapons surely just play through and unlock them? Seems like normal game progression to me.
I do agree with you on the weapon licences though, 1250 kills is ridiculous.
My point was that there are 3 weapons at launch that you cannot unlock by playing the game, you have to spend 10 dollars if you want them.
I thought the unlock system was great in beta, 300 kills for the license was very reasonable. 1250 is just bonkers for something like a pistol. I have hundreds of hours in BF4 and most of my weapons are around 500-600 kills.
Its a real shame because I was so hyped for this game after beta but then all the problems people pointed out in the beta are still there in the full game along with some new ones we didn’t see in the beta.
The guns you can get after your first 5-6 days playing are so massively more powerful than the starting weapons that i’m sure it will drive a lot of new players away. The M416 feels like a laser beam that you can get kills with easily at almost any range.
Haven’t bought and don’t plan to, it’s my first year of Uni and definitely don’t need another timesink to keep me from that path. My impressions from the betas were that, whilst there’s enough of a change to the formula to keep my interested, I’m not actually very keen on the concept. I played Battlefield because the spectacle of all out warfare with all these different facets was really awesome and fun but I just don’t think that’s there in Hardline. Doesn’t really do it for me is all, just praying the next Battlefield is Bad Company 3!
If you have a burning desire to play cops ‘n robbers, Payday 2 and GTA V do it so much better. This is almost a bare bones of conversion of BF4 into cops and robbers with the major problem being that it doesn’t do either particularly well. I mean, I dig BF3/4, I dig cops and robbers, but this is Battlefield with an identity crisis.
It’s good, will play 200+ hours over the coming year like every BF game.
Played the beta and it felt like a bunch of ideas from a committee that started like ‘you know what would be cool’ that were dumped into a game and poorly executed and balanced. That might have changed since beta.
Saddest bit is that most of those ‘you know what would be cools’ came straight from COD.
Won’t be buying it purely to send a financial “Up Yours” to EA over the BF4 disaster.
Boy, you sure showed them! Vindication achievement unlocked.
I’m really enjoying the setting in the single player campaign (currently only at episode 5) and the multiplayer has been good fun with some mates, heist and blood money have been my favourite modes, hotwire is a good mode for some quick rounds and levelling up / earning easy money but gets boring driving in circles.
I can understand why BF4 players aren’t too keen on Hardline, but being someone who didn’t play BF4, Hardline has been fun for me. Still would’ve preferred a Bad Company 3 though.
Havent touched the single player portion of the game but I really enjoy the multiplayer. I just wish I could play blood money and heist only on maps that don’t have vehicles.
It’s really great, very good looking, and guns feel weighty but i have had a couple of weird glitches.
Also, i beat it on Veteran last night, but the cheevo says 90% complete, so it must have not counted one level, frustrating, but the game seemed to know i had done so and unlocked the hardest difficutly. I hope it stacks and unlocks after i beat it again
Happy to stick to bf4 until battlefront, not a huge fan of the multiplayer although the single player was a nice change of pace. Just hoping for Bad co 3 not bf5!
Hotwire is insane amounts of fun. Most fun I’ve had in a BF game in a long while!
I do miss recon/professionals having the spawn beacon and I really, REALLY miss bipods on the sniper rifles, but those are just minor niggles 🙂
I love Battlefield so it was a no brainer, It doesn’t really feel like a battlefield game though, more like Battlefield4: Cops, which is good for now. I feel the graphics have taken a step backwards from BF4, also need more maps and weapons, some maps only seem to appear on some game modes, I like allot of the TDM maps but I don’t like 64 player TDM. I really like the new mode Rescue, reminds me of Counter Strike but I hate that they took my favourite mode Squad Deathmatch away, few rubber banding issues but pretty minor. Really enjoying singleplayer, I like what they have done so far (finished episode 2).
I think TDM needs some work done on its spawn system as well, its particularly bad on The Block.
I was going to text you to see what you though!
It has its moments http://youtu.be/60ckqr9GJg4
9 hours into multiplayer and it’s pretty good. Heist is fun And played a bit of hotwire to get some levels. Had awefull lag on high pop Servers so will stick to smaller ones. As was said the 1250 kills for gun licence is a bit high 500 would be realistic. Like the weapons, feels like whoever is on the receiving end is going to have a bad day.
Hotwire all day for cash!
Seriously breaks the other modes when you can whore this mode for money.
Anyway, I played the beta a lot, I liked that and I like the game.
Biggest issue is players playing everything as if it’s team death match.
+1 on the Team Death Match play style. A lot of players seem to focus on killing in Hotwire rather than the objectives. Which can really suck if you have team of tards who are racking up kills but barely contributing to the team total.
Loving it. I honestly don’t get over BF games as they aren’t a yearly occurrence. I’ve found none of the issues re: weapons unlocks etc. as it doesn’t phase me. If you got a game like Q3 RA now, people would cry, as there are a whole of 8 weapons. Who cares about weapons.
The gameplay is still solid. The level design is still great imo.
I’ve had less issues playing online with Hardline than I have with any multiplayer game… including COD. It’s seriously one of the best net codes I’ve seen for this type of game on console.
It’s fun, BEUGSB4BATTLE.
Once I stepped back (stepped away from conquest) and started playing the more intimate modes I found loads of depth and tonnes of fun. Right now though i’m wither trying to max out hacker when I’m on my own or blasting it in Hotwire or Blood Money which are both frenetic and loads of fun.
Can’t see this lasting past the Battlefront launch at Christmas though and I’m sure i’ll be back playing BF4 off and on.
Battlefield 4 was the first one I played much of. I enjoyed it, but much prefer Hardline. I have no real interest in military so this is a much better theme for me.
Loving Hotwire, but also playing bursts of rescue in between.
So sick of seeing all these people saying “I played the beta and it sucked so I’m not buying it.”
Yeah ok…. good for you? Why the hell are you commenting then? If you haven’t played the RELEASED game, then just keep quiet. I played the beta, it was okay, not great, and I’ve been playing the retail copy since release and it’s a great game. Sure there are some little things that can be improved upon, but let’s compare it with Battlefield’s competitor’s release shall we? CoD AW. It’s easily 1000x the game that is, and in general the release has been fairly bug free, compared to AW’s clusterbomb.
Loving it! A nice change of pace for the series, as a big fan of the close quarters expansion in battlefield 3, you can probably see why this game appeals to me. Have already put 20 or so hours into it, probably look me 3 weeks to hit 20h in bf4.
Guns do need rebalancing though and damage model is too high.
Personally I can accept that the higher version of the game gave the people who forked out the cash a few unique weapons, fair play I would want something good for my cash, but the fact that it (the ACWR) is one of the best guns in the game is a dick move.