Battlefield Hardline is a continuation, much like the Call of Duty and the Assassins Creed games in that we are starting to see slightly more regular releases to the Battlefield series. Also much like Call of Duty, there are now a few different teams doing the games alternating each year so it works out at around a 2-year development cycle per developer.
This year’s Battlefield Hardline brings in developer Visceral Games (formerly, EA Redwood Shores), better known for third-person action games such as the excellent Dead Space series, The Simpsons Game, 007 From Russia With Love, Dante’s Inferno and a good few others since 2001.
Battlefield Hardline did originally look like a Christmas 2014 release, but after running the multiplayer BETA and listening to fan feedback, the game was put back to a spring 2015 release to tweak and get things right after the issues with Battlefield 4*.
Instead of the more common military theme, have Visceral have changed things up a bit for the Battlefield series by doing a ‘Police against criminals’ scenario, and have also put in a lot of work with regards to the single player campaign, plus new game modes for the multiplayer.
(*DVDfever Ed: And Assassin’s Creed Unity shows what a bad idea it is to rush out a release!)
Battlefield Hardline Walkthrough Gameplay Part 1 – Prologue – Campaign Mission 1 (PS4) – theRadBrad
The story/campaign to Battlefield Hardline puts you in the shoes of Detective Nick Mendoza. It starts out as a normal routine day squeezing a small time criminal to get to the drug dealers. Set ups are created, dirty cops are revealed and you are taken on a Hollywood style rollercoaster. Things do start to go really awry though, roughly halfway through the campaign; you end up operating outside the law to bring down those who betrayed you. It isn’t exactly CSI Miami, Criminal Minds or even Breaking Bad, this is more in tune with Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys – huge explosions, tanks Vs helicopters and all sorts of daft stuff you would see at the cinema, so grab your popcorn for a wild ride!!
As with the previous Battlefield games, the campaign does act as a tutorial as such. For the first few missions, you get introduced to new mechanics like stealth, and items like a grapple gun and zip line, all of which have little-to-no use in multiplayer. During the campaign you will also unlock extra weapons, camo for weapons, patches and extra slots etc.
The campaign also gives you scope for various tactics and multiple ways to tackle the assignment at hand. You can, if you so wish, just go in all guns blazing, or methodically watch and stalk the enemies slowly taking them out making arrests until an area is clear. Mind you, one wrong move and alarms go off and you will find yourself in the middle of a firefight!
You will unlock extras as your expert level increases. Do this by collecting the evidence scattered around the level which also ties into side missions and pads out the story. You also will have a few criminals that you can arrest under a warrant so stealth is the way to go to get those guys.
All in all, the campaign is great stuff and well worth investing time in it. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it start to finish albeit a little frustrating at times if you make a mistake and end up dying while trying to make quiet arrests.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.
Battlefield Hardline Gameplay (PS3) – GameZine
Retro at heart and lover of all things ’80s, especially the computers, the music and the awesome movies and TV shows! Crazy huge retro gaming collection spanning the ’80s and ’90s with hundreds of tapes, discs and carts for various machines on top of a 600+ strong Steam library that is ever-growing. No I am not a serial hoarder, just a dedicated retro gamer!