Battlefield Hardline is different. Different because it is fun to play but yet the campaign feels a little disordered with a promise of police game, but the player is a SWAT soldier with a full kit in police uniform.
You play as a police officer turned convict turned vigilante Nick Mendoza who wants to clean up the system. The opening scene has you dressed as a convict in orange attire and on his way to prison, and the story starts from a few years earlier where Nick and his partner Carl Stoddard bust down a local gang. The arrest goes wrong, which is then followed by a high-speed pursuit and a one rattled car spinning several ways down the road and one handcuffed criminal. Next you know, is that you have a new partner in Officer Khai.
First few missions have a good storyline and a gameplay alien to the Battlefield franchise. The game offers a lot more stealth than a normal Battlefield ever did. You are practically saving your cartridge and making arrests like a police normally does – flashing your badge at the bad guys time and again. Hardline encourages you to do this through allocating warrants to specific enemies, which can earn you points unlocking extra equipment.
Flaunting your badge at isolated enemies (only if there are three) causes them to drop their guns and surrender, where you can rush to them, take them down, cuff them and make them sleep. But beware, once you are spotted all hell breaks loose, everyone in the room is running behind you like a mad dog putting bullets as and when they come.
The single player campaign in Hardline loses the plot midway and the developers just don’t know what to do with its police story after a first few levels. After that the police theme is lost almost entirely. You turn from a good guy to a fugitive, evading police, breaking into shops owned by gangsters. One of the missions has you cracking a security vault to steal money because of some motives.
There are rewards and unlocks for completing missions in the most non-violent ways even though the game is classified as a shooter. Sometimes this makes the game dull and progress very slow. One of the interesting parts of the game is that it has a TV show-style setup. Each time you quit the game, there is what’s next on Hardline and when you start the game, there a previously on Hardline waiting on your screen making the experience TV-like.
Moving from singleplayer to multiplayer, the game feels superior from the word go. There are various modes some of which are just different names with concepts which date back to Unreal Tournament.
The most popular mode of them all is ‘Heist’. The robbers must make their way into a vault at the centre of the map, then rob a vault full of cash and steal them under police’s nose and pass through a pair of extraction points. The cops must regulate this and prevent it from happening. Breaking into vaults has one often breaking into the building blasting big holes navigating through rubble to approach the extraction point. What makes the mode more interesting is that both teams are facing each other in a single building with very few entry points. But with access to multiple corridors and roof access, this makes you exposed and unsafe.
One of the other fascinating modes is ‘Bloodmoney’. Essentially a version of ‘Capture The Flag’ where both teams are fighting for large pile of cash in the vault in the centre of the map. One has to steal cash from the opposition’s vault and have to get it back to one’s base to score. Chaos filled level has people running haywire without much teamwork making it confusing.
‘Hotwire’ is one of my personal favourite modes; here criminals are trying to steal a list of marked cars while the cops are trying to repossess them. ‘Hotwire’ is wild fun for you, smash your vehicles into the opposition and create chaos as your fellow police officer/criminal drive alongside you and spew bullets from the windows at other rides. Freedom to steer your drive works well with the game.
‘Rescue’ and ‘Crosshair’ are something that police setting will relate to. The former is a hostage rescue mode that has you saving innocent lives from the hands of criminals, while Crosshair is a VIP escort mode, where the police is protecting an informant while the criminals attempt to kill him. Then there’s traditional ‘Conquest’ mode, where one has to own a base to capture a flag. If your team owns more flags, your enemy’s ability to respawn will reduce, making them smaller in number each time.
Overall, the game offers variety but the ‘Hardline’ does not do justice to the police theme. The police officers have weapons that would put high end SWAT team to shame. This predominantly helps the multiplayer mode, making it entertaining and singleplayer mode cringe worthy.
Multiplayer games are fast as maps are tightly bound and action is always around you. Visceral has worked to cater this time to a wide range of audiences and successfully has created a glitch with multiplayer experience unlike the last time.
Hardline takes the Battlefield franchise forward but holds some of it in its own right. The speedy police vehicle chases and shootouts have you in the spot almost all the times. Largely, Battlefield Hardline is a lovely shooter and stealth game combined in one filled with interesting characters and well written storyline. Give it a go mostly for its multiplayer modes which will provide haste and pleasure of chaos.