Battlefield Hardline Beta Impressions.

 

 

By Sam Coles:

Battlefield Hardline got a bit git because it was seen as a glorified mod for Battlefield 4 where they charge full price for it. Now that Visceral and EA have now released the open beta for the game I can tell that it’s not like Battlefield 4 at all.

 

 

When I was playing it I realised one thing, I was having fun and I haven’t had that feeling since Battlefield Bad Company 2 and the reason for this is that the multiplayer is over the top and does not take itself seriously. The gameplay is faster than any of the Battlefield games that I’ve played and it fits the fast paced nature when you’re raiding a bank in the heist mode with your 12 gauge of buck shot as you cut down police or criminals. The maps are more concise compared to other games, but that is not necessarily a bad thing because it fits the confined spaces such as the heist mode and the hotwire mode.

 

 

The game modes that I sampled in this beta are Heist where you either play as the cops and you have to stop the criminals from extracting the packages of money from the vault, or you play as the criminals where you have to break into the vault and steal the money and this is great because there are multiple ways of entry, such as setting a breaching charge on the roof of the vault and coming in from above. Hotwire is an interesting take on the conquest mode from the series past where instead of flags you capture cars and have to hold them as long as you can, but you can’t stay stationary you have to go certain speed to accumulate points while you have people chasing you down and shooting you it’s very intense.

Classes that you have access to:

Operator: These are the medics of the world of Hardline and their weapon of choice are assault rifles they can also bring themselves back to life, but only when they’re hit by cars.

Mechanic: They play a similar role as the engineer from Battlefield 4 where they repair vehicles, but they no longer have RPG’s because they are now weapon drops on the map which keeps the car chases balanced.

Enforcer: These guys are your muscle and love their close quarters battles and you’ll want these guys when you’re in the vault during the heist mode because their weapon of choice are shotguns and no longer LMG’s because like the RPG’s they’re now weapon drops on the map.

Professional: They’ll be giving over watch when you’re on the job as they specialise with sniper rifles and DMR’s and have many ways of keeping their sniper nest defended with gadgets such as trip mines.

The negative points that I have of this beta is in Hotwire mode I found that most players could easily exploit the game by driving around the outside of the map, I managed to rack up a combined score of 7,000 plus and that was for the entire game without taking damage. Another nit-pick was every time I loaded a match I would get a news bulletin about the heist or car theft which was a novel concept to begin with, but then turned into irritation, I hope this is something that is cut from the main game because when you’ve played hours of the game you could probably recite the news report word for word, maybe have an option to turn it off.

Battlefield Hardline is an interesting take on the Battlefield series and this beta has me invested in the full product, besides the few problems it was a fun experience and that is the key word for game fun. The game feels fast like a mix of the mobility of Halo and the tight controls of Call of Duty with a cops and criminal spin. I so glad that shooters have now pulled their heads out of the cloud of “Modern Military Shooter” and doing more unique settings. Battlefield Hardline will be released March 17^th in North America and March 20^th in Europe on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.