Battlefield: Hardline feels like a really entertaining mod – E3 2014

Before everyone gets really mad, I am not saying Battlefield: Hardline feels cheap. Or like a ‘Budget Battlefield’. It just doesn’t feel like its own game.

If DICE had announced that Hardline was a downloadable pack for Battlefield 4, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye after playing it. In many ways, that’s a huge compliment to the individuals at Visceral – it’s successfully taken everything people love about COD’s main rival and squeezed that into a cops and robbers type environment… which is exactly what this is.

The match I was given access to was your traditional objective-based setup: the cops have to protect the vaults, the robbers need to break in and run off with what’s inside. You have four classes to choose from – Operator, Mechanic, Professional, Enforcer – all with their individual weapon loadouts and gadgets for you to toy around with. Hopefully each is obvious enough to give you an idea of the influence they can have on each contest.

The major differences come in the ‘street’ setting Hardline has been set in. While no stranger to the main iteration, it’s a little strange to see someone zipping around in a civilian-esque vehicle. It’s weirder still when said vehicle comes flying over your head as a group of bad guys try desperately to make an escape. That’s where the real appeal lies, though. Battlefield has always been capable of feeling quick and slightly out of control, but Hardline seems intent on making that the entire point.

From the moment a match begins, the focus is instantly on being as fast as it possibly can. It makes sense, too – why else would EA decide to take Battlefield in such a direction? The result is a game that’s instantly entertaining; a shooter which doesn’t take itself too seriously but that’s built on the foundations of an already successful powerhouse. Pile-ups quickly become the order of the day, and nonsense such as cars recklessly trying to speed away from the oncoming fuzz usually result in absolute mayhem.

With that said, certain elements did come across as a little flimsy, the downtown-like map in this instance feeling way too big, for example. In many ways it would be difficult to change, given that the whole concept is to give the robbers enough room to try and escape and the cops enough to try and stop them – if the environment was any smaller the intense nature of each firefight would be lost. It can still give the impression you’re partaking in a marathon, mind: if you can’t find a set of wheels, you got a lot of jogging ahead of you.

The real question is what Visceral can do to ensure this is its own game. Hardline is undoubtedly fun, and the Payday/Rainbow 6 influences are there for all to see. It’s never a complete copycat of either of those two – or at least it doesn’t seem to be at this stage – and seems to have far more to offer than the former. To say this is Battlefield with a twist isn’t a stretch, though.

Given that this is the entry we’re getting in the Battlefield series this year, mind (and assuming we don’t have the same server issues as before), with enough depth and variety, Hardline will be a good, if not a little odd, expansion. Worth the full price? That’s yet to be seen, and we need to see a lot more.