Less than a year after the release of Battlefield 4, and Battlefield Hardline has already been announced and sent into beta testing. All topics about marketing and franchise milking aside, how does Hardline hold up in the (now) long list of Battlefield games? After spending a few days playing the Hardline PC beta, DICE, and now Visceral Games, have clearly refined the Battlefield formula down to a consistently well-polished product. There are some slight drawbacks in the reliance on this formula though, and they’re hard to overlook for anyone yearning for something new from the franchise.
Firstly, there are many positive aspects in game’s beta. The change in thematic direction concerning cops versus robbers is refreshing and neat, even if it is slightly cliche. The landscape of a ripped up downtown LA is adequately awe inspiring. As with many Battlefield games previously, the directional sound design is exceptional. The lighting is fairly consistent and lacks much of the irritation that previous Battlefield games (specifically Battlefield 3) had, such as overly sensitive laser sight glare. The game’s mechanics remain mostly unchanged and this is generally a good thing for the franchise’s loyalists. However, if you enjoy playing PC games on a game pad, prepare to be disappointed that DICE/Visceral have once again omitted toggle-able sprinting outside of double tapping a direction.
As this is a beta test build, the expectation that odd animation bugs be absent is too much to ask. Several of these bugs did turn up. When trying to climb over a car, every so often the player would be teleported back several feet and the animation would continue forward thus leaving the player where they had started—not over the object. This odd bug also appeared several times when attempting to climb a ladder. The player would get teleported sideways and not be on the ladder anymore. Probably one of the most immersion-breaking bugs so far in the game is the floating mini-guns on helicopters. These mini-guns sit four to five feet off the sides of every helicopter and it doesn't do anything for the feeling that this is a moderately realistic war zone. Bug reports were submitted with very detailed circumstances in which they occurred, so hopefully they all get fixed later.
On the topic of immersion, Battlefield had always been the franchise that gamers celebrated for immersing them into a spectacular looking environment and not breaking that experience for the most part. During the past week however, there were some quality control problems that can’t be overlooked. First, the texture loading is abysmal. After an unnecessarily long loading screen, and about a minute on the loadout menus, when the time comes to finally punch the “deploy” button, many times the game still has not fully rendered the textures in the world. These texture problems also extend past just loading. After they have loaded, many of the game’s textures don’t match in quality. This mismatch becomes most obvious post-crane collapse. Many of the earthier toned textures in the newly shaped battlefield look like they were created in 2004, when textures could get by looking fuzzy. It is funny when these textures can sit beside a giant crane that has very detailed textures. This alone rips a lot of the believably of the world out of the experience. That isn't to say that all the textures are like this. The most likely reason for this texture downgrade is to lighten the processing load after the crane collapses. The textures inside the buildings before the crane collapse look very crisp; however, after, the textures appear duller in the newly dimmed and particle filled level.
The game modes themselves serve their purpose as objective based games, but there isn't much to be said as far as promoting creative strategies on either team’s side. “Blood Money” is a twist on capture the flag in which both teams are fighting to transport money from a central money pile to their respective vaults. The enemy team also has to ability to raid the opposing team’s vault and set them back on their cash requirement. This never seemed to be a particularly effective strategy since doing so means that the other team could freely stock up at the money pile and kill everyone on the way back due to the open space and lack of decent cover or high ground coming from vault-direction. The location of the money pile was placed in a decently frustrating spot, which was probably the purpose. The money pile is usually camped on quite hard in the first few minutes of each round and walking into the glass-roofed building to grab cash at this time is almost certainly an instant death at the hands of a camping MG or sniper on the roof.
“Heist” mode, is a variation on capture the flag and Battlefield’s Rush mode. At the beginning of the game, the objectives are much like Rush mode in that the attacking team must plant bombs on the armored cars to get to the money inside. After the money is grabbed, the game takes a more football meets CTF style and it’s a race to get the packages to the escape points before the defenders kill off all the attacking reinforcements. Very early on, it was discovered that since the final objective in Heist mode was on top of a skyscraper, the best possible strategy for the cop team to use was to camp the stairs or elevators. This became almost game breaking in one match seeing as the robbers didn't have any sort of helicopter, and if they tried to use the elevators, they were greeted with ten M16A3 muzzles in their faces. Yes, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if there was a zip-line player present and they scaled the other tower, but that didn't feel worthwhile considering the ease in which the zip-line can be destroyed. Camping seems to continue to be the best overall strategy in the Battlefield franchise, and frankly it’s a little disappointing to see.
My final bit of criticism is of how the menu system is laid out. Battlefield has traditionally been a franchise that started on PC and catered to PC users. This menu system screams, “console port,” in its layout this time. During the few minutes that I tried playing with a controller, it was very apparent that the menu navigation made more sense in that control scheme than the default mouse and keyboard. When clicking around with the mouse, the loadout screen was clunky and hard to maneuver through at a quick pace. The layout of the results screen is also clunky and vague in its display of content. Looking at the reward screen is confusing and doesn't outwardly tell the player enough information like what the rewards do, or why they should care that they got them in the first place.
Overall, the experience was fun, and somewhat expected. Nothing that was present broke new ground, but nothing that was given wasted my time. Whether or not this game will be worth the $60 down the road is up in the air based on what is currently playable. An updated opinion will be written a few months from now after the beta has progressed some more and the release date draws closer.
Log in to comment