Battlefield: Hardline (BETA)

Hardline is the new Battlefield title recently announced at E3. During the conference they also announced a Beta would go live. I thought I’d post a few impressions from my time with it, about 6 hours in all.

But what about my history with the BF franchise? The only game I’ve actually purchased in the series is 1942, released way back in 2002. I did, however, play the BF3 beta on 360 and PC. It was okay, but not enough to convince me to get the game, although I do now own it (but not yet played it) when it was given away free for a limited time on Origin. And that’s about all the experience I have with BF, so you should keep that in mind.

Like BF4 before it, Hardline was revealed with a very neat demo of two competing teams on a single map. It was tense, exciting stuff, watching two coordinated teams fighting it out. But it’s all bollocks, of course, because the demo is heavily scripted to show off the game in the best possible light, and because nobody actually plays the bloody game like that.

As you’d expect, Hardline is mostly a clusterf**k of combat and explosions. You do, on occasion, get some interesting team dynamics at play, but let’s face it, public servers will never offer much in the way of team coordination or cooperation. The most you’ll get is players actually throwing down support items or bothering to stop and pick you up in a vehicle. Usually, the team that does these things is the one that wins. Hell, have a couple of helpful Operators on your team who’ll keep reviving people, and you’re pretty much an unstoppable force. But we’ll get more into the combat and class roles later.

So what makes Hardline different to BF4? Well, this has two new sides – Cops vs Criminals. That could lead to some interesting gameplay, right? Something different to the military based BF4? Ha! The whole Cops vs Criminals thing is, frankly, a joke. They both run around with military grade weapons, mini-guns, rocket launchers, attack helicopters, laser trip mines etc. Just slapping the word ‘Police’ on a vehicle or uniform doesn’t make it feel any different, just look different. But you know, if this was a mini-expansion to BF4 or DLC (which is what I initially thought) I wouldn’t be too fussed by this. Except it’s not, but we’ll get back to that.

So the two sides in terms of classes, vehicles and equipment (not to mention the identical play styles) are kind of irrelevant when it comes to the theme. But what about how it plays? Well, at first, I really didn’t like it. Movement felt sluggish and the shooting strangely ‘floaty’. I think this was partly due to coming into this from Titanfall. I kept trying to vault over ledges, climb low walls etc. You can vault some stuff, but it’s all rather clunky, not to mention buggy, as several times I got stuck on something.

Over time I have to say I got more used to the movement and shooting, but it wasn’t something I was particularly enamoured with. There are tools such as grappling hooks and zip lines to get about a bit more swiftly, but these also felt slow and clunky to use, simply leaving you vulnerable to enemy fire. The vehicles in the game (especially the cars) handle really badly, but they’re kind of pointless anyway on the Beta map, simply being used to get more quickly from A to B and then ditched and forgotten. Most of the combat in the Beta map centres around one or two areas and, when one side gains the upper hand in those areas, it’s pretty much game over. This also makes a lot of the map rather redundant and empty because there’s sod all reason to go anywhere else.

Graphics? Not great, but not terrible. I’m assuming some stuff was reduced for the Beta. At least I hope it was. Performance was great though, a very stable 60fps at all times. There was also a lot of issues with hit detection in the game and the way some weapons are either too effective, or not effective enough, but you can expect stuff like that at this stage, such as rockets being used as CQC weapons because they don’t seem to damage the person firing them. Although I should say a little more about the hit detection. It’s pretty bad. Sometimes you’ll land several shots to the head, but nothing seems to register. Sometimes you’ll shoot someone, think you killed them, but then they’ll turn and shoot you dead, only for them to just drop dead a moment later from your attack.

It’s not a lag issue, I can say that for certain. It’s definitely the way the game is registering hits, something to do with its ‘tick rate’ although I’m no expert in that shit so I won’t even pretend to know what it’s all about. But I’ve seen a lot of people talking about it in the game chat and it’s something that clearly needs to be fixed because it can be incredibly frustrating.

So you have 4 different classes and a level/progression system which is exactly what you’d expect. Uh, what else? There’s a nice degree of terrain destruction in the map that I liked, but I think BF4 did this too. In fact, although I’ve not played BF4 I’ve seen enough videos of it to wonder what exactly is new in Hardline? This feels like all the same shit we’ve seen before simply re-skinned as a Cops vs Criminals expansion. And you know, I’d be okay with that. It feels a bit lazy, but as a slightly different, themed DLC or expansion, I wouldn’t really care too much, provided it was appropriately priced.

Oh dear. But Hardline isn’t a DLC or expansion. It’s a fully priced release. Yeah, I’m talking 50 quid on Origin just for the ‘standard edition’. What the f**k? Are they serious? Is this real? Is this really happening? It looks to me like they’ve taken some maps that could have ended up in a BF4 DLC pack, slapped some Police logos on some poorly modelled cars and said ‘HEY! IT’S AN ENTIRELY NEW GAME GUYS HONEST!’

Like I said, I’ve not played BF4, so I can’t honestly compare the two. But how can they possibly try to sell this as a ‘new’ game? And even if BF4 didn’t exist (which only came out about a year ago, didn’t it?) I’d still call Hardline out on how lazy it is when it comes to classes, weapons and vehicles, because hardly any of them fit with the game’s theme. As a re-skin of BF4 it makes some sense, but if that’s all it is (and a poorly done one at that) then how can they justify such a price?

You know, I didn’t hate Hardline, despite my issues with it. I must admit that it can be rather fun at times. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe the full game will deliver a lot more than the Beta did. I guess we’ll find out in time, but right now, Hardline just feels like a very cynical cash grab. If we’re the Cops, then I guess EA are the criminals. And THEY HAVE THE LOOT.