Battlefield Hardline

It’s not your typical Battlefield, but if you don’t mind trading military uniform for a police badge, you can buy the game and enjoy long hours of fun playing cops and robbers online. The single player campaign is not worth your time. [05/2015, p.54]

It feels like just that: a lower-budget sideshow to the glitzy main event. [May 2015, p.108]

Battlefield: Hardline would have fared better if it didn't have to "lift" the heavy title of the Battlefield series. If you are looking for a fun pick-up-and-play multiplayer shooter, look no further. Hardline is a satisfying, over-the-top multiplayer experience. If, on the other hand, you are in for a Battlefield game, look back on previous Battlefield releases. Hardline is not Battlefield.

Hardline‘s release was smooth, and although it did feel like a modified BF4, it also plays like something novel and worthwhile all on its own.

Hardline is liable to satisfy Battlefield diehards for the next few months until something new comes along or new content is offered. For those sitting on the fence, the changes made to the Battlefield design are interesting but not enough to warrant paying full price just yet.

Battlefield Hardline should have restored the good name of the series, but it pays the piper for a production that needed more polish. The netcode for the multiplayer is OK and the battles are pretty fun, but everything here is pretty standard, and nothing really stands out.

Visceral have created a perfectly good functioning Battlefield game in Hardline. It shoots as good as the best of them, the car-chases are fun, and the small tweaks made to the core formula are very welcome. But a little refinement does not mask that this is a very similar game to what we bought in 2013; despite the strong efforts to make a variety of new game modes, you can’t shake the feeling of playing classic Battlefield.

However, it does do its absolute best, and in trying still manages to be a fairly enjoyable, if somewhat frustrated, production. At the very least, it’s “more Battlefield“, which is by no means a bad thing – yet – and at its highest points, it’s a bit of silly, Vice-inspired fun.

Battlefield Hardline tries to refresh the series, only half succeeding.

There are some bright spots in Battlefield: Hardline’s design, but they do not change the overall pointless of this game. If you’re thinking about playing it online, better splurge on the well-patched Battlefield 4 with all its expansions.

Quotation forthcoming.

Singleplayer is crap as usual, but multiplayer is not bad at all and also tries to innovate the series. Multiplayer in Hardline also accelerated, got smaller shape and put on a police uniform, which brings not only interesting modes for multiplayer and unrivaled environment, but unfortunately also unfinished game mechanics balancing between the mindless action and more tactical legacy of the series.

Uninteresting single player campaign and a bit of innovation in multiplayer is not enough to fulfill the high expectations of Battlefield fans.

While Hardline is tone deaf at times, mostly it is just deafening. Explosions and bombast are used not to distract from a troubling narrative as much as a stale one perfunctorily paced and reminiscent of network television emptiness.