Battlefield Hardline review: public enemy

The first major, stand-alone Battlefield release in years to be developed outside of series originator DICE, Hardline is Dead Space developer Visceral Games first crack at a full Battlefield game. Previously, Visceral has contributed work on multiplayer maps for Battlefield 3 and 4, and also provided help with Battlefield 4's campaign. Hardline is also taking the series to untested waters: a non-military setting.

But Hardline's biggest departure is something else entirely. Battlefield has always lived and died by its multiplayer — in part because its campaigns have always severely underwhelmed (2010's Bad Company 2 notwithstanding). Battlefield Hardline's cops and robbers multiplayer is competent without breaking new ground. But for the first time in years, that doesn't feel like the game's main focus.

Battlefield Hardline's biggest push lay in its campaign, which places you in the role of Miami vice detective Nick Mendoza as he tries to uncover the forces behind a brand new turf war between drug gangs in the city. This is just how the story begins however, as a multiple-year storyline told over 10 episodes goes from Miami to L.A., then Nevada and back again.

The basic foundation of Battlefield Hardline isn't new. It's a first-person shooter whose gunplay emphasizes positioning, bullet physics and a decent amount of environmental destruction. But for whatever reason — and there are several good justifications here — Visceral has worked to add stealth mechanics to the Battlefield formula. This isn't a passive suggestion, either. Enemies have vision cones clearly indicated on the minimap, and a meter shows when you're in view and in danger of being spotted.

But the biggest departure in Hardline from previous precedent is the addition of non-lethal takedowns. While this can be weapon-based courtesy of melee attacks from behind or an optional taser, Hardline also offers an arrest mechanic. If you can sneak up on enemies, you can flash your badge, and they'll drop their weapons and put their hands up. This provides a limited window of time to handcuff and permanently disable them.

There's some measure of sophistication here. If you attempt to arrest more than one suspect at once, you'll need to cover everyone with your gun while acting, or risk someone getting ideas about resisting, and if another enemy stumbles on your arrest in progress, the jig is up and the firefight is certain to start. There are also special targets with arrest warrants out that will provide additional "expert points," which in turn unlock new gear to use in the campaign.

The arrest system offers a skeleton of new tactical depth to the series, and I appreciated the option to subdue rather than shoot. Navigating some spaces had a real sense of thoughtful, first-person stealth, and added some much-needed thought and strategy. I felt like I was casing targets, looking for the smartest way in, and more importantly, that "smartest way" didn't feel static. There are frequently multiple ways to get to objectives with their own pros and cons, and Hardline provides opportunities to use the grappling hooks and ziplines it introduces beyond the boring "press X to do thing" structure of so many other shooters.

Combined with the light investigation elements — which takes the genre-standard in-mission collectibles and makes them part of a bigger narrative of investigations tied to unlocks — Hardline's experiments give it a sense of identity that Battlefield has missed since Bad Company 2 in 2010.

Well, sometimes, at least. But that identity can feel a little fleeting.

Battlefield Hardline works unbelievably hard to avoid discussions of police violence, the militarization of domestic police forces and any meaningful commentary on its subject matter. In part, this is because Hardline is almost comically cynical — every cop is dirty, whether by choice or necessity, there are no "good guys," everything is shades of grey, etc.

Visceral makes some smart moves, though. Each in-game chapter is presented as an episode as if it were a TV series, right down to the "previously on" bumps that appear when you go back into the game after quitting, re-acquainting you with relevant plot points and such. This also gives good entry and exit points for each mission.

There are other polish issues that pop up while going the less-lethal route — for example, the handcuffing animation that accompanies arrests frequently clips through the game world, leaving enemies half-inside level geometry, or in the ground itself. Also, later, when you should not be able to arrest people, you still can, a fact the game pretty conveniently doesn't address in any way.

And, well, you actually can't finish Hardline without killing. There are several moments where shooting is literally the only option, not just the most likely one. These things work to undermine the grounded storytelling that Hardline seems to want when it isn't busy unlocking new weapons for you.

All that grounding is cast aside in Hardline's multiplayer, which takes most of the procedural elements the campaign adds and strips them out for a more conventional Battlefield experience. That isn't to say it's all gone — you can still subdue an opponent, which will feed you intel on their nearby teammates, and the heist elements present in parts of the campaign are a staple of the multiplayer's new modes. Hardline also eschews more dramatic military hardware in favor a more civilian-tinged garage, though there are still heavily armored options and helicopters around.

However,while the last three Battlefield releases have brought major improvements and expansions to the basic formula of the series — destructibility and squads in Bad Company 2, huge levels and player counts in Battlefield 3, and a combination of both along with level-based transformation courtesy of "levolution" in Battlefield 4 — Hardline takes an iterative approach to Battlefield's class-based multiplayer setup, one that leans more heavily on tone and subject matter related to its urban basis.