Battlefield Hardline is a bit different from other battlefield campaigns because usually you're a war soldier going through huge open fields, but in hardline you start out as a typical police officier going about routines taking on petty criminals drug dealers and things like that.
Well early on in the campagin you spend a lot of time in cutscenes, following around a NPC, listening to dialogue, and not really doing much playing. For atleast half the game is like this. You are being handheld by NPC's and not really making much choices yourself. Then about halfway through you stop being a typical good cop and are more a convict on the run. At this point it kind of opens up and you stop being handheld and you get into way more open ended combat segments which is a lot more fun.
The campaign has a mechanics such as the ability to sneak up on enemies and hit a button to freeze them and then arrest them. This makes sense for the first half of the campaign when you're a cop, but on the second half when youre basically a run away criminal , you can still do this. Which didnt make sense to me, but its still kind of fun. But the animation gets old fast.
Another mechanic in the campaign is experience/scoring. Almost everything you do gives you experience, which then unlocks new attachments and weapons you can use at any point. It reminds me of games like Rainbow six Vegas where there are equipment boxes scattered around and you can swap between your entire loadout including attachments, med kits, and stuff like that. I found this part pretty fun to explore all the different options and weapons, opposed to the typical just picking up random guns off bodies.
There are three difficulties you can choose from, and its highly suggested in the menu that you choose the hardest one. So I did that one. And for the most part, it was a well rounded challenge. But there are other sections which can get pretty frustrating. Similar to all contemporary FPS games, you can hit a button to pull out a camera scanner and 'tag' everything in the enviorment (far cry, among other games) so this is a big deal you have to do. Because the worst threat of the entire campaign is Alarms. Before you bother shooting anyone, you have to constantly look around and make sure theres no alarms. And if there is, you have to sneak up to the box and disable it. Or else clearing an area becomes near impossible.
So that brings me to the stealth mechanic. It's pretty decent and fun to engage with, but with this in mind its almost like you're forced to use stealth. If you try to always engage with every situation guns blazing it wont work. Because of the alarms, and because you die in 3 bullets. Yes, it is very unforgiving on how much damage you can take. You are extremely fragile and even being caught off guard for a second means your death. There is regenerating health, but its extremely slow. There are ways to mitigate this, such as throwing med kits on the ground to speed up the recovery, or sticking near your NPC team mates which sometimes can heal you faster.
There a few moments in the campaign where it spawns you in areas where you're tottally surrounded by enemies / turret machine gun fire and it just says 'Survive' and before you can even get a chance to react, you're already dead. These points are pretty annoying and I found myself wishing I didnt choose the hardest difficulty, but after crawling around and finding a spot where they cant hit me it was finally over.
The story and characters are nothing special, but its a servicable 'good cop gone rogue' plot. It works in an episodic format which makes it feel like a TV Show, which modern games just love to do. it makes for decent pacing, because there a clear beginning and end points to every session. The campaign is also very short, and I finished it only three 2 hour sessions.
The last level is pretty funny because if you sent someone gameplay of it, they would probably think its Far Cry. its just some tropical island where you go around tagging people and eliminating outposts. almost exact same mechanics and setting. lol
Its a tripple A shooter, so the graphical effects, sound, and gunplay feel very developed and polished. At times the enemy health is rediculous though. I'm going around using a high powered rifle, the enemies are wearing shorts and a t shirt, and I have to shoot them 3-4 times in the chest to kill them. While they can kill me in 2 shots sometimes. I found that pretty rediculous. So for the most part I just went around with a single shot rifle and a scope trying to get headshots. Theres a satisfying hitmarker everytime you shoot the enemies so that was fun to try to get headshots with.
So the pros are:
-Highly developed graphics/combat
-Interesting unlock system and open ended equipment choices
- Many ways to tackle situations and the same fight can develop in different ways
-Decent story which feels like a tv show via episodic format
Some cons:
- Too cinematic at times, the pacing can be boring where youre sitting around for minutes on end listening to dialogue/following NPC
- Half of the campaign you barely do anything, just handheld by the same NPC for levels on end. Basically an escort mission, but youre the escort.
-Some of the difficulty feels unbalanced or just bullshit
- Generic gameplay that dozens of other games have done
-Some of the driving sections are boring where its pseudo open world and you have to drive back and forth to locations. The actual driving feels fine, but driving around without anything happening kinda lame
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment