As E3 2014 has come to a close, today mxdwn Games got to go hands on with a demo for EA’s newest first person shooter game in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield Hardline. Battlefield Hardline is set to be released on October 21, 2014 for PC via Origins, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and also the new generation consoles PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Plus it there was a surprise to gamers that was announced earlier this week that Battlefield Hardline launched a closed beta version for PC and PS4 users.
The Battlefield franchise has been in the hands of the developers DICE, but this time it is in the helping and new hands of Visceral Games. Battlefield Hardline is instead going for a modern day cops and robbers instead of the traditional military war. As you come up to the booth you felt like you were in an actual police station, where all the staff actually played the role of an “officer”, which you are greeted by one when you enter, as if you are being processed as a “prisoner.” You continue along in the police station, and you will see on the wall there are building plans that are marked on and you also see SWAT team raid diagrams on another board. As you continue along you would go passed an “interrogation room” that had a silhouette of man just waiting in the room with handcuffs on. To take this whole cops and robbers experience even further, those who went through had their “mug shot” taken against a wall as if it was an actual picture from the police station.
Representing mxdwn Games, Kerwin Tsang, was able to take on this hands-on experience of everything that was going on at this booth. He was waiting in the lobby until the blaring of an alarm went off. At that moment, the doors opened and the “police officers” were screaming at everyone saying “come on! let’s go! let’s go! move it!” as if it was a real mission happening at that moment and you were in the middle of it all. As you continue through the doors, there were individual computers for you and 32 total players, and they were running a multiplayer match of Battlefield Hardline.
In the demos you were either able to play on either of the two different game modes, ‘Heist’ and ‘Blood Money,’ though for this demo Kerwin played on Blood Money and was put into a map called High Tension. High Tension is located in an approximation of what downtown Los Angeles would look like, with urban city blocks, skyscrapers, streets, etc. Though the map was open and huge, which allowed the streets to be very wide. The rules on how to play the Blood Money mode goes as follows, both teams will need to steal as much money as possible from a central stash that is placed in the middle of the map and then take it back into their own team vault. Though by accidental discovery, you actually are able to go on daring raids to your enemies vault in order to raid them and bring back the money to your vault. Some teams might use the advantage of their snipers and have them defend on a skyscraper to get the vantage point needed, in order to be near the central stash and have an eye on the enemies and cash for your team. It is like a modern day capture the flag, and in order to win this game mode, you have to have the most money.
There are still 4 classes that are put into the game, but now the engineer class is known as the mechanic, and now that you are playing a modern day cops and robbers, you will no longer have that military jeep, that is replaced by cop cars and silver sedans (for criminals), and the M-coms are now the vaults. Being a police in this demo, the weapons that Kerwin was equipped with was a M16 that had a holo-sight attachment, a revolver, a knife, and grenades.
“My side’s HQ had a number of vehicles: armored vans with mounted machine guns, police squad cars, motorcycles, and a blackhawk helicopter. Driving the motorcycle was an absolute pleasure; turning felt very smooth and it was very easy to navigate tighter areas. Controlling the helicopter was another story; it was wonky and heavy, and I wound up crashing spectacularly.”
“Even though this was a cops vs robbers game, the action still felt very war-like. There were explosions going off everywhere, and people in vehicles zipping by maniacally. Shooting mechanics were snappy and satisfying, but we were playing it on PS4 controllers” said Kerwin.
You can watch the trailer released for Multiplayer, below:
From the limited time Kerwin was able to experience the hands-on experience of Battlefield Hardline, he says that “Overall it was a good impression, but I was a bit concerned that aside from the cops and robbers setting, the game didn’t feel very much different from previous Battlefield games. You still had large, open environments, you still had the heavy weapons like .50 cal machine guns, explosives, assault rifles and so on.”
You can find out more information on Battlefield Hardline on their official site, plus like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.