Zoroark Cutie
The Illusion Fox Skyfarer
- 2,511
- Posts
- 10
- Years
- Age 30
- Auguste Isles
- Seen Dec 13, 2017
On my final day of college two things happened, Battlefield 1 was revealed and I was able to pick up Battlefield: Hardline. I spent about the entire whole following day, because Rainbow Six: Siege has placed a curse on me, and honestly, I hate this game, but at the same time I also oddly enjoyed it.
One of the biggest things to this Battlefield game is that you can arrest people. This is one of the things I like the most about the game since you do play as a cop in this game and so it makes sense that you're going to be given the ability to arrest people. You flash your badge or yell at the enemies to drop their weapons and they actually freeze and put their hands up and you have to keep your gun aimed at them otherwise, and if you don't they'll begin to slow reach their gun and attempt to shoot you. That's not to say that this was 100% perfect. It's actually one of the games many faults as well and I'll go into why I also hated it in a bit because I just want to bring it together with a few other things. You also don't get to use military grade stuff, most of the time that is, and there are some vehicle moments such as a boat and even some cars, police and non-police. I don't know if it is just me, but the cars don't seem to go as fast I would expect though, but at least I didn't have problems with the controls.
You get introduced to a few of the gameplay features the game offers at the beginning of the game. First is the scanner. The scanner has three purposes, tagging enemies, locating evidence, and locating enemies that you have arrest warrants for. Some areas of a level have evidence you can look for and you can find them with the scanner and analyze them to collect them and the scanner will tell you how many pieces of evidence are in each area. You can also find certain enemies who have arrest warrants, and if you are able to successfully arrest them or use the taser on them, then you get bonus points. Points are back from Battlefield 4's Singleplayer, although this time you rank up in the singleplayer and you unlock weapons by finding them on enemies, ranking up, and completing case files, and you can also unlock camos, attachments, and gear as well. This is a big difference to Battlefield 4 where you couldn't customize your weapons and if you wanted to unlock more weapons you had to either find them on enemies, find them in levels if they are a hidden weapon, or get a point rank after every level. Thankfully you can switch to these weapons and customize your weapons by finding weapon cases and switch around the attachments, camos, and other stuff in this game.
Now is the time that I talk about my biggest issue with the game, the progression. Progressing in the singleplayer is slow. It's painfully slow to the point I felt like I was going at a snails pace in the game. The first issue is with ranking up. You would think that you can rank up guns blazing, but that's not the case. If you kill an enemy, you get no points. You only get points by completing objectives, knocking out enemies, using the taser on them, or arresting them, that means if you want to unlock all the cool guns and toys to use, you need to play the game as stealthy as possible and be as non-lethal as possible, and between all the ways you can get points, you're going to rely on arresting the most because arresting enemies earns you more points than knocking out or tasering enemies. Arresting enemies will get boring and tiresome after just a few times since everything from the animations to the lines are repeated and each enemy acts the same and honestly it gets to the point where you really don't want to arrest people anymore. Then there's the evidence and the scanner. The scanner is your only way to collect evidence and it can be so tricky to get this evidence sometimes. The scanner will notify you, but even if you are standing where the evidence is and looking at it, the scanner won't recognize it even when it is plainly in front of you. This happened multiple times and it was very glaring in one specific part in the game. Not to mention that some of the evidence is questionable on why a detective of all people would say it's evidence. Some of the evidence can be found on some of the enemies that have arrest warrants and once you arrest them, you can search the evidence off of them. So to go through all of this, you have to rank up by playing as stealthy and as non-lethal as possible to get weapons and look around each area to find evidence for case files that will unlock more evidence. This is pure baby walking! So I have to play the game slowly and look around for collectibles to unlock all the cool guns, or I can play this game guns blazing and take forever to rank up and eventually get some of the cool guns. I get it, you're playing as a cop, a detective to be exact, so it would make sense to arrest first and shoot when you are threatened with harm, but this is Battlefield, a series known for high octane first person shooter with crazy action moments, this is not L.A. Noire, this is not Sleeping Dogs, and this is not True Crime, so for Peter's sake let me shoot some more because arresting enemies gets really old really fast. You have to pick either progressing the ranks slowly and complete the campaign fast and not have all the cool guns and gadgets or progress through the campaign slowly and rank up fast to get all the cool stuff.
The investigations is also something that is flawed beyond belief. You have a few case files to go through and each one is going to be spread across each of the levels. However, as mentioned before the scanner sometimes won't pick evidence up and some of the evidence is just silly like a CD album. What?! This is evidence. A mass produced CD album. I get that it's made by someone who has connections with a mafia boss, but seriously, it's just a mass produced CD album, and no it's not evidence with more evidence on it like fingerprints or blood, it's just evidence. Not only that, but the cases you do are something you're not going to care about because they have no part in the story.
I guess I could talk about the story now, but I'm just going to say that the story of this game is one of the most disappointing stories I've ever played. This game starts off really good, but the more you play it the more it falls flat before it falls through the floor again and falls flat again. The first half of the story is really interesting to an extent, but once you get to the 2nd half it's just disappoints after disappoints. You play as Nick Mendoza and you play as a Police Detective in Miami for the first half of the game and the 2nd half you play as a wanted man. You are partnered with a female detective named Khai, your Captain is named Dawes, Stoddard who is your partner in the prologue and a corrupt cop, and other characters include Tap who is only in the game 2 times and Tyson who you meet in this level who is played by Adam Harrington (I guess this is L.A. Noire. I'm just glad he isn't playing Roy Earle otherwise I would've had to punch my TV screen). At first it is an interesting story at first, but then it turns really generic into a story of being betrayed and getting back at the people who betrayed you. It also doesn't help that there is nothing to each character as they are essentially by the books and I personally really disliked the ending to the game.
As for the gadgets in the game some of them are your standard Battlefield gadgets, but there are 3 that I want to talk about. The first is the taser and I hate it. I absolutely hate it because of how much you are kinda forced to use it. If you want to unlock all the weapons in the game and get the enemies with arrest warrants, you have to take it as it gives you points and it can be used in stealth sections just in case or even in fire fights to get some points. My biggest problem other than it is a necessity to take it if you want level up, is that this taser is a pain to use. You won't be able to hit anyone until two little green circles appear on the tasers sights, you fire it then and the taser takes them down. For the most part it worked, but there were times where it didn't work and it was enough to make it painful. One time I was following right behind someone, the sights turned green, I aimed it right at their back which is where I've been aiming it at every time I followed behind someone in the game, I fired the taser while the sights still had the green circles and the taser misses and it caused me to be spotted. It even has problems with trying to shoot it above or through something. An example of one is in Case Closed, after getting a guy named Stingray, I stayed on the floor where you get him and been trying to take down enemies with the taser from above, and it didn't work all the time when trying to shoot above the glass panels even when I get someone with it and someone walks into the same spot, it will just miss out of no where for no reason. An example of it not going through something was in the episode Out of Business, where in the mechanic warehouse in the junkyard, I tried shooting it through a space that is on those giant metal shelves. In theory it should've gone through and hit the person on the other side, but for whatever reason it doesn't, even though the space that I'm trying to shoot it through is large enough for it to go through. Later in the level called Gator Bait, you are introduced to the Grappling Hook and a Zipline. Now this was awesome! You now have the ability to scale up large heights and zipline across to platforms far away and could open up a lot of each level! There's just one problem, these two gadgets are completely worthless for the rest of the game. They're only useful in this level as the rest of the levels of the game do not give you any sort of opportunities to utilize these gadgets more and it sucks. Just imagine the possibilities that could've been done with these two gadgets, but instead they are only useful in one level, and it's only the first part of the level. I can only think of one other time that these two gadgets can be useful and it's in the final level.
There are a few moments that the game does have that is a bit different, but there aren't a lot of these kinds of moments. In the Back to School level, there is a shootout section on this level where you get to shoot enemies and defend yourself after Khai has been shot so you need to shoot at enemies while also putting some pressure onto where she got shot to keep her from bleeding out. The level titled Gator Bait is the only level where you have a quick time event when an Alligator snatches Nick. All you do is hold the Alligator off from trying make you its lunch until your partner stabs it through the head. Case Closed has a part where you have avoid some large letters in a mall during a hurricane. Out of Business has a chase sequence where you are being chased after and you have to do your best to avoid as much gunfire as possible and then you switch sides and begin to shoot from the car. At one point in the game, they somehow manage to have a section where you are in a tank and they somehow manage to have a boss battle during that part, a very lame boss fight.
The levels of the game are a bit of a mix bag for me. There are a total of 10 levels in the game, that's not counting the prologue. That can seem like a good amount of levels, but the levels are extremely short. Some of the levels are nice like Case Closed where a hurricane happens in the level and Independence Day where you're going up a tower and you get a nice view of Miami and see some fireworks. However some levels are just not all that interesting like the levels Checking Out, Gator Bait, Gauntlet, and Sovereign Land, but between all of them Gator Bait is probably the one I find the worst. Checking Out is not all that interesting, Gator Bait has you drive around the Everglades most of the time, Gauntlet was just a giant stealth mission where you avoid cops, and Sovereign Land's design in general just bored me to tears even though it's the level where you get to be in a tank.
I really wanted to love Battlefield: Hardline's singleplayer and in some aspects I do. I like the cops vs. criminals setting, I love that you can take down enemies non-lethally, I like that you can customize weapons in the singleplayer with a wide amount of options, I like the different approach and I did enjoy a good amount of parts in it, but overall it was a really repetitive game with how much arresting you have to do in order to get some extra guns that ultimately became boring if you decide to play it non-lethally mixed in with some bad levels made this not all enjoyable. I will say that the gunplay is solid, but it doesn't matter if you are playing the game non-lethally. The game was also too silly for it's own good at that as well. A Battlefield game with a cops vs. criminals setting could've made for an interesting and great game, but it wasn't that great. I would say that it was okay, I personally don't think it was that bad, but that could be that it's because of the setting as I really like cop settings. I just wish that the main gameplay wasn't so boring and repetitive with the arresting, if it wasn't too strict on the ranking progression and allowed for more gun fights without penalizing you by giving you no points, and if the story wasn't so generic and disappointing. For anyone else this is definitely not something that I can recommend and I would recommend Battlefield 4 over this, maybe Battlefield 3, but I haven't played that game.
One of the biggest things to this Battlefield game is that you can arrest people. This is one of the things I like the most about the game since you do play as a cop in this game and so it makes sense that you're going to be given the ability to arrest people. You flash your badge or yell at the enemies to drop their weapons and they actually freeze and put their hands up and you have to keep your gun aimed at them otherwise, and if you don't they'll begin to slow reach their gun and attempt to shoot you. That's not to say that this was 100% perfect. It's actually one of the games many faults as well and I'll go into why I also hated it in a bit because I just want to bring it together with a few other things. You also don't get to use military grade stuff, most of the time that is, and there are some vehicle moments such as a boat and even some cars, police and non-police. I don't know if it is just me, but the cars don't seem to go as fast I would expect though, but at least I didn't have problems with the controls.
You get introduced to a few of the gameplay features the game offers at the beginning of the game. First is the scanner. The scanner has three purposes, tagging enemies, locating evidence, and locating enemies that you have arrest warrants for. Some areas of a level have evidence you can look for and you can find them with the scanner and analyze them to collect them and the scanner will tell you how many pieces of evidence are in each area. You can also find certain enemies who have arrest warrants, and if you are able to successfully arrest them or use the taser on them, then you get bonus points. Points are back from Battlefield 4's Singleplayer, although this time you rank up in the singleplayer and you unlock weapons by finding them on enemies, ranking up, and completing case files, and you can also unlock camos, attachments, and gear as well. This is a big difference to Battlefield 4 where you couldn't customize your weapons and if you wanted to unlock more weapons you had to either find them on enemies, find them in levels if they are a hidden weapon, or get a point rank after every level. Thankfully you can switch to these weapons and customize your weapons by finding weapon cases and switch around the attachments, camos, and other stuff in this game.
Now is the time that I talk about my biggest issue with the game, the progression. Progressing in the singleplayer is slow. It's painfully slow to the point I felt like I was going at a snails pace in the game. The first issue is with ranking up. You would think that you can rank up guns blazing, but that's not the case. If you kill an enemy, you get no points. You only get points by completing objectives, knocking out enemies, using the taser on them, or arresting them, that means if you want to unlock all the cool guns and toys to use, you need to play the game as stealthy as possible and be as non-lethal as possible, and between all the ways you can get points, you're going to rely on arresting the most because arresting enemies earns you more points than knocking out or tasering enemies. Arresting enemies will get boring and tiresome after just a few times since everything from the animations to the lines are repeated and each enemy acts the same and honestly it gets to the point where you really don't want to arrest people anymore. Then there's the evidence and the scanner. The scanner is your only way to collect evidence and it can be so tricky to get this evidence sometimes. The scanner will notify you, but even if you are standing where the evidence is and looking at it, the scanner won't recognize it even when it is plainly in front of you. This happened multiple times and it was very glaring in one specific part in the game. Not to mention that some of the evidence is questionable on why a detective of all people would say it's evidence. Some of the evidence can be found on some of the enemies that have arrest warrants and once you arrest them, you can search the evidence off of them. So to go through all of this, you have to rank up by playing as stealthy and as non-lethal as possible to get weapons and look around each area to find evidence for case files that will unlock more evidence. This is pure baby walking! So I have to play the game slowly and look around for collectibles to unlock all the cool guns, or I can play this game guns blazing and take forever to rank up and eventually get some of the cool guns. I get it, you're playing as a cop, a detective to be exact, so it would make sense to arrest first and shoot when you are threatened with harm, but this is Battlefield, a series known for high octane first person shooter with crazy action moments, this is not L.A. Noire, this is not Sleeping Dogs, and this is not True Crime, so for Peter's sake let me shoot some more because arresting enemies gets really old really fast. You have to pick either progressing the ranks slowly and complete the campaign fast and not have all the cool guns and gadgets or progress through the campaign slowly and rank up fast to get all the cool stuff.
The investigations is also something that is flawed beyond belief. You have a few case files to go through and each one is going to be spread across each of the levels. However, as mentioned before the scanner sometimes won't pick evidence up and some of the evidence is just silly like a CD album. What?! This is evidence. A mass produced CD album. I get that it's made by someone who has connections with a mafia boss, but seriously, it's just a mass produced CD album, and no it's not evidence with more evidence on it like fingerprints or blood, it's just evidence. Not only that, but the cases you do are something you're not going to care about because they have no part in the story.
I guess I could talk about the story now, but I'm just going to say that the story of this game is one of the most disappointing stories I've ever played. This game starts off really good, but the more you play it the more it falls flat before it falls through the floor again and falls flat again. The first half of the story is really interesting to an extent, but once you get to the 2nd half it's just disappoints after disappoints. You play as Nick Mendoza and you play as a Police Detective in Miami for the first half of the game and the 2nd half you play as a wanted man. You are partnered with a female detective named Khai, your Captain is named Dawes, Stoddard who is your partner in the prologue and a corrupt cop, and other characters include Tap who is only in the game 2 times and Tyson who you meet in this level who is played by Adam Harrington (I guess this is L.A. Noire. I'm just glad he isn't playing Roy Earle otherwise I would've had to punch my TV screen). At first it is an interesting story at first, but then it turns really generic into a story of being betrayed and getting back at the people who betrayed you. It also doesn't help that there is nothing to each character as they are essentially by the books and I personally really disliked the ending to the game.
As for the gadgets in the game some of them are your standard Battlefield gadgets, but there are 3 that I want to talk about. The first is the taser and I hate it. I absolutely hate it because of how much you are kinda forced to use it. If you want to unlock all the weapons in the game and get the enemies with arrest warrants, you have to take it as it gives you points and it can be used in stealth sections just in case or even in fire fights to get some points. My biggest problem other than it is a necessity to take it if you want level up, is that this taser is a pain to use. You won't be able to hit anyone until two little green circles appear on the tasers sights, you fire it then and the taser takes them down. For the most part it worked, but there were times where it didn't work and it was enough to make it painful. One time I was following right behind someone, the sights turned green, I aimed it right at their back which is where I've been aiming it at every time I followed behind someone in the game, I fired the taser while the sights still had the green circles and the taser misses and it caused me to be spotted. It even has problems with trying to shoot it above or through something. An example of one is in Case Closed, after getting a guy named Stingray, I stayed on the floor where you get him and been trying to take down enemies with the taser from above, and it didn't work all the time when trying to shoot above the glass panels even when I get someone with it and someone walks into the same spot, it will just miss out of no where for no reason. An example of it not going through something was in the episode Out of Business, where in the mechanic warehouse in the junkyard, I tried shooting it through a space that is on those giant metal shelves. In theory it should've gone through and hit the person on the other side, but for whatever reason it doesn't, even though the space that I'm trying to shoot it through is large enough for it to go through. Later in the level called Gator Bait, you are introduced to the Grappling Hook and a Zipline. Now this was awesome! You now have the ability to scale up large heights and zipline across to platforms far away and could open up a lot of each level! There's just one problem, these two gadgets are completely worthless for the rest of the game. They're only useful in this level as the rest of the levels of the game do not give you any sort of opportunities to utilize these gadgets more and it sucks. Just imagine the possibilities that could've been done with these two gadgets, but instead they are only useful in one level, and it's only the first part of the level. I can only think of one other time that these two gadgets can be useful and it's in the final level.
There are a few moments that the game does have that is a bit different, but there aren't a lot of these kinds of moments. In the Back to School level, there is a shootout section on this level where you get to shoot enemies and defend yourself after Khai has been shot so you need to shoot at enemies while also putting some pressure onto where she got shot to keep her from bleeding out. The level titled Gator Bait is the only level where you have a quick time event when an Alligator snatches Nick. All you do is hold the Alligator off from trying make you its lunch until your partner stabs it through the head. Case Closed has a part where you have avoid some large letters in a mall during a hurricane. Out of Business has a chase sequence where you are being chased after and you have to do your best to avoid as much gunfire as possible and then you switch sides and begin to shoot from the car. At one point in the game, they somehow manage to have a section where you are in a tank and they somehow manage to have a boss battle during that part, a very lame boss fight.
The levels of the game are a bit of a mix bag for me. There are a total of 10 levels in the game, that's not counting the prologue. That can seem like a good amount of levels, but the levels are extremely short. Some of the levels are nice like Case Closed where a hurricane happens in the level and Independence Day where you're going up a tower and you get a nice view of Miami and see some fireworks. However some levels are just not all that interesting like the levels Checking Out, Gator Bait, Gauntlet, and Sovereign Land, but between all of them Gator Bait is probably the one I find the worst. Checking Out is not all that interesting, Gator Bait has you drive around the Everglades most of the time, Gauntlet was just a giant stealth mission where you avoid cops, and Sovereign Land's design in general just bored me to tears even though it's the level where you get to be in a tank.
I really wanted to love Battlefield: Hardline's singleplayer and in some aspects I do. I like the cops vs. criminals setting, I love that you can take down enemies non-lethally, I like that you can customize weapons in the singleplayer with a wide amount of options, I like the different approach and I did enjoy a good amount of parts in it, but overall it was a really repetitive game with how much arresting you have to do in order to get some extra guns that ultimately became boring if you decide to play it non-lethally mixed in with some bad levels made this not all enjoyable. I will say that the gunplay is solid, but it doesn't matter if you are playing the game non-lethally. The game was also too silly for it's own good at that as well. A Battlefield game with a cops vs. criminals setting could've made for an interesting and great game, but it wasn't that great. I would say that it was okay, I personally don't think it was that bad, but that could be that it's because of the setting as I really like cop settings. I just wish that the main gameplay wasn't so boring and repetitive with the arresting, if it wasn't too strict on the ranking progression and allowed for more gun fights without penalizing you by giving you no points, and if the story wasn't so generic and disappointing. For anyone else this is definitely not something that I can recommend and I would recommend Battlefield 4 over this, maybe Battlefield 3, but I haven't played that game.