After getting the chance to play hours of Battlefield Hardline’s multiplayer this week, Visceral Games entry into the Battlefield franchise is looking promising, with a new theme and feel, thanks to the cops and criminals gameplay. The full review for the game will be coming to COG very soon. In the meantime, we rank each of the game modes, both new and those modes returning from previous games. So, from worst to best, here we go:
6 – Team Deathmatch
Do I really need to explain why this is the worst of them all? There are only three reasons people play TDM in Battlefield, practice, weapon grinding, and boredom. Squad Deathmatch in Bad Company 2 may have been a good mode with opportunities for strategy and team coordination, but ever since TDM was first introduced in Battlefield 3, it has never been taken seriously by the general BF community.
5 – Conquest
Before you scroll down the comment section to spew venomous words in my general direction across the web, hear me out.
A Battlefield game without Conquest is a bit like a Rush Limbaugh program without any bigotry. If Hardline were to be released without a Conquest mode, you can be assured that fan boys would turn up to take a dump on Visceral’s doorstep.
However, this game is built around a Cops N’ Crooks theme, with a much heavier focus on infantry combat, faster vehicles and tighter gameplay. As a result, Hardline is more route based than previous Battlefields. Not only is destruction not as prevalent, but the gameplay is more structured around using all of your weapons, gadgets and raw skill to your advantage.
The problem with Conquest, is that the mode is not designed for this. Conquest was and always was designed for wide open sandbox environments, where the player uses vehicles and the large world to their advantage.
In the end, you have two results, either you have wide open maps that feel just like Battlefield 3 and 4 but with less player created routes, or a cluster fuck of firefights in tight in-door spaces, like some of the Conquest maps in Battlefield 3.
Either case doesn’t fit what Hardline is trying to do, as a result, this mode feels like a throw away. It doesn’t match the game’s design or theme. Does this mean you can’t have fun in Conquest? Of course not, it’s literally the pillar that held this series for three games in a row. It’s just that out of all the things Hardline brings to the table, Conquest is the least exciting. You know, aside from Team Deathmatch…
4 – Blood Money
I like Blood Money, it’s chaotic, and has plenty of choices for the player to make when it comes to acquiring cash for the team. Do they just take from the main stash in the middle? Do they steal from their enemy’s base? Do they hunt down players with full stacks of cake and take from them? It’s a good mode, and it’s something different from previous games, where team’s symmetrical bases didn’t get a whole lot of use other than as spawn points.
My issue with Blood Money is the number of times when teams are in a stalemate, which leads to matches dragging on for far too long sometimes. Plus, those moments where all you’re doing is holding the square button, picking up cash, with nothing going on; it fails to have tension.
I did enjoy this mode, both on small maps and big ones, but out of all the new modes, I’d say that overall, Blood Money was my least favourite. Again, still a good mood, and one I’ll play when the game comes out.
3 – Hotwire
It is the most talked about mode of all the new ones announced for Battlefield: Hardline. Probably because it’s the easiest to understand and is the freshest concept in Hardline’s multiplayer. The only other popular game that featured a mode about carjacking was Grand Theft Auto IV, so to see something like this, in a Battlefield game never-the-less, I think is the reason this mode is talked about so much by both the developers and the community.
Is it fun? Well yeah, sometimes, it can be freakin’ awesome! It definitely leans more towards the sillier side of the Battlefield games rather than epic war battles.
Silliness is something I’ve felt that has always existed in Battlefield and something that sets it apart from other games. Sometimes, your stories in the game’s multiplayer will be you and your friends escaping a horrifically loud and violent firefight, where you were outnumbered and out-gunned; but other times, your story may be about how you destroyed a helicopter by crashing your muscle car into it off a jump.
The reason Hotwire is third place for me, is the same reason that ever since Bad Company 2, I’ve preferred Rush to Conquest. When you have a large map and multiple control points, you’re going to have zones where nothing is happening, it’s just inevitable and something you can’t avoid, it’s in the design of the mode.
There were a few games where I never died in Hotwire, not because I was skilled, but because I kept driving around waiting for something to happen. On Everglades, I spent the whole game riding on a motorbike that was marked the entire game, but because other vehicles were more easily accessible, nobody really went after me.
These seem to happen on the bigger maps, where 32 players doesn’t feel like enough at times in those moments when nothing is going on. That being said, Hotwire has plenty of insane moments when multiple cars are exploding, or you’re in a high speed pursuit with a full squad car of people firing machine guns and launching grenades at you.
It’s a fun mode, and certainly one that lends itself to those signature Battlefield moments. It’s a good thing it has the Radio to help out with those more uneventful drives though.
2 – Rescue and Crosshair
The biggest surprise for me was how much fun I had with the two competitive focused modes in Hardline. I’ll be upfront in my admission that when I first saw the trailer for Rescue mode, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and think “Wow Visceral, you’ve copy pasted a game type from Counter Strike, what mind blowing innovation!”
Battlefield has improved its infantry combat significantly since the early days of the franchise, but most smaller team modes in previous games never really received much attention, and felt like tacked on additions to games that were designed for large scale battles.
It was to my shock at how quickly I got sucked into these modes, and I would say that in terms of raw excitement and tension, these two rank as the highest. So much so that I couldn’t decide which of the two I preferred.
Spending lots of time in these modes is when Hardline’s subtle improvements become more apparent, the increased player movement speed, more accurate hitboxes and hit-markers and the balance of the weapons and classes.
The operator’s ability to carry health packs may seem overpowered at first in a mode featuring perma-deaths, but all it takes is one skilled sniper or smart shotgun user to take them down quickly. A smart team will have each person participating in a different role, whether it’s defending the hostages, escorting the VIP, or watching the extraction zones.
So why are these modes second place then? Why aren’t they #1? To tell you the truth, I was quite tempted to put them on there. But these two modes have one major flaw, a flaw that is impossible to remedy in perma-death game types.
For a long period of time, I was paired up with a person in my squad who would consistently end a game with 0 points… after 5 rounds. Why? Because he would sit in a corner of a building, even if an enemy went into said building, and was escaping with a hostage.
When you have someone on your team that isn’t pull their weight, you are left at a significant disadvantage compared to a full team of equally skilled players. There is nothing more infuriating than watching your team lose round after round after round, simply because of bad player who just happened to be paired up on your team.
Will this mode be a big hit in the competitive gaming scene? Only time will tell, but is it fun? Hell fucking yes! Easily the biggest surprise of the game.
1 – Heist
Earlier I mentioned how I prefer Rush to Conquest. It’s simply because Rush is a mode where the action all takes place in one general area. It’s focused, fast and intense, but still open enough to lend itself to improvising strategy and teamwork.
Heist is basically Rush, but better suited to the Cops N’ Crooks theme of Battlefield: Hardline. While it’s not as open as say, Bad Company 2, it replaces that with well-designed levels featuring multiple pathways and entrances, allowing you to flank and surprise the enemy if you’re sneaky enough.
This is also the gametype that is the most suitable to Hardline, more so than Hotwire, because it’s all about the classic objective; the criminals want the cash, and the cops want to stop them. In terms of all the modes, this one fits in with the cops and robbers fantasy the best.
Also, I feel that it’s the most consistent mode out of them all. Whether it’s a tight, route based map such as Bank Job, or a wide open outdoor level like Riptide, or a hybrid of the two in Downtown, this game mode’s intensity was a constant. And thanks to the faster vehicles, player movement and map layouts, it’s easier to get right back into the action, especially when compared to Rush in Battlefield 4, where it mostly all felt like an afterthought compared to Conquest.
