EA and Visceral Games opens Battlefield Hardline Beta, Our First Experiences…

Earlier last year, I took part in the closed beta for Battlefield: Hardline and it’s come a long way since then with several improvements and game fixes. This month, – Visceral Games has opened up the beta for multiplayer beta from February 3 to February 8. So get cracking if you want to experience Hardline before it comes out next month. The beta will be available to all players around the world on Origin for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

“There’s nothing more valuable to our team than the relationship we have with our community. Their passion feeds our passion and their feedback has definitely helped make Hardline a better game, we want them to play the hell out of the beta next week and trust that they’ll keep that feedback coming so we can continue to fine tune the game.” – Steve Papoutsis, General Manager of Visceral Games and Executive Producer of Battlefield Hardline.

Once you’re in the game, you should be able to see how progression works, it’s quite different from previous installments and you may see slight similarities to the familiar setup of Counter Strike and Payday here. You can navigate the battlefield with ziplines, muscles cars, grappling hooks, it seems there are more ways than ever to get your stylish kills on youtube with this installment. Hacker mode will be familiar to players who’ve played Commander mode on Battlefield 4 which will give players the edge over the opposing team.

Specs

EA has also released the full specs for the game for PC which runs on the Frostbite 3 engine, simply put if you can run Battlefield 4, you shouldn’t have a problem playing Hardline.

Minimum:
  • OS: WINDOWS VISTA SP2 64-BIT (with KB971512 Update)
  • PROCESSOR: Athlon II / Phenom II 2.8 GHz, Intel Core i3 / i5 2.4GHz
  • MEMORY: 4GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS CARD: ATI Radeon HD 5770 (1GB), NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (896 MB)
  • HARD-DRIVE: 60GB
  • DIRECTX 11
Recommended:
  • OS: WINDOWS 8 64-BIT (with KB971512 Update)
  • CPU: INTEL QUAD-CORE CPU, AMD SIX-CORE CPU
  • MEMORY: 8GB RAM
  • GRAPHICS CARD: AMD Radeon R9 290, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
  • GRAPHICS MEMORY: 3GB
  • HARD DRIVE: 60GB
  • DIRECTX 11

Low-mid range pc’s with 4GB RAM may experience performance drops, which EA has addressed that it’s an issue with the open beta and the full game will be fully optimized.

BFHL_Screens_Desert_Hotwire

The Game changer ?

This would mark this installment of Battlefield to be the most fast paced in the series. Hotwire is tantamount to this as I spent a fair bit of time dodging opposing forces without being able to fire back and still keep the vehicle running and it’s my personal favorite mode at the moment. In hotwire mode, the criminals attempt to steal a list of marked cars while the cops try to repossess them, A moving conquest mode if you think about it but more on that from the developers themselves.

“Working with DICE to fit the core vision of Battlefield into Hardline allowed us to make a game that respects the Battlefield but add our own take to it which we’re very excited for.” -Scott Probst – Senior Producer, Visceral Games

TeamShot

We had an interesting conversation with Visceral Games, the developers of Battlefield:Hardline. We spoke to Scott Probst – Senior Producer; Evan Champlin – Senior Multiplayer Designer; and Jeff Zaring – Lead Multiplayer Map Designer

A bit of a confession, I was one of the many who played Battlefield back in the early days of 2142 and Bad Company 2 and I was already quite happy with Battlefield 3 and 4 after a while so containing my excitement was a hard thing to do.

“Visceral Games isn’t any stranger to Battlefield as you previously worked with Battlefield 3: End Game. How did you come out with Hardline and decided to take a different tangent on the FPS franchise with Cops vs Criminals ?” 

Team Visceral: “Building Hardline was something we did from ground up. It was during End Game that we started planning for something like this. Looking at everything that was already present on the Battlefield franchise, going with cops vs criminals was a good fit to continue the series. It was an absolute joy to work with DICE to fit the core vision of Battlefield into Hardline. Some may not find this fitting with how you see Battlefield in the traditional sense, but it allowed us to take Battlefield in an entirely new direction which I’m sure players are going to appreciate exploring the world that it’s set in.”

BFHL_Screens_Downtown_Hotwire2

“The biggest gripe about multiplayer I had was accessibility, will Hardline allow new players who want to step into Battlefield waters get a good experience without being dominated by veteran players of the franchise?”

“We’ve worked hard on making sure the balance is retained as well as visual cues to guide new players, they’ll also get to know more about their loadouts. We’ve made sure that that new players won’t feel intimidated stepping into Hardline, it’s easy to get a hold on and improve your skill but ultimately makes the player work to master it.”

BFHL_Screens_SP_NickStoddardHall_WM

“One of the letdowns of Battlefield, I’d say were the campaign, many fans of the Battlefield series still continue to ask for Bad Company 3 for the stellar single player campaign it had. What’s Hardline doing to change that in terms of story and how long can we expect the campaign to be ? “

“While we don’t have any specifics on the length of the campaign, rest assured, we’ve worked hard to provide depth to the story that’s in Hardline. It follows a well proven formula that you see in most crime dramas. It’s a campaign we’re proud of and it has some of Hollywood’s finest writing and acting talent to back it up. ( Editor’s note, Alexandra Daddario from True Detective, Wendy Calhoun from Justified, and Benito Martinez from The Shield were part of the story team who wrote Hardline’s single player campaign.)  It’s a campaign that you will want to invest your time in just to see the setting we envisioned Hardline to be.

BFHL_Screens_Bank_Heist_WM

“And on Multiplayer, Battlefield 4 had some rough bumps in the beginning. What is Visceral doing to reassure players to step once more into Battlefield ? Also what’s going to be different for Hardline?”

 “Well, that’s why we’re having two betas, we’re constantly working and running with QA to make sure nothing’s broken. That being said, we’re not bulletproof and are prone to hiccups, however we’re going to maintain that Hardline will be well supported and ensure that everything rolls out as intended.” As for multiplayer, we believe this will be the most competitive and fast paced multiplayer this is. “

“Hotwire mode pits you in a high-speed chase on the battlefield, as the criminals attempt to steal a list of marked cars while the cops try to repossess them. This is something I’m sure that players are going to enjoy.” – Evan Champlin Senior Multi Player Designer

Hotwire mode brings high-speed chases to the battlefield, as the criminals attempt to steal a list of marked cars while the cops try to repossess them. (Available on two maps in the beta) While Heist pits criminals trying to break into a bank vault, securing their take at drop off points in the map while the cops stop them. We also have our traditional modes such as conquest that allow for 64 players to fight in and we made sure the maps are teeming with opportunities too. We noticed how players are particularly keen on uploading their skills on social media and we’re constantly being surprised at the way players innovate. Downtown and Dust Bowl are two maps that we’ve made to keep this in mind, there’s going to be plenty of moments for players to be ingeniously clever to score.” (Editor’s note, I found it fun to flank an enemy objective using a dirt bike and trip mines.) 

“Finally, a bit more on support for the local region, will Battlefield Hardline have good support for playability here in the Middle East.” 

We’re working with EA to ensure that Battlefield is supported in every region that it comes to. While we can’t comment on specific regions, we’re aware that Hardline will be supported in the regions where they are retailing.”

(Editor’s note: Battlefield’s Open Beta has a server based in the UAE courtesy of Trinitygames.com for PC players.) 

Battlefield Hardline will be available March 17 in North America, beginning  March 20 in the UAE on Origin for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One and Xbox 360. You can play the BETA here. Players can also pre-order Battlefield Hardline now by visiting http://www.battlefield.com/hardline/buy.