Battlefield Hardline

Battlefield Hardline is a 2015 first-person shooter video game developed by Visceral Games in collaboration with EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. Unlike the previous games in the series, Hardline focuses on crime/heist elements instead of military warfare.

Gameplay
Battlefield Hardline features new variety of gameplay that breaks away from the traditional Battlefield game modes. The focus of the game has been shifted to police and the "war on crime", breaking away from the military setting that has hitherto characterized the series. As such, the main factions in Hardline are the police Special Response Units and criminals. Players will have access to various military-grade weapons and vehicles, such as the Lenco BearCat, as well as having police equipment such as tasers and handcuffs.

Hardline also uses the Levolution mechanic from Battlefield 4. For example, in the map "Downtown" players can send a construction crane crashing into the building, ripping down debris from the central buildings in downtown, which falls down on the streets of Los Angeles. But, this time, every map features multiple levolutionary events, both small and gigantic.

Many new game modes are featured in Hardline, for instance: Heist, Rescue, Hotwire Mode, Blood Money and Crosshair Mode.
 * Heist: The criminals must break into a cash filled vault (or as featured in some maps, blow open the doors of an armoured truck) then move the cash filled packages to an extraction point; the police must stop them. If the Criminals manage to escape by bringing all the money to the extraction point they win.
 * Blood Money: Both factions must retrieve money from an open crate in the center of the map, then move it back to their respective side's armored truck. Players can also steal money from the opposing team's truck. The team that first deposits $5 million worth of money into their truck or the team with the most money under a time limit wins.
 * Hotwire Mode: Drivable cars take the role of traditional Conquest "flags." Like Conquest, capturing cars (done by driving above a certain "cruising" speed) will bleed the enemy team's reinforcement tickets. The team who reduces the other's to zero or who has the most tickets remaining after the time limit wins.
 * Rescue: In a 3 minute long 5 vs 5 competitive mode, S.W.A.T officers must try to rescue hostages held by criminal forces. The cops win by either rescuing the hostage(s) or by killing all the criminals. Criminals win by killing all the cops. Each player has only one life in this mode, that means no respawns.
 * Crosshair: The second competitive game mode in Battlefield Hardline. Crosshair is also 3 minutes long, 5 vs 5 with only one life. In Crosshair the criminals are trying to kill a player controlled VIP on the cops side who is a former gang member turned states witness. The criminals win by killing the VIP and the cops win by getting the VIP to the extraction point.

Visceral Games ratified that the single-player campaign will not be linear and promised to deliver a better one than the predecessors. The campaign will feature episodic crime dramas where choices will heavily change situational outcomes and gameplay experiences. As a cop, players can use multiple police gadgets and personal equipments. The police badge can be used to strike fear into criminals' hearts and order them to lay down their weapons, the scanner is used to stake out a situation, identify high value-targets, log evidences, tag alarms, and mark other threats. To slip past unnoticed, players can use bullet cases to distract enemies.

Setting
Miami is embroiled in a drug war and Officer Nick Mendoza (Nicholas Gonzalez) has just made detective. Alongside his partner, veteran detective Khai Minh Dao (Kelly Hu), he follows the drug supply chain from the streets to the source. In a series of increasingly off-the-books cases the two detectives come to realize that power and corruption can affect both sides of the law.

Development
Battlefield Hardline was revealed on an EA blog post by Vice President and General Manager of Visceral Games, Steve Papoutsis. The game was due for announcement during E3 2014, but information was leaked early. Unlike other games in the Battlefield franchise that feature military warfare, Hardline features a "cops and robbers" gameplay style. The leaked trailer refers to the game as Omaha. "Visceral started work on Battlefield Hardline about a year before Dead Space 3 shipped," creative director Ian Milham has revealed, suggesting that the game may have entered development in early 2012.

On June 14, 2014, the Battlefield Hardline beta went public, coming after an official announcement at the 2014 Electronics Entertainment Expo that the beta would be coming soon to PC and PlayStation 4. The beta ended on June 26, 2014.

On July 22, 2014, DICE announced that they would delay Battlefield Hardline from October 21, 2014 to March 17, 2015. The reason for the delay was to implement the feedback given during the public beta. On February 3, 2015, the Battlefield Hardline beta became publically active for all platforms. It was reported that 7 million people participated in the open beta and it was met with positive reception from both critics and players. On February 24, 2015, Electronic Arts confirmed that the game had been declared gold, indicating it was being prepared for production and release.

During Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, EA confirmed that the game would be running at 1080p on the PlayStation 4 and was aiming to achieve the same resolution for the Xbox One version. However, on March 8, 2015, Visceral Games revealed that the PlayStation 4 version would only run at 900p, with the Xbox One version running at 720p.

Reception
Battlefield Hardline received mixed to positive reviews. Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the PlayStation 4 version 75.50% based on 12 reviews and 74/100 based on 19 reviews. The PC version was given 75.00% based on 3 reviews and 71/100 based on 4 reviews, and the Xbox One version 73.20% based on 5 reviews and 70/100 based on 9 reviews  The Battlefield Twitter page reported that users were having connection issues and are working on a fix. The Battlefield Twitter page originally reported that they suffered a DDoS attack exclusive to the Xbox One, although has since been removed with reports of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One connectivity issues.