Battlefield Hardline | Multiplayer mode preview

Battlefield is about to get a bit of a makeover. Instead of manning the front lines, Battlefield: Hardline will see players in the middle of a cops and robbers story.

It’s a shift in the series that could go either way. The mutiplayer beta has been released, giving players the opportunity to form their own opinions.

A few weeks ago, EA gave us the chance to see Battlefield’s mutiplayer option for ourselves, offering up maps Dustbowl, Downtown and Bank Job, and modes including Hotwire and Heist.

In Hotwire, your objective is to find and drive the marked cars for as long as possible. The longer you drive, the more points you earn. If you’re on the criminals side, your objective is to steal the cars; on the police side, you have to repossess them.

Ultimately, that amounts to the same thing. It feels a bit aimless at first, driving around trying to avoid your enemies, but when a fuel tanker comes barrelling at you at high speed, or a sniper bullet whistles past your ear, it tends to focus your mind on what you’re supposed to be doing.

Downtown, things are a bit different
Playing on the Downtown map was a bit more challenging than Dustbowl. Although Dustbowl afforded you plenty of opportunities to scale abandoned buildings to take out some of the opposing team, it was also far easier to lose yourself in the surrounding hills to wrack up points. In Downtown, in contrast, it was more likely that a tanker would punch through the barriers on a flyover above your head and drop down on you from above, leading to a hasty retreat from your car or risk killing yourself in the inevitable explosion.

The bank job
The second mode we previewed was Heist, which puts you in the middle of a bank job. Again, it's cops versus robbers. If you're on the criminal team, finding your way into the vault and escaping with the package before you get mown down by the law is the main objective; naturally the police objective to take down the gang.

It seems simple, but it’s the details that make this appealing. There is more than one way into the vault, for example. Sure, you can try the traditional route of battling your way into the bank’s main door, but that risks a quick death and a respawn far from the action. Figuring out the alternative route – like blowing your way in through the cafe next door – is far more fun.

Getting the package is only part of it though; you also have to escape with it, if you’re the criminal. That involves waiting for a helicopter to whisk you away. If you’re on the opposing side, that also provides you with a final opportunity to take the criminals down.

At one point, I spawned and died in less than 10 seconds, landing right in the crossfire of an enemy shootout. An equally quick death saw me mown down by a car seconds after taking out the tanker in Hotwire mode. It was a gloat that was cut short all too soon.

A Conquest return
Conquest also makes a return, supporting battles of up to 64 players on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and 24 on the previous generation of consoles.

The multiplayer mode on Battlefield: Hardline is only part of the story, of course. But the single-player campaign wasn't included in this preview, so we'll reserve judgment on the game until the full version lands next month.

[ battlefield.com/hardline ]