After noticing earlier this week that BFH was available early on EA Access on XB1, i decided to download knowing full well that the 43gig+ download was going to take ages on my slow ass connection. So it took just over 48hrs to download the full game which only offered a 10hr trial on the multiplayer. Madness i know, but i was curious
Sadly, from the five or so hours ive played i think i shouldn't have bothered. To my knolwedge this game has been bragged about as a multiplayer that actually works at launch, hmm, not from what ive seen. The netcode issues that plagued BF4 for the first six months are here too. I died quite a few times behind cover, too many to call it unlucky, over the years ive got quite good at BF games and i can notice the annoying traits quick enough. Some audio drop outs occur, but none gamebreaking if im honest. Had quite a few instances of it freezing up and id end up having to go to the XB1 dashboard to quit out and load it up again. Juttery movement while running and seemigly warping backwards ten yards when vaulting over waist high walls was annoying too, making it kinda unplayable so i had to drop out.
These problems seemed to happen even though i felt the PS4 beta ran quite smoothly. Also, im no fanboy, i love all game consoles, i own plenty of them, but BFH on XB1 has a distinctive drop in visual fidelity compared to the beta i played on PS4. It is small, but i noticed it more when i was trying to keep track of distant enemies. Using higher optics on certain weapons highlighted this also.
Visceral are using Dices Frostbite 3 engine for Hardline and while beautiful it has a few annoying bugs. None more prominent than the famous reload bug(this is where, when you shoot your weapon, then reload, the animation plays out and due to the visual feedback you would expect to have a full mag. Not so, you still have a mag with a few bullets in and you duly get wasted, VERY, FUCKING, ANNOYING.)
This is not a rant on Hardline, i hope its a success, it has lots of fantastic things going for it and will no doubt be a solid shooter in time. But thats exactly it, it doesnt have time. This multiplayer needs to work sublimely out of the box, no lag, no netcode problems, no connection/stability issues and no bugs, just like Destiny and Titanfall, or hell, even CoD. The Battlefield name doesnt give it a free pass, if this even remotely has a hint of not working it will crash and burn.
Im no expert, but i do think ive played enough Battlefield to offer an educated opinion on what BF games should play like. I will be purchasing Hardline in the future, but not for a while, by then maybe these issues will be sorted, hopefully.