Battlefield Hardline
For: PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC
From: Electronic Arts
Four and a half stars (out of five)
Battlefield changed my life.
This is all relative, you understand.
In no way am I trying to suggest that a video game changed my life on the scale of how getting married, becoming a father and earning a promotion or two at work changed my life.
I am an old-school, singleplayer-only gamer from way back.
I like the slow pace of things like Fifa (most sports games, really), and I prefer hanging out in the friendly environs of Forza Horizon over the chaotic mess that can be online gaming.
The few times I dipped my toe into the online world, I got brutally beaten in Fifa by some 14-year-old kid in Italy, or yelled at by a 45-year-old bloke called Stewart because I wasn't following team orders in a disastrous foray into an online shooting game.
I was done with online multiplayer gaming - for life.
And then came Battlefield Hardline.
I have a mate called Reece (who lives in Auckland).
He has a younger brother called Gareth (Christchurch).
They are veterans of the Battlefield series (both spent 300 hours-plus on BF4).
Together, we are Team MTCH.
The Mitchell boys dragged me into BF4 after some months of persuasion.
I found it intimidating and I was extremely bad (still am, really), but it opened an invigorating window into an online multiplayer world that did make me want to run away.
Playing as part of a squad - jumping into the gunner's seat of a tank driven by Reece, or hitching a ride in a helicopter piloted by Gareth, or following orders as we launched an attack - was just a lot of fun.
So, when Hardline released just a few weeks after I got into BF4, I was both disappointed (to be leaving BF4 behind, albeit not permanently) and hugely excited.
Hardline moves away from the modern warfare theme of its predecessors.
It's a cops v criminals first-person shooter with some familiar Battlefield themes and some new elements aimed, I believe, at appealing to a broader market.
There is a singleplayer campaign (I will touch on that later) but, with a base of millions of gamers around the world, the game is primarily about the multiplayer action - and it is pretty incredible.
The spiritual heart of Battlefield is the Conquest mode, where rival factions battle to control specific points on various maps.
It's in Hardline, in both full and small versions, and so is the slaughter-a-thon that is Team Death Match, but there are also a bunch of new modes, a couple of which are brilliant.
The best, in my humble opinion, is Hotwire.
This is a neat take on Conquest where the ''flags'' are vehicles, which can be captured and driven around at pace in a bid to keep them under control.
This lends itself to superb multiplayer fun where one gamer drives, one equips a repair tool to keep the vehicle in one piece and the others hang out the window shooting anyone who comes near.
Another winner is Blood Money.
In this, both factions strive to get money from a pile of cash in the middle of the map and take it back to base.
It encourages real variety as you ponder whether to collect cash, raid the opponents' vault or defend your own.
In terms of the gameplay, well, remember I am a Battlefield rookie.
The Mitchell brothers would dig deep and talk of the best SCAR-H grip to equip and the low TTK (time to kill) rates, but my review is a bit more basic.
Hardline is definitely quicker and more chaotic than BF4.
Maps are smaller, and in some modes you spend as much time redeploying after being killed as you do actually playing.
It sometimes feels like it's been dumbed-down a bit.
You can attain better weapons WAY quicker thanks to a new, cash-based unlockable system, which allows you to get more kills but also seems to mean you GET killed a lot easier.
In BF4, you can do a lot more hiding and healing than you do in Hardline, which is more run-and-gun stuff.
There is probably less strategy involved in Hardline, and there are fewer vehicles, which is a shame.
But, jeez, it's amazing fun.
The satisfaction of a sweet kill in TDM, the thrill of swiping a vehicle in Hotwire, the buzz of talking to your buddies while Team MTCH carves up - I am sold.
Hardline is also a phenomenally smooth online experience.
Lag, at least here in Oamaru, has been non-existent, and there are always multiple servers for every game mode.
Meanwhile, there is a reasonably decent singleplayer campaign should you tire of the intensity of multiplayer.
You play Nick Mendoza, who has just made detective and is tasked with cleaning up an escalating drug war in Miami.
Through 10 episodes that - thank goodness, given the recent trend - have the balance between cut scenes and gameplay just right, you get a nice mix of investigation and shooting action in some spectacular settings.
The campaign is fun, but for the first time in my gaming career, I can say this: it's all about the multiplayer for me.
