For the first time, having felt the multiplayer regime Hardline , We realized that the game about police and bandits is by no means familiar Battlefield, She's about interception of armored vehicles, swift robberies and fire from all trunks.
And then we went to the UK – to see how much the single regime has changed. Hardline is little like a famous military shooter. Hardline campaign is stylized as a television series about the police, where each episode consists of three acts and ends in the most interesting place. This is the first "season" of ten episodes. When you ask the head of Steve Paputsis about DLC and the second season, he is wisely silent.
At the presentation, we managed to play two episodes on the PS4 – one of the beginning of the game, the other is located closer to the end, but both were not shown entirely. The passage took about an hour and a half, including experiments with mechanics and open systems at levels.
Police Miami
► Trushing justice will have to be not only in cities, but also in nature.
It begins Hardline Like a typical police series: we are sitting in a car with a colleague, beaten phrases like “I recently lost my partner”, “I was transferred from another city”, “I grew up with a punks on the streets” sound. But here you notice incredible attention to the details: a car with detectives travels in the dysfunctional district of Miami, and he is like a real one, you believe in it. Aircraft sections, one -story houses – something similar in a spectacular scene from True Detective, the very one that was shot in one double.
A local one, at the feet of a couple of bottles of beer and bong sits near the road on a battered sofa,. At the gate in the other area, two play chess. The lights of rare lampposts are reflected in puddles. Compared to Hardline America from Call of Duty looks like a landfill with sterile houses and mannequins.
Hardline visual style is atypical for the Frostbite engine. Artistic leaders c Battlefield 4 or Dragon Age: Inquisition Assign for each location and each level their own color scheme and do not be shy of light filters. In the game about police officers, everything is quite restrained and without a riot of colors.
► Michael Bay passes Hello.
The task of our detectives is to go to a large drug dealer. Leaving the car, they go on foot. The plan is simple: to find a familiar informal "in the area". And here he is, something energetically tells friends. We threaten him with a police icon, and friends are rapidly disappeared. We twist the bastard, he nods towards the Latin quarter, where the next “tongue” lives, and remains to lie face down and handcuffs.
Further Hardline reveals its main mechanics. The hero knows how to move silently, distract the enemies with a throw of the sleeve and quietly cut down objectionable to the back of the head. Opponents, in turn, had conventional visors of vision, prominent on our mini-card, almost like a radar from Metal Gear Solid. Therefore, we are drawing up from one secluded place to another by the Latin quarter to a small drug dealer, hoping that he will lead us to the larger fish.
Under the sight
► serve and protect! And then be sure to be for donuts.
In the next scene Betfred Casino, we are already standing on the roof and watching through a high -tech scanner behind an abandoned school. Gloomy people with weapons roam the playground. Nearby is a drug dealer nervous – under his T -shirt he has wires and a microphone for wiretap. The sub -witch's assistant must go to school and meet an important criminal so that we can convict him in the spread of the potion.
Everything is predictably goes awry. As soon as our informant enters the room, van with other armed people drive up to the school, and a massacre begins in the courtyard, smoothly moving inside. We put the target scanner to make a clear tactical picture, and go down. Finally get relative freedom. It is necessary to quickly get through the courtyard, go into the room and climb the second floor – there the last time we saw our informant with the key drug dealer.
Do not forget that we are on the side of the law, so to the firearm and violence in Hardline , In theory, it is worth resorting with a big eyebrow. If there are two unsuspecting the criminal in front of the detective, we are Orem: “Not from the place!" – and show the badge. The villains reluctantly raise their hands, but they follow your every movement; Here you need to nervously transfer weapons from one to another, otherwise someone will open fire under the noise.
► attack on the camp will be possible in several ways. Best without excess noise.
The mechanics are not the most convenient, it is very simple to fail double detention, but in Hardline There is a more effective and familiar alternative: to distract one with a throw of the sleeve, and then aptly launch the tazer with electrodes of the second below the lower back. Stealth in the game is simple: know yourself throw the sleeves and come from the back. Opponents do not respond to the bodies or corpses of comrades and rarely change the patrol route.
No one interferes with the “bad guys” of Bay, get the barrel and show the criminals how to properly perform justice: the fluid fire breaks through the thin walls, the armed gangsters are going ahead. The situation is sharply transformed. It is already more like the same Battlefield 4 , But we act at low distances, and the chance to catch a volley out of a shotgun and instantly perish very high.
The episode with an unfavorable area and an abandoned school is quite compact and works as training. We are shown the so -called Vertical Slice games and demonstrate key mechanics: why do we need a scanner, how to hide, how to arrest, when it is more convenient to use a firearm, according to what rules are enemies act.
Bad guys
► In a preview version, we were not allowed to sit at the wheel, but we hope that Hardline will have excellent chases.
The second scene, closer to the end of the game, does not give concessions, here you need to apply the acquired knowledge in practice. This time we will storm the skyscraper of one private office, and here the design of the authors is visible more clearly.
We are in full equipment, hold the assault rifle, a respirator hangs on the side, the rope on the right. The special operation begins. You need to get to the upper floors. The entrance is seriously protected, the elevators are blocked, alarm is everywhere, the sound of which instantly runs a crowd of people with automatic weapons.
You can act as you like. Go on the forehead and arrange lead rain or go around the building and get through the back door. Or climb onto a multi -storey parking lot nearby, fix the cable and go down on it to the upper floors from which it is convenient to turn off the alarm. Parking is a great shooting position, you can climb there with a sniper. But it is worth raising the alarm, and the van with reinforcements will come from the next street, and the protection of the building will begin to look for us.
The system works almost like in the Black Box-emitions from Assassin’s Creed: Unity. You can solve problems as you like, but better carefully. Sandboxes of this type at levels with relative freedom of choice, several options for penetration into the same place and the ability to solve the problem without noise – the idea is not new and is surprising only within the framework Battlefield , which was almost always about dust clubs, automatic lines, tank volleys and heart -rending cries.
IN Wolfenstein: The New Order There were the same open segments where the player allowed the player to move freely and quietly eliminate opponents. In case of alarm, it always managed to grab the shotgun and grind into minced meat and the crumpled metal of any Aryan miracle robot.
► Our main character, nickname of Mendaia, will work under the cover for some time.
The same open levels with different options for penetration were in Dishonored and in Deus Ex, Only the hero had more abilities and tools there.
But is freedom of such a sense in the shooters are needed at all in shooters? What is better – to construct scribbled and directed skirmishes or establish a system of conditions and rules for AI so that it behaves relatively believably and universally in any situation and any environment?
In Hardline, the balance between the sandbox and scribbled skirmishes is not yet clear. IN Battlefield 4 usually there was a spacious battlefield, but almost every skirmish was directed. Steve Paputsis said that because of the new system with vision cones and segments open, the developers had to rewrite AI.
► There are separate suspects on the missions, which are recommended to be detained alive.
The maps are separately prescribed areas that the bots must be protected, and zones that AI cannot leave. Protection in case of anxiety does not scatter and does not act randomly. Someone is more aggressive, someone acts carefully. They take into account your position, try to smoke from shelter with tear grenades, bypass from several sides and even from the back.
It sounds very cool (this is how the sentries work in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist), but in Hardline All tactical movements are still awkward. It happened that the opponent was just the first on our hero in full height, not wanting to hide. Nevertheless, in scriched, not “open”, shootings everything is arranged as it should.
Fight
► Criminals usually act straightforwardly, but sometimes they begin to seriously press and bypass from all sides.
After we still penetrate the upper floors, Hardline begins to quote the fourth Battlefield. Penthouse, a lot of shelters, a cabinet with weapons and ammunition, somewhere along the way several crowds of armed thugs. We are preparing to meet guests – we arrange mines and bombs, select the right weapon and establish an optical sight with a night vision function.
Setting trunks c Hardline works on the same principle as in Battlefield 4 – Choose a gun, attach modules to it, – only all for money. Separate nuance: we have two behavior models. Either we use first -class guns and kill people, getting a “bad cop” for this, or we take the guns more cash (and sometimes cut off the opponents) and earn “good cop” glasses.
The higher a particular rating, the more weapons can be purchased, but otherwise your behavior does not affect anything. According to Steve Paputsis, this was invented for the player to experiment with different passing styles.
Be that as it may, the penthouse is secretive to pass. Enemies fearlessly storm the building, we technically fight off the waves, we put on a respirator in time. When the light is turned off, we will look at the luxurious interior through an optical sight with a night vision function and calmly send one enemy after another to the other world. Somewhere here the demo version ends, and we observe the denouement of the episode.
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Then the events are so intriguing that we cannot tell about them without spoilers and without violating the terms of the embargo. The game generates the same chic moments as well as Call of Duty , Moreover, he tries to do this with a frivolous face. Hardline It does not at all impress the game about the war, and this is very cool – the story about the police against the backdrop of the already rimmed shootings between the faceless PMC will look fresh. Separate questions are raised by the structure of levels: I do not want Hardline became the game of one idea and a set of sandboxes, where there are two or three options.