Playing detective
"Battlefield Hardline" (Electronic, PS3, PS4, Xbox, PC) opens with a familiar scene: You're a cop on a drug bust. After kicking down a dingy apartment door, you cuff the four drug dealers inside, nervously training your gun from person to person. Suddenly, an undetected fifth person jumps out of the bathroom, and a few panicked seconds later everyone is dead except the cops. Earlier "Battlefield" games were built around long-distance gunfights that reduced enemies to an inch of black pixels or a stray flashlight beam at the far end of a town square. "Hardline" breaks from this tradition, focusing on interior spaces that make gunfire ungainly and ineffectual. "Hardline" works best in its multiplayer portion, where it abandons the pretensions of police work and storytelling.
Washington Post
