Welcome to Ideology of Madness new contributor Jack! He’ll be posting under the “You’ve Got Jack” banner, contributing stories about whatever he geeks about! Make sure to give him a warm welcome!

So, Battlefield is one of those series where there’s a new one nearly every year and you’re always burning money on DLC, like Call of Duty.  Also, like Call of Duty, it suffers from the problem of being the same thing each time.  It’s like going to your favourite McDonald’s.  You’re going to keep going back for your Quarter Pounder and when the newer one comes out with bacon on it, you’re still going to get it, but now it’s slightly better. That being said the next entry in the Battlefield game series could either be the shot in the arm that FPS Multiplayers need or a boat anchor around the neck of the series.

From it’s inception Battlefield has been, more or less, a combat simulator.  Large scale warfare using both ground forces and vehicles taking place in a military setting.  Hardline goes in a completely different direction.  Taking it’s cues from Payday and Kane and Lynch, Hardline is a Cops and Robbers take on the Battlefield formula.

In most cases, I’d say that they’re putting a dog in a dress and calling it a supermodel, but it also changes the standard game-types you’re used to seeing in a FPS game.  Normally when you play these games, you have a choice between Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Domination, or variations on those 3 themes.  According to the leaked internal demo video (bottom), there are some interestingly new game types and features.  Here are a few of my personal favourites.

iGOIni6KWEDbsHotwire Mode:
Feeling like Mad Max?  Well Hotwire Mode might just be the game mode for you.  The cops pursue the criminals trying to take them out before they can escape using both ground and air vehicles.  The drivers focus on driving while the passengers try and take out the other vehicles.

iRzSdqHZc2WfJHeist Mode:
This is what reminds me of Kane and Lynch and Payday.  The criminal team needs to assault a location (bank, or museum), and make off with the goods.  The cops have to stop them by any means necessary.  Pretty straight-forward.

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Ziplines:
An interesting new mechanic is the zipline.  No longer do you have to wander a map searching for stairs or a ladder to get to the roof of a building, now you can get a team member to fire a grappling hook and you can make like 1960s Batman and climb your way up.

Like this, except with less homo-eroticism and more bullets and explosions
Like this, except with less homo-eroticism and more bullets and explosions

Now’s the waiting game.  As you can see in the linked video below, when all this information came to bear, it was still being called “Omaha” and was very internal.  Over 6 months have passed since then and in game development that can completely change a game.  This means we’ll have to wait for EA’s panel at E3 on June 9th before we get anything certain, but for the first time in a long time, I’m actually excited for a new game in a shooter series, rather than just updating for the sake of being able to continue to play with my friends.