I dont get the hate. If this takes away the casual player away from the main battlefield series (it wont, but it'll preoccupy them till BF5) then surely thats a win for the battlefield purists?
I loved BF2, wish they'd just stuck with that and improved it, focus on what makes them what they are, rather than looking around and trying to blur the lines with other games so its neither one or the other.
That said, i just played 3hrs with friends, and had a ton of fun. Its not battlefield, no, battlefield has a stick up its A!! Hardlines is just fun, it doesnt take itself too seriously, and for that reason its actually enjoyable.
Where they went wrong was forcing the BF name on the series, but then Bad Company did that, it did it for the console crowd only before BC2, people only complained cos it wasnt BF3 and they wanted BF3.
If you just ignore the fact that they're blatantly riding the Battlefield wave, and accept it simply as 'Hardline' in the same way MoH was its own series, then i really cant see what the issue is.
Its like FIFA and FIFA Street. Street was extremely arcade, but you knew that and you bought it based on the titles merits, not because it had FIFA in the title and you buy all the FIFA games. If BF players cant seperate 2 different titles because of a shared word that means something else to them, well more fool them.
The Battlefield name has been dragged through the mud plenty lately, so maybe we dont judge a book by its cover, but by the quality of its contents. What difference does a name make?