The Battlefield Hardline review embargo lifted tonight, but we won't be posting our review until we've spent extensive time with the multiplayer on live servers. I have, however, already completed the single-player campaign and can confidently say that you won't be missing much if you skip it entirely.
Hardline is the biggest departure yet for the Battlefield series, but unfortunately most of the changes it introduces are for the worse. The single-player campaign fails on two fundamental levels. First, by translating the military shooter formula to the realm of cops and robbers, it shifts the focus from mindlessly shooting enemy combatants to sneaking up on and arresting criminals. Unlike the zipline and grappling hook (which you only use two or three times throughout the campaign), this isn't a throwaway mechanic; you spend the vast majority of the campaign crawling around environments, causing distractions, and throwing bad guys to the ground and handcuffing them (which for some reason causes them to instantly fall asleep, denoted by little Z's that float over their heads). In this way, Hardline has more in common with the stealth elements of the Far Cry series than the entertaining shooting galleries of Call of Duty – only you have fewer options at your disposal for dealing with bad guys, and one alerted enemy typically brings in a deluge of backup.
