Battlefield Hardline Benchmarked

For the original German article, see here.

Game Engine

Unlike Battlefield 4, Hardline was not developed by DICE. Visceral Games, the studio which delivered the Dead Space series, developed the majority of the new FPS. Although the series has changed developers, Hardline employs the same engine which made its predecessors a success: Frostbite 3.

In comparison to other ego shooters, the game is very detailed: characters, levels, etc. The effects are wonderful as well: whether it be water, particles, reflections or lighting. In fact, Hardline is a step ahead of the competition in almost every category. The only games which have a chance of standing their ground are Ryse: Son of Rome and Crysis 3.

Fans of the Frostbite 3 engine love its destroyable environment. Skirmishes will often result in broken windows and walls, which make firefights quite intense. This feature sets the Battlefield series apart from the rest of the commonplace games belonging to the action genre.

The Battlefield series has long been applauded for its jaw-dropping sounds and the latest installment carries on this proud tradition. The amazing sound system of Hardline promises to fully immerse the gamer in a way that few other competitors can. The cinematic cutscenes and explosive gameplay are brought to life by the realistic soundscape.  Sadly, the campaign of Hardline cannot match the standards set by the engine and sound system. At first, the story is quite interesting and the game has a lot of potential, but as we progress through the virtual world, we feel like the story becomes "worn out." All-in-all, the single-player campaign is neither a full-blown success nor a failure.

The graphics should satisfy most gamers. At first glance, the video options are almost identical to Battlefield 4. The left side offers controls for the resolution, the brightness, the field of view and special features, which are not to be found in most ego shooters (for example, a colorblind mode). The right side offers options to regulate around 10 graphics settings, which includes: Ambient Occlusion (SSAO, HBAO), Anti-aliasing (MSAA), textures, etc. Thanks to the 4 presets "Low," "Medium," "High" and "Ultra," the gamer can quickly find suitable game settings.

Annoying: according to the menu, most settings require a restart. This would not be quite so bad if the game would load faster on HDDs. Furthermore, the cutscenes are limited to 30 fps and cannot be skipped (harder to find suitable benchmark sequences).

The main flaw would be the lacking Fraps support. Here are the steps required to make the recording software work: open Notepad, type in "RenderDevice.PresentAsync 0" (without quotes) and save the file as "user.cfg" in the main directory of Hardline (file type: All Files, not .txt). After these tweaks, Fraps should run fine.