Giant game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) along with game development studio Visceral Games introduced Battlefield Hardline as a public beta on June, 14 2014. The game received mixed reviews due to the poor storytelling. On the other hand, the game mainly got ratings as high as 80%.
Hardline's cops and robbers theme is a clear departure from previous military-centric themes of the Battlefield franchise. The focus centers around urban warfare and police in combat duty.
In a blog post from the Battlefield Hardline website, EA announced that it will be dropping a free DLC called Blackout for free if you have the base game Battlefield Hardline.
According to the blog post, Blackout's new content, "...is organized under a central theme: the cloak of darkness. What happens when the lights go out, and criminal and police factions are forced to face off under the slimmest sliver of light?"
The DLC will include 2 new maps, night vision goggles, 2 new new weapons, plus addition music, fixes, and camouflage uniforms.
Gaming news site GotGame said that, "There is no release date announced, but according to EA, it will come out soon."
A video teaser was released by EA a few days ago. The video teaser drops the viewer in-medias-res inside a museum with the protagonist gunning down bad guys. Based on the presentation, the museum set pieces were flammable but don't seem to be destructible (except for the glass windows).
From observing the 3-minute, 49-second video, the graphics is not superb. However, the remarkable ambient occlusion really helps the excellent lighting effects. That's very important as the DLC's selling point is urban warfare during the dead of the night.
Aside from the new additions, Blackout also improved Hardline's spectator mode. This makes the game friendlier for Twitch streamers.
Looking at the Twitch Stats directory, the Hardline streamer with the highest concurrent viewers is frankieonpcin1080p with 3,223 viewers as of September 9, 2015. The bottom four streamers were not doing so bad. The fifth person, jackfrags, garnered 1,015 in September as well.
Blackout is not the first FPS to introduce nighttime as a game mechanic. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six is another popular FPS franchise with the same gameplay. Rainbow Six, along with Counter Strike, has also popularized urban warfare.
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