Battlefield Hardline is the first in the series to be developed outside DICE. Will Visceral Games redeem the franchise’s reputation?

Reviews for Battlefield Hardline are rolling in now that the embargo has lifted, and we’ve gathered several of them below.

There are several reasons to be interested in this one. Visceral games, developer of Dead Space, has a deserved reputation for strong narrative – and the story and single-player campaign of recent Battlefield games is one of the franchise’s most-touted criticisms.

Meanwhile, Visceral hasn’t made a multiplayer shooter of this kind before, and will be put under the microscope as a result despite close collaboration with DICE and the recruitment of multiple multiplayer shooter development veterans.

Plus, there’s the whole cops versus robbers thing, which hasn’t been done in this way before. Visceral was going for a Miami Vice kind of feel.

So how did it turn out? Take a look. All scores out of ten except where otherwise noted.

Battlefield Hardline releases on PC, PlayStation 3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on March 17 in North America, March 19 in Europe and March 20 in the UK. Get ahead of the rest with our Battlefield Hardline guide.