After a few long sessions since yesterday’s surprise launch of Battlefield REDSEC, the free-to-play battle royale spin-off of Battlefield 6, it’s clearly coming after other grounded-ish military battle royales like PUBG and Call of Duty: Warzone. Hiding a fun mission structure within its streamlined familiarity — as well as an entire non-BR game mode — I’ve had the most fun when its map, called Fort Lyndon, is used to push the boundary beyond the requisite ever-shrinking storm. I still need some more time in the fray to nail down a final opinion, especially since most of the random squadmates I’ve matched up with in the main BR modes haven’t exactly been playing as a team. But for now, the squad-based, elimination-driven, free-for-all Gauntlet mode has impressed me more than the battle royale option itself.
With destructible environments, the ultimate buzzword (levelution), powerful vehicles that can alter the tide of battle or serve as fun chokepoints, and a baked-in squad system, Battlefield 6 seems like a perfect fit for a battle royale mode. But so far, REDSEC’s translation of Battlefield’s role-based structure feels like a shallow, if fun, take on the genre. Its hasn’t offered much yet to fully draw me away from Fortnite’s cartoonish chaos and electrifying events or separate itself from the likes of PUBG or Warzone beyond using Battlefield 6’s weapons and the Frostbite Engine. On the surface, REDSEC seems intent on reviving the rote 360-era conversation about shooters with a washed-out color palette because it seems so similar to its contemporaries.
Thankfully, REDSEC’s compelling mission structure takes a rewarding cleaver to the otherwise ho-hum military BR doldrums. They’re kind of like the missions and bounties you’d find in Fortnite, but with better rewards and more diverse challenges. Even with otherwise uncooperative squadmates, I found myself planting bombs and capturing waypoints to reap the benefits of well-communicated rewards. That seems to be REDSEC’s secret sauce: each in-game mission pops up like clockwork after a few minutes, only requiring a few button presses to get you to the next simple target.
Hinging on classic military FPS objectives like babysitting a planted bomb or picking up an important file so you can transmit its signal back to home base, these smaller sidequests add order to the otherwise chaotic pace of conquering the battlefield. Completing an objective will always come with some kind of supply drop. I really like how these drops are handled, offering a clearly communicated reward before accepting the mission, since some will alert nearby players to your presence.
In contrast, Gauntlet expands each of these extra objectives into full-fledged game modes, pitting a handful of four-player squads against each other to rack up the most points on each objective. The mode and objective will change throughout each of the four rounds, with the lowest-performing squads getting eliminated until only two remain. Rotating through different named locations within Fort Lyndon, each game mode uses a piece of the map and works more like a mish-mash between Fall Guys and a squad-based, free-for-all version of traditional Battlefield that’s easily been my favorite part of REDSEC for now.
Battlefield REDSEC’s slow-rolling storm just hasn’t done much to incentivize me toward a hard objective or new destination, but its mission structure usually got me (and any uncooperative squadmates) moving in the right direction towards otherwise flat attempts at the #1 spot so far. I’ll need more time to complete missions and snipe away at opponents across the map before delivering a final verdict, but for now, REDSEC at least has some unexpectedly interesting things going for it.
