You know something didn’t quite go right when the best mode in Battlefield 6’s battle royale-focused spin-off, Battlefield REDSEC, is the one that isn’t a battle royale at all. While REDSEC takes notes from other grounded-ish military battle royales, it doesn’t innovate much on what’s already worked. The destructible environments and powerful vehicles of the otherwise exciting multiplayer seem like a perfect fit for this genre, but REDSEC’s relatively shallow execution just hasn’t hooked me the way Fortnite’s cartoonish chaos and electrifying events did, nor has it separated itself from the likes of PUBG or Call of Duty: Warzone. Instead, I’ve had way more fun when its map is used to push the boundary beyond the requisite ever-shrinking storm in the squad-based, elimination-driven Gauntlet mode that cleverly fleshes out the mission structure hidden within the battle royale’s streamlined familiarity.
You know the drill: you and a squadmate drop onto a massive map in the rapidly blinking eye of a destructive storm. In REDSEC’s case, a closing plume of neon-scarlet-streaked charcoal clouds surround a fictional military base in Southern California called Fort Lyndon. Looting Lyndon’s blown out shops and construction sites for anything you can find, your squad has to scrap its way to be the last one standing. EA clearly believes that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and I can’t fault them for that.
Dotted with memorable named locations like the Golf Course and the Lighthouse, there are all kinds of high vantage points for sniping and tight corridors for scrapping. And with destructible terrain and a seemingly endless supply of artillery and airstrikes, these locations have a tendency to “lev-olve” into bombed-out rebar skeletons or collapse entirely (I learned this the comically hard way after dying to a ceiling). This blend of different battlefields makes for a balanced, tense frenzy within each named location, especially in matches with four-player squads. Even the dusty roads and stark topography in-between do a good job of keeping things balanced, with plenty of hills and valleys or scattered vans and small buildings offering cover from enterprising marksmen.
But when cover fails, you’ll get a second chance if you fall early enough in battle and your squadmate doesn’t revive you in time. That comes complete with a second drop-in (over your squadmate if they’re still kicking, or above a random location if you’re both wiped within a few seconds of each other), and you’ll need to re-up on gear and consumables from there. I like that you can even make re-deploying at the right moment work in your favor, because you can aim for special pickups from your parachute that weren’t there when the match started.
Battlefield 6’s class system translates well into a battle royale, with each of the four classes offering something helpful. I usually stuck with the all-around Assault class that specializes in assault rifles because it has the best boosts for completing REDSEC’s mid-match missions, but each class shines in its own way. The Engineer class seems the most useful at first glance because it can repair vehicles just like in the main mode, as well as use its blowtorch to open special weapon lockers that are otherwise locked. But the Recon and Support classes each offer their own benefits too, especially in a four-player squad.
Classes aside, REDSEC’s battle royale modes actually dilute the chaos and excitement of Battlefield 6’s premium modes, spreading the madness out over a massive map. Its 100-person lobbies are about 50% bigger than the 64 people in an All-Out Warfare match, but Fort Lyndon is definitely more than 50% bigger than your average Battlefield 6 map. This math does REDSEC no favors. Suddenly, crazy and complex sequences with collapsing buildings and vehicular showdowns lose their chaotic excitement because the open map gives you more places to run and hide. As a result, REDSEC doesn’t have much to set it apart from other military battle royales. Its hardcore “realism-ish” nature might be part of the draw to anyone looking to avoid getting ran at by Nicki Minaj or Homer Simpson, but nobody’s going to confuse the tacticool aesthetic for personality. It kind of feels like this could be any other big-budget military shooter adapted into a battle royale.
Thankfully, REDSEC’s compelling mission structure takes a rewarding cleaver to the otherwise ho-hum military doldrums. They’re kind of like the missions and bounties you’d find in Fortnite, but with better rewards and more diverse challenges. Automatically populating in your map menu after the first few seconds of each match, you’re usually presented with three missions, but those options might diminish as the round goes on. The rewards (and risks of attracting others) that come with each mission, on the other hand, remain consistently worthwhile and well-communicated. They can provide helpful stuff like weapon upgrade packs, one-time-use abilities like destructive airstrikes and UAV surveillance drones that reveal enemies’ locations, battle pass XP, and strong guns. I love how explicit REDSEC makes all of the mission rewards. Sure, it doesn’t specify which weapon (or even type of weapon) will drop from a mission, but guns outside my preference still made a huge difference.
Even with otherwise uncooperative squadmates, those irresistible rewards spurred me into planting the bombs and capturing the waypoints required to earn them. That seems to be REDSEC’s secret sauce: each in-game mission pops up like clockwork after a few seconds, only requiring a couple of button presses to reveal the next 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 and welcome direction to the otherwise listless pace of conquering the battlefield. Some, like planting a bomb, will reveal your location with a big red marker on nearby enemies’ screens and match that with an equally loud siren alerting opponents to your location.
But if your loadout isn’t battle-ready and you’re worried about running into other players, there are more ways to get better gear. In addition to the standard looting option, weapons, armor, and other useful pickups will randomly rain from the sky. Custom Weapon Drops make for the most useful and desirable pickups, giving you access to one of your customized weapons from Battlefield 6’s standard multiplayer modes. I like that these drops work once for each player, rather than just giving one squad their trusty sniper or assault rifle, but it almost feels like a microcosmic participation trophy rather than rewarding squads who treat these drops like hard-push objectives and beat out the others.
REDSEC doesn’t offer enough to do in-between wiping enemy squads and looting military-themed chests compared to some of its contemporaries, but the map-driven context of each mission does add spontaneity and strategy to the ways you might carry out a mission. For example, taking a bomb-setting mission when you’re close to the otherwise slow and unthreatening firestorm that closes in around you might dissuade anyone from a risky diffusion that puts them right at the edge of the billowing wall of smoke.
In contrast, the Gauntlet mode ditches the storm entirely as it expands each of these extra objectives into full-fledged game modes. It pits a handful of four-player squads against each other to rack up the most points on each objective, and even adds a few extra scenarios to the mix, totaling eight different game types. I think my favorite is the area control mode, where each squad is competing for a small hexagonal chunk of the map that has its own corresponding satellite dish to take over. There are 15 to compete for, making each round a chaotic, scrappy battle for domination that rewards different kinds of play depending on which part of the map you’re fighting over.
Gauntlet also cleverly recognizes that some people just want to play each mode like Deathmatch, and weighs points accordingly with kills and revives contributing to the scoreboard. And to make things more competitive, all points double in the last minute of each quick round, preventing any team from completely running away with the win. High-performing players from otherwise losing teams might also get reassigned into squads whose teammates disconnect, adding extra reward and incentive to do well.
The mode and objective will change throughout the four total rounds, with the two lowest-performing of eight squads getting eliminated each round until only two remain for one final showdown that plays out like a mini Battlefield match. Rotating through different named locations within Fort Lyndon, Gauntlet ends up working almost more like a brilliant mish-mash between Fall Guys and a squad-based, free-for-all version of traditional Battlefield than it does the otherwise uninspired battle royale that houses it.