After several long sessions since yesterday’s surprise release of Battlefield REDSEC, the free-to-play Battlefield 6 spin-off, it’s clearly coming after other military battle royale games like PUBG and Call of Duty: Warzone. While hiding a fun mission structure in a simplified form – as well as an entire non-BR game mode – I had the most fun with a map called Fort Lyndon, used to push the frontier beyond the required, ever-shrinking storm. I still need a little more combat time to form a final opinion, especially since most of the random teammates I played with in the main BR modes didn’t exactly play as a team. But for now, the team-based, elimination-based and free-to-play Gauntlet mode has impressed me more than the Battle Royale option itself.
With destructible environments, the ultimate buzzword (leveling), powerful vehicles that can turn the tide of battle or serve as fun bottlenecks, and a refined squad system, Battlefield 6 seems like a perfect fit for Battle Royale. But so far, REDSEC’s translation of Battlefield’s role-based structure feels like a shallow, if fun, take on the genre. It doesn’t yet offer much to fully distract me from the cartoonish chaos and electrifying events of Fortnite or separate me from games like PUBG or Warzone beyond the utilize of Battlefield 6 weapons and the Frostbite engine. At first glance, REDSEC seems intent on reviving the routine conversation of the 360-era era about shooters with a faded color palette, as it seems very similar to its contemporaries.
Fortunately, REDSEC’s compelling mission structure provides a satisfying cleaver to BR’s uninteresting military doldrums. They’re a bit like the missions and bounties you’d find in Fortnite, but with better rewards and more varied challenges. Even with uncooperative teammates, I planted bombs and captured landmarks to reap the benefits of well-communicated rewards. This seems to be REDSEC’s secret: every mission in the game appears like clockwork after a few minutes, requiring only a few button presses to get to the next elementary objective.
Building on classic military FPS objectives, such as taking care of a planted bomb or retrieving an significant file so you can transmit its signal back to base, these smaller side quests organize the confused pace of conquering the battlefield. Completing an objective will always involve some sort of drop in supplies. I really like the way these drops are handled, offering a clearly communicated reward before accepting a mission, as some of them will alert nearby players to your presence.
In contrast, Gauntlet expands each of these secondary objectives into full-fledged game modes in which several teams of four fight against each other to earn the most points for each objective. The mode and goal will change in each of the four rounds, with the lowest scoring teams eliminated until only two remain. Roaming around different named locations within Fort Lyndon, each game mode uses a section of the map and works more like a mish-mash of Fall Guys with a team-based, free-for-all version of established Battlefield, which is my favorite part of REDSEC so far.
Battlefield REDSEC’s Slow Storm didn’t do much to encourage me to choose a arduous objective or a fresh destination, but its mission structure tended to keep me (and any uncooperative teammates) heading in the right direction towards an otherwise flat attempt at #1 so far. I’ll need more time to complete missions and fire at enemies across the map before I give a final verdict, but for now REDSEC at least has a few unexpectedly engaging things.
