With Battlefield REDSEC, shooter fans have a new Battle Royale, and the first impression from MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller shows: EA has perfectly understood the target audience – but you might not be a part of it.
In battle royale and extraction shooters, there’s always a certain tension. It’s a bit like a survival game because if I die, I have lost. There are no respawns, no infinite chances. I move around in a partly vast area, constantly hearing distant gunfire and never knowing when the next enemies will be in front of me.
I always have to be vigilant if I want to win. This conveys to battle royale shooters the feeling of mystery and the unknown. In a way, the genre combines the tension of survival games with the competitive gameplay of PvP shooters, as each of us is essentially playing our own version of the Hunger Games.
With this feeling, the battle royale genre has become beloved by many gamers and has led to some of the biggest games of our time: Fortnite, PUBG, Warzone, Apex Legends.
REDSEC manages to evoke exactly this feeling.
The first landing, personal failure, and the first death
Right in time for the release of REDSEC, I grabbed my Battlefield buddy Jacob and tested the new Battle Royale. There’s a duo mode, which is perfect for us two. So we jumped into the first round without much preparation.
At the beginning, there was a bit of laughter: REDSEC temporarily turned into a hardcore shooter for me.
I occasionally turn off the HUD of Battlefield 6 for screenshots, and I must have forgotten to turn it back on last time. I only realized this after landing – unfortunately, we had already seen in the air that several enemy squads were landing nearby.
So I panickedly searched the settings for the HUD options while Jacob bravely protected me with a pistol – because you only have a pistol and a knife during the initial landing.
When the HUD finally came back on – and I could swear EA has moved the settings – our enemies were unfortunately already equipped with the delicious ground loot from the vicinity. Meanwhile, we hadn’t even picked up any armor plates.
While we managed to cleverly avoid two squads in our search for left-behind firearms, before we found weapons, we found ourselves on the receiving end of bullets from an opponent. It didn’t take long for us to die for the first time. However, it wasn’t devastating, as we soon realized.
In the footsteps of Warzone with a touch of Battlefield
After the first death, we noticed: EA was inspired by the competition. There’s a second chance. However, this was made even easier for us than in Call of Duty: Warzone. We don’t have to prove ourselves in a 1v1 against another “loser”, but we simply hang back on the parachute and glide down to the ground.
This time we had a bit more luck with looting and quickly found usable weapons. One feature I particularly like are the so-called upgrade kits. With these, you can give your potentially lousy ground loot a higher tier. This gives them larger magazines, a laser, or better scopes.
With our new equipment, we were finally able to successfully engage in our first battles and complete a few missions along the way. I also discovered that I can open a safe with the repair tool of my engineer – aside from an XP case, there wasn’t much worthwhile in there. By now, we were well equipped.
During the round, we received a keycard through the completed missions that allowed us to open a special pendant. In this pendant, we found a tank – nice.
Our new tank almost became a steel coffin
In our steel horse, we set off motivated and immediately found a duo that ran into our barrel – or rather, ran away from our barrel. They fled into a building, but we simply demolished it in typical Battlefield fashion. While rubble was raining down, the two soldiers quickly ran across the street to the adjacent building.
Damn, there was a loot drop on the street that they apparently requested. We didn’t notice that, and they could pick up rocket launchers while running past.
Now we fled behind the building because we didn’t want the tank to become a steel coffin for us, nor did we want them to steal it when we got out to send them to the afterlife in the traditional way.
Fortunately, we succeeded, and we rolled in the loot of our opponents. Unfortunately, the tank was still out of commission because they hit us with an artillery strike just as I was about to repair it with my engineer’s tool.
Everything a good match needs
After our tank debacle, we had to continue on foot. At a small, destroyed house, we ran into two more enemies. Unfortunately, they had no loot we could use. So we continued towards the zone.
The circle kept shrinking, and only a few teams remained. A player appeared in front of us, who immediately took the first shots – but suddenly his friend came out of a bush. We lost, and the duo should take the victory. We ended up third, but I have no idea where the players in second place were in the final battle.
The match ended, and Jacob remarked in astonishment: That was our first round. It was the same round in which we encountered that silly HUD death. Yet we still got pretty far.
And this first round had everything you’d expect from a good battle royale match: funny moments, good and bad loot, lots of action, and exciting fights until the end.
Dariusz’ conclusion: REDSEC is for Battle Royale fans, not for Battlefield fans
Before I sat down to write this article, we played a few more rounds. I gathered first impressions for almost 3 hours. I learned that you can pick up your favorite weapons, including personalized loadouts, at weapon stations, we shot down enemy helicopters, and fought against a tank. My conclusion is very clear:
EA has targeted REDSEC at a very specific audience, but it doesn’t necessarily include long-time Battlefield players.
REDSEC plays like a classic battle royale and does that – at least that’s my first impression – quite well. Here you can definitely experience similarly cool moments as in other battle royale shooters.
Is REDSEC better than the competition? No idea. Does REDSEC provide what fans like about the genre? Yes, definitely!
The Battlefield developers put their own stamp on the battle royale mainly through vehicles, destruction, and classes. This makes REDSEC not just a Warzone competitor but a battle royale with powerful vehicles like tanks, a battle royale with Battlefield gameplay.
However, REDSEC unfortunately only feels like a battle royale, not like a Battlefield. Although we have gameplay from Battlefield, the typical Battlefield feeling does not arise. The feeling you only have when something is exploding at every corner with 64 players in a chaotic battle, bullets and rockets flying through the air, tanks rolling past you, buildings collapsing over you, and jets flying low over your head.
The atmosphere and immersion of Battlefield do not come across in REDSEC. The “battle royale feeling” is not bad either, but it’s different. If you are looking for the Battlefield feeling, you might not find it in REDSEC.
If you want to try Battlefield REDSEC: The battle royale is free. So there’s no reason not to take a look at the mode yourself. And so you don’t have to run around with weak weapons, I’ve listed some firearms here that might perform well in REDSEC: After 150 hours in Battlefield 6, I predict: These 7 weapons will be particularly strong in the new battle royale
