Battlefield Redsec holds Warzone to the fire by leaning into tactical chaos, and I'm quickly warming up to EA's devilishly dangerous battle royale

What were you doing in the summer of 2017? For me – and a lot of other FPS gremlins – it was the summer of PUBG. Every night meant squadding up, dropping into Erangel, and chasing that elusive chicken dinner. PUBG was everywhere, and anyone who could waggle a mouse was getting drafted.

I’ve been chasing that dizzying high of my first battle royale ever since: Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone and even extraction shooters like Escape From Tarkov. Battlefield Redsec doesn’t quite hit those same highs, but it’s a fun, fascinating spin on the genre that’s unmistakably Battlefield.

Class act

Redsec has been a poorly-kept secret, and when the first rumors of its existence started oozing out, I worried DICE would just bolt a shrinking circle onto a Conquest map and call it a day. Thankfully, that’s not what we got. Instead, Redsec sticks fairly close to its largest competitor – Warzone – while keeping its own spin on things. The inspirations are clear, but Redsec manages to feel so distinctly Battlefield that it’s hard to begrudge it. Especially when it’s this fun.

Structurally, it’s basically Warzone. You drop in, loot up, and head toward your nearest mission objective. Those missions are clever little pressure valves — designed to pull squads together and create flashpoints for firefights. Early objectives are often quiet, a chance to kit up and breathe before the chaos really begins. By the mid and late game, though, the whole map is alive with rumbling combat. The tempo is great, but what really impresses is how slickly it interprets Battlefield’s systems for battle royale.

Take the class system. Play as Support and you’ll carry a supply bag that heals teammates and refills their ammo. It’s instantly useful and turns you into the glue holding your squad together. Switch to Engineer and you’ve got a welding tool that opens safes and repairs vehicles. The Recon class, meanwhile, gets access to a drone and a motion tracker — both invaluable for knowing where your opponents actually are. The motion tracker is your best friend in the final circle.

And then there’s Assault. Their deployable ladder is phenomenal for mobility — scaling rooftops or breaching from unexpected angles never stops feeling good — and they can charge up respawn beacons faster than any other class. Every role feels powerful, but also essential. It’s that rare balance where you finish a match and immediately want to try another class, not because the one you played was lacking, but because they all seem like the best one. Oh, and did I mention the Engineer gets an aim-guided rocket launcher?

Some missions drop vehicle keys as rewards, which can be exchanged for armoured trucks or even tanks. Those things are, frankly, godless killing machines. While anyone can scavenge plastic explosives or an RPG, the Engineer’s tools make them uniquely suited to mitigating the damage an armored vehicle can do to your chances of a victory.

Speaking of damage, Redsec's destruction makes every fight unpredictable. A wall that’s cover one second might be debris the next and if a sniper is bugging you from the top of a nearby building, you can just blow it to pieces and send your would-be assassin running scared. Providing you can actually find explosives.

It’s those asymmetries — that interplay between classes, vehicles, and map objectives — that make Redsec feel alive in a way many other battle royales don’t. It's full of good ideas. While many crates are a hodgepodge of different stuff, some crates drop loot designed for the class that opens them. Open it as an Assault and you'll find assault rifles, but crack it open as a Support and you're getting an LMG and a set of defibrillators.

But my absolute favorite feature is the ability to do takedowns. Down an opponent and you can run up and hit the melee key to perform a takedown which kills them outright after a short animation, gives you their precious dogtag, and also reveals any of their surviving teammates to your entire squad, à la Caveira's interrogation technique in Rainbow Six Siege. Another inspiration, but it's such a cool idea, I don't know why it's not been pilfered by another battle royale game before then.

Other battle royales are about agility: mantling, sliding, popping plates mid-gunfight or even building a three bedroom family home in 5 seconds as soon as someone dares to look in your direction (thanks Fortnite). Battlefield 6 already feels like a much more physical experience than most shooters, and here that's even more true.

Movement is sluggish across Redsec's huge map, and if you get caught in its circle – a huge burning wall the size of an office building that is stupefying to look at the first time you find yourself a few metres from it – you die instantly. Positioning is everything here, which is tough because every battle royale player you know is desperate to loot just one more building and Redsec is constantly trying to find reasons to make you stick around with its missions, quest rewards or tanks hiding in giant lorries. Everything in Redsec wants your attention, but you don't have time for all of it.

All of these Battlefield elements add flavor to a genre that, honestly, is starting to feel a little tired. Redsec feels like it's got something special going on. It's unlikely to win the genre any new fans, but it sure is fun to roll up to the final circle in a fully-armed tank, and I think moments like this – and the other "oh shit" moments that pop up while playing – will keep me and my buddies smashing up Fort Lyndon for a few more weeks, at least.

Struggling to win? Check out these Battlefield Redsec tips to improve your odds of being the last squad standing