Battlefield 6 x Top Gun crossover and the return of Wake Island is awesome seasonal content | hands-on preview

Battlefield 6 is teaming up with the Top Gun movie franchise for a special event in the game’s latest multiplayer season. I was able to preview the new seasonal content and I had a great time playing for a few hours last week.

It’s hard to fly jets in a confined space, but the Top Gun background is inspiring and the return of the Wake Island map is a high point for the franchise.

Sans Tom Cruise, Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 6 is launching a collaboration with Top Gun on August 18 and it runs through September 15, with a free trial for Battlefield 6 starting on August 18 and running through August 25.

Call of Duty is also launching new seasonal content, but it’s going to have a tough time compete with Battlefield 6, as the Wake Island map’s return is going to make a lot of fans happy. I really with this content had arrived when Battlefield 6 debuted back in October 2025, when it was competing head-to-head with ARC Raiders and Call of Duty. Battlefield 6 had a great launch, but this kind of content could have sustained its run better.

Defending your carrier in Battlefield 6’s Carrier Strike. Source: EA The Top Gun team-up features the jet-fighting Gauntlet experience and the Carrier Strike multiplayer mode that showcases Battlefield 6 at its most epic land-air-sea battles — including gameplay on the remade Wake Island. The update is part of Battlefield 6 multiplayer Season 4, which started on July 21 with the launch of the Tsuru Reef map and now will get a major update on August 18.

The idea is to bring blockbuster moments from the big screen to the battlefield, where players can jump into the flight boots of iconic characters and pilot two-seater fighter jets inspired by Top Gun. During the special event, players can obtain Top Gun-inspired cosmetics to fly their colors in the sky. The can step into the boots of familiar Top Gun characters, but not Tom Cruise.

The new vehicles, with a two-seater aircraft inspired by Top Gun, included F/A-81F Super Spectre and the F-74A Seacat. There’s also a new sniper rifle, Desert Tech HT1.

You can get in a two-seat aircraft in Fighter Sweep. Source: EA The update features some leading characters from the Top Gun franchise. They included Top Gun’s reliable pilot Lt. Bradley Rooster Bradshaw (played by Miles Teller), a reliable pilot who also fights on the ground; Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd (Lewis Pullman), a crack WSO with a lot of mission experience and success under extreme pressure; and Admiral Solomon “Warlock” Bates (Charles Parnell), a seasoned commander with experience and a track record.

Seasonal content is available across both experiences, adapted to each mode. Ranked Play launches in REDSEC’s Battle Royale Quads. The content will be in the game from August 18 to September 15.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dIQDOL3jfEw?feature=oembed The map for Carrier Strike is pretty epic with a focus on all-out war with naval, air and ground forces. The goal is to eliminate the other player’s carrier as you fight around an island.

There is also a jets-only mode, dubbed Gauntlet Fighter Sweep, where players compete to be the best in a dogfight scenario above the Tsuru Reef map.

In the Gauntlet Fighter Sweep, you can fly a F/A-81F Super Spectre, either in a single seat or two-seat version, and then fire rockets at ground targets with new air-to-ground weapons. You can also engage in dogfights with enemy pilots as you chase each other over the terrain. And you can also fly the F-74A Seacat for the first time in a Battlefield game. The dogfights take place in a limited air space above the island, but the dogfights can be pretty massive.

It’s been a long time since I played flight sims, and flying jets (instead of WWII aircraft) was just as hard as I remembered it being. I think a lot of players will need to go back and visit flying tutorials before giving this one a try. I went into it cold and managed to get a kill once or twice. Mostly, I was shot down or crashed myself into the terrain or the sea. You have a couple of missions to fulfill at once, shooting missiles as antiaircraft targets on the ground while pursuing enemy jets in dogfights.

When the enemy is on your tail and launches a missile, you get a warning beep and it’s pretty unnerving just like in the movies. You can take evasive action or drop flares to divert the missile. This works occasionally as you can confirm by glancing backward to see the effect.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYGwxUPaJ38?start=3&feature=oembed It becomes a little easier (and more cinematic) when you’ve got a teammate in the plane with you. I had a gunner mate who fired the missiles and guns while I tried to fly the plane. That was a much better experience. In the Gauntlet Fighter Sweep, this is all you have to worry about, as there isn’t an actual battle going on below on the island.

With Carrier Strike, your goal is to take out the enemy aircraft carrier. It’s a massive air-ground-sea battle with jets flying overhead. I spent most of my time playing this version in the preview. Even though I spent most of the time on the ground as an engineer instead of flying, I really enjoyed the gameplay. I also felt that the survivability was fairly balanced.

With the SMAW (shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon), I could hide in a building and get multiple rockets into tanks, eventually taking them down. That helped me get some kills as I tried to survive battles where we had to take victory points and hold them. I also found it helpful to climb up into elevated areas like multi-story buildings and take carefully aimed shots at approaching enemies before they knew who was shooting at them. The destruction of the buildings eventually brought me down as jets or tanks pummeled everything in sight.

Battlefield 6’s free trial lasts from August 18 to August 25. Source: EA It was hard to stay ahead of the enemy in the games I played and we always had to return to the aircraft carrier for a last-ditch defense of our ship’s nuclear reactor. The enemies always managed to plant bombs at the reactor and then mow down all of the defenders who tried to disarm the bomb. At one point, there were enemies guarding the doors where we respawned, shooting us as soon as we opened the doors. I think they need to fix that in the game, so you aren’t so vulnerable spawning inside aircraft carrier.

During the special event, players can obtain Top Gun-inspired cosmetics to fly their colors in the sky. They can step into the boots of familiar Top Gun characters, but not Tom Cruise.

The new map coming tomorrow is Wake Island, a remake of the classic map and faithful to the Battlefield V version, with updates to make it fit with the current design needs. It is designed for intense warfare across land, air and sea and it takes advantage of newly introduced vehicles, while an aircraft carrier serves as the main base of one army.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/I4tHPByfAZk?feature=oembed Wake Island retains its classic narrow, curved horseshoe shape, but it has been expanded to accommodate modern vehicle physics and large-scale destruction. Meanwhile, Tsuru Reef as a number of terrain types including a luxury resort hotel. You can take a zipline up to the top of the hotel and try to snipe from above.

Tsuru Reef also has expansive open ocean areas, wide aerial spaces for jets and choppers, and multiple flank routes for attack boats and IFVs. The sight lines are great for sniping, so you have to be careful when you’re running around just about anywhere on the map. If you’re flying a chopper, you can be deadly to those on the ground, but you can also be taken out by jets, rocket launches on the ground, tanks or even patrol boat guns.

With all of those features, this definitely seems more interesting to me than Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s new seasonal content.

Disclosure: I played the game on Steam on a Falcon Northwest PC with a Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card and a 27-inch Sony InZone monitor M10S II gaming monitor (shipped to me by Sony). The gaming PC and display kept up with the game, with performance with a QHD 540Hz refresh rate and rapid 0.02ms response time.

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