I first played Ready or Not a few years ago when it was released on PC, and found it to be a fairly unspectacular but highly authentic squad shooter. To be fair, the point is that it’s unspectacular. Ready or Not isn’t trying to be Call of Duty, or even Rainbow Six. You won’t be engaging in any high-speed chases, hanging out the back of open jeeps, or leaping out of planes. You will be kicking doors down, though, so the spirit is there at least.
That’s because Ready or Not is positioned as a hyper-realistic tactical shooter. You can’t shrug off gunshot wounds here, or bounce grenades off walls for funsies (well you can but if you catch a flashbang on the rebound you’ll know it). As a member of a tactical response unit, your job is to put paid to terrorist action, hostage situations, and active heists.
You move at all times with your squad, which if you’re online will be friends or strangers by the magic of the Internet, but if you’re solo will be with a group of bots with genuinely solid AI. The enemy AI isn’t always as clever, but we can’t have everything. You can issue a dizzying amount of orders, split the squad into two groups of two, flank the enemy, breach separate doors and rooms at once, silently or with flashbangs and extreme prejudice – and when you execute a breach and it all goes to plan you will feel an absolute badass, even without the over-the-top Call of Duty nonsense.
Usually there’ll be civilians you need to protect. Following real-world procedures means even civilians must be detained and secured for your safety as well as theirs, while evidence like weapons must be bagged and tagged. Perps must be arrested and cuffed (even the ones you’ve shot in the head, weirdly), and often there’s mission-critical material or side concerns that must be dealt with, such as finding a missing juvenile during a hostage situation in a diner.
Missions start off straightforward enough, but as your arsenal grows and your understanding of the game deepens, the challenge ramps up accordingly. You’ve always got your squad though, and often the best way to approach a mission is to split the team and let the AI do its thing. You’ll hear a shout, some gunfire, and you’ll be informed the “shooter is down” over the mic. It’s wonderfully immersive and always cool.
One of the things I enjoy most about Ready or Not is the ability to stack commands and issue multiple orders to separate groups at once, with an incredibly intuitive control scheme built around command wheels. Open a wheel while aiming at anything and it will contextualise itself, allowing you to order your squad to do anything you can do from making arrests to lobbing a grenade. Moving the stick towards “open” while looking at a door for example, will open another wheel that lets you issue multiple commands specifically focused on what to do with that door.
A spycam lets you check the contents of a room before breaching it, while you can open the door just a notch to peek in or shoot through the gap covertly. There’s very little VOID Interactive didn’t think of in Ready or Not, and it adds up into a very rich tapestry that gives you multiple ways to tackle issues in any mission. Playing with real people is a blast, and very few games capture the tension of high-pressure teamwork like this one.
The trade-off is that there’s very little here that you won’t have seen or done before, and few moments where Ready or Not does anything to wow you. It’s quite structured, eschewing fun and games in favour of realism – but it does randomise elements in each mission that keep you on your toes a little such as enemy or hostage placement.
I’ve had fun with Ready or Not but it’s a game designed with team players in mind more than soloists. It’s not a game built on fun and frolics, but teamwork and quick thinking, and if you engage on its terms you’ll find plenty to get excited about.
