Ready or Not Review: A Grand Return for the Tactical Shooter

Ready or Not demands a significant shift in perception, attitude, and engagement from the player. Accustomed as they are to the multiplayer frenzies of competitive FPS games or the choreographed spectacle of single-player campaigns, they might have serious trouble relating to a production that has absolutely none of that. And this is almost a paradox, considering there was a period in first-person shooter history when its more tactical incarnation, the very one to which VOID Interactive's game belongs, was the market leader. Of course, we're talking about twenty years ago, yet the memory of the first three Rainbow Six games, Ghost Recon, Swat 3 and 4, and even other less celebrated titles, is still very much alive.

Unfortunately, these memories haven't produced any lasting legacy. Except for sporadic exceptions, never quite living up to the aforementioned titles for one reason or another, the genre has practically disappeared. Pontificating on the reasons for this oblivion, mostly attributable to a change in player tastes and a consequent shift in direction by developers, would be interesting, but doing so here would risk diverting attention from the focus of the discussion: that Ready or Not is a great game. With some aspects still needing refinement, but absolutely living up to the highest standards of the tactical shooter.

Ready or Not, the return of the tactical FPS

Ready or Not could easily be called Swat 5 and no one would have anything to say, such is its debt to the Sierra Entertainment series. In this statement, there is no intention to belittle the work of the VOID Interactive team, but rather the opposite: it's true that it relies on very similar and therefore proven game mechanics and dynamics, even an almost identical setting, but it does so brilliantly, updating them to a modernity visible especially in the artificial intelligence of police officers and criminals.

But let's proceed in order. In Ready or Not, you lead an assault team from the Special Weapons and Tactics unit of the Los Sueños police (a classic fictional representation of a Californian city), through a series of high-risk missions (18 of them). The progression is structured through a rather vague campaign, with only mission briefings providing a sort of narrative background. Some missions are linked, others are not, but in general, there's a lack of a cohesive element that makes the various assignments feel organic. A very bland operative progression system, where certain bonuses are unlocked after some missions, tries to give the campaign a minimum of depth, but fails miserably, and there's truly no difference from tackling the various missions individually in the dedicated mode.

This is a negligible flaw, in practice, because the heart of the production lies in the gameplay itself, the moment you disengage the safety on your weapons and the tactical team arrives in the operational zone. From there, you need to think about every single movement, imagine various possible scenarios, and only as a last resort use force. Tackling missions with guns blazing means failure, because the approach is decidedly realistic: enemies are alert and bullets kill instantly. This is why, as the unit commander, the other four operatives must be managed wisely, using their equipment and strategic acumen to deal with every eventuality. This doesn't (only) mean neutralizing every criminal, but also saving hostages, defusing bombs, identifying evidence, and all those situations that the appreciable variety of environments and contexts brings with it.

Shooting is not the first option

Shooting is never, truly never, the first option. Not only because, simply, before firing a shot, a suspect must be ordered to surrender (unless you are already under fire), but above all because it is an unproductive approach. It's better to use mirrors to look under doors, peek through a door before throwing it open, blow up locked ones, prepare an entry with flashbangs, smoke grenades, or non-lethal devices, move while covering every single corner, and, in general, everything that tactics require. Fail to adhere to these dictates even once, and you will be punished, cruelly but never unfairly.

The sense of tension experienced in missions is therefore almost oppressive. Everything is slow and deliberate, until a suspect is encountered or a furious shootout erupts. In the midst of the action, one must never lose clarity, and fortunately, two things help with this: an immediate and functional order-giving system and a very effective operative artificial intelligence. Squad management is delegated to contextual commands, which change depending on what is in your sights (in the case of a door, opening it; a suspect, handcuffing them; a trap, disarming it) and a menu with shortcuts represented by numerical keys: exactly the same excellent system as Swat 3 and 4. Companions respond very well to orders, even with a certain discretion (once a room is cleared, they proceed to check and secure hostages, suspects, and evidence), and knowing how to use them is much more important for success than knowing how to shoot.

Not that using firearms is uninteresting, quite the opposite. Ready or Not provides a vast arsenal, including assault rifles, pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, and more. Unfortunately, there are no statistics to make the choice more informed, so one has to go by feel (larger calibers ensure greater penetration, submachine guns are more precise, and so on), but when used, each weapon behaves differently. All of this is always in the name of realism, so accuracy is heavily affected by movement and high recoil.

While the tactical FPS experience is therefore of high quality and without particular critical issues, the same unfortunately cannot be said for the technical component. Make no mistake, Ready or Not is by no means ugly to look at or particularly problematic: it is certainly not a game that excels aesthetically, but textures, modeling, and, above all, lighting are of appreciable quality. It is, however, poorly optimized, as evidenced especially by a very erratic frame rate, little influenced by the graphic settings used. Furthermore, certain options remain active even if deselected, or vice versa. We hope that these problems, certainly minor but still affecting the overall experience, will be resolved by launch.