As kids, some of us probably saw SWAT teams in popular media and thought, “Whoa, that must be so cool!” At the time, it might have sounded like an adrenaline-pumping thrill. That’s where “Ready or Not” walks in to wiggle its finger before lecturing us on the state of reality. You’ll enter this spiritual successor to “SWAT 4” expecting a tactical first-person shooter, but you might come out of it jittery–possibly even disturbed.
In “Ready or Not,” you and up to four other players are members of a tactical unit within the Los Suenos Police Department. With the police station as your hub, you’re able to choose between a plethora of cases, customize your weaponry and gear, and test your aim at the range.
When you’re taking on a case, “Ready or Not” isn’t playing around. This is the most realistic depiction of a SWAT shooter to date, resulting in it being a slower, more methodical experience. However, it really emphasizes how you *are* here to enforce the law. You’ll need to bag evidence and report suspects, casualties, and anything case-related if you want the highest grade for that case. It’s also better to subdue suspects, not kill them.
Although, suspects aren’t going to make it easy. This is thanks to the cunning enemy A.I., paralleling the scariest part of human nature: our unpredictability. Suspects have dangerous aim, but even worse tricks up their sleeves, like playing dead or taking hostages. Luckily, your loadout helps to even the odds. While many guns feel similar, their sheer variety is welcome. It’s your gadgets and equipment that will keep you alive and get you a better score, though. For example, it’s better to glimpse behind a door with a mirror-gun before someone uses a battering ram.
On that note, it’s better to play in multiplayer. This means more eyes watching your back and more ground to cover.
The other half of the fun of “Ready or Not” is its atmosphere. Yes, this is a tactical shooter, but the realism aspect is done so well to an unsettling degree. Firefights get so intense that not even the soundtrack removes the tension. You and your squadmates are fragile, making the loudness of the guns and the crackling of the bullets hitting surfaces enough to make you flinch in reality. In gunfights, you’ll more than likely shoot back rather than retreat due to how slow movement is, and sometimes, it can be frustrating.
It’s the case design, though, that takes the cake. “Ready or Not” is chock full of well-written scenarios that are horrifying to stew on. It always felt like there was something under the surface of each case, and that’s because usually, there was.
One of the earliest cases involved a streamer getting swatted because of a false anonymous tip about a hostage situation. However, after I investigated further, it turned out this man was peddling child pornography and running an illegal cryptocurrency farm. Another case took place during a school shooting with barely any intel, only for me to discover that there were multiple shooters and even explosives involved.
There’s plenty of cases like these with shocking twists in its environmental storytelling, and it’s more disturbing knowing that incidents like these can and have happened. There’s no scarier world than the one we live in.
RATING:
What you have in the end is one of the most ambitious, well-developed, and unexpectedly startling games in the tactical shooter genre. It’s highly challenging–almost like it’s asking players to treat this like it were real. True to its name, “Ready or Not” doesn’t care if you’re prepared, and in this case, it works spectacularly to keep the experience fresh.