Ready or Not Review (PS5)

Ready or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s a super serious PC release that’s finally made its way to PS5, offering up a darker and grittier co-op experience than anything else currently on the market. But does that mean it’s worth your time? While Ready Or Not won’t be for everyone, for us there’s a visceral edge to the game that we just couldn’t get enough of.

Ready or Not puts you in the shoes of a SWAT officer in the Los Sueños Police Department. Teams of five will head out on various missions, where your task is to bring order to chaos. What that entails is either restraining or taking out hostiles, securing civilians, and reporting any evidence back to base — all with as few casualties as possible. It’s a very simplistic gameplay loop at its core, but Ready or Not spices things up with its atmosphere, its dark subject matters, and its tactical mechanics.

There are 18 different levels across the main Ready or Not campaign, with a further eight missions available through DLC. We were taken aback by how varied and unique each of the levels fels. From dingy drug dens to millionaire mansions, each level has a distinctive atmosphere about it.

One mission sees an ex-intelligence officer turned conspiracy nut lace his log cabin with booby traps, meaning every door could mean death, and its tight-knit corridors dictates the types of weapons you'll bring in with you.

Another takes place in a community college, where the long hallways are the source of constant paranoia. A hostage situation in a hotel meant we had to systematically make our way through each room while constantly watching our back.

That’s to say that while visually there’s a nice variety, the design of each level brings its own challenges, which complement the hardcore style of gameplay. You see, Ready Or Not is not some lock-and-load action shooter. A single stray bullet from an enemy or teammate can mean death, and even on the normal difficulty your whole squad can go down if you aren’t careful. We wouldn't say the AI is smart but it is aggressive and quite unpredictable.

There’s a rather steep learning curve in those early hours as you learn how to navigate the game’s finicky item and command wheel, or familiarise yourself with the six (yes, six) different ways you can interact with a door.

This learning curve makes the single player mode much more of a chore. You are joined by four AI teammates who must be commanded at all times. These can be quite specific and can take some time to come to grips with.

You can order your team to stack up at the door, specify which side of the door, tell them how to open the door, and if you want them to throw in some flashbangs in the process. All this through a fairly rudimentary command wheel means you'll spend your opening hours fighting to get your commands across correctly.

You can certainly enjoy the atmosphere of the game when playing solo, and it can be approached like an immersive single player experience, but we didn't find the deep command systems all that fun to navigate. It certainly gets easier the more you use it, but it’s obvious that this isn’t the way developer Void Interactive wants you to play.

Instead, Ready or Not is at its best when you’re playing with a full squad of real teammates. In our early missions we were all scattered, aimlessly blasting our way through the missions. However, with no respawns on death, we quite quickly started to form strategy and coordination.

Communication is key in Ready or Not, and we reckon those playing solo and not keen to jump in a voice chat may lose out on some of the charm. Before long, our team was performing pincer movements, tossing timed flashbangs, and clearing rooms without any casualties. Becoming more in-sync with the rhythm of the game and developing our tactical skills was one of the most satisfying elements of Ready or Not.

However, it does serve up an interesting contradiction of tone. On one hand, our squad had so many hilarious moments where tripwire bombs were triggered, or there were friendly fire mishaps. But on the other, there were disturbingly quiet moments as the game faces themes of drugs, sex trafficking, and even paedophilia. What many could see as a po-faced police sim, actually paints it in a very depressing light.

That is especially prevalent when bullets start flying. There are no hit markers or directional damage indicators. Killing enemies can be quite harrowing actually, as they slump against walls and start to choke on their own blood. Whenever anyone pulls the trigger, chaos ensues. It didn’t matter how composed or tactical our team was playing, firefights would often result in a panicked barrage of bullets.

What we loved about gunfights from a gameplay perspective were the aiming mechanics that were built into the DualSense controller. With the tap of L3 or R3 you can tilt your guns left or right, and you can either aim down the canted sights or full scope with a half or full squeeze of L2. It means clearing rooms feels incredibly tactile and cinematic at times.

There are quite a lot of options when it comes to your loadout too. There’s a fairly in-depth customisation system, which allows you to change everything from your ballistic face guards to the amount of magazines you bring on a mission. This means coordination with the team allows someone to bring a Mirrorgun to peer under doors, while another squadmate could bring a battering ram to breeze on through.

With assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and pistols, we loved how different missions require or encourage a different type of gun. And each handles with a satisfying kick thanks to the DualSense haptics.

You’ll really get to feel the difference between those guns with Ready Or Not’s slow pace gameplay. This is not a twitchy shooter, and for some it’ll move at a glacial pace. There is no run button, which we think works brilliantly for the way the game wants you to play. However, it can become an issue when you’re scouring the map for one last hidden objective. Many of our missions ended with the whole team silently wandering around at a snail’s pace for minutes on end.

Coming across from PC, Ready or Not is a soild port on both PS5 and PS5 Pro. There is a performance and quality mode option on both consoles, with the former offering up a stable 60fps. The latter drops down to a choppy 30fps, and the visual difference is basically unnoticeable. The various perps and civilians you'll be dealing with all look very rubbery, but the environments look fantastic with fine details and atmospheric lighting bringing each of its settings to life.