Ready Or Not (PS5) Review

I can’t see shit through the thin, cracked visor of my bulletproof shield. Hands sweating, I spin around, backing into any corner. Crouched and shying as bullets pepper my cover. I’m screaming desperately for the contacts to drop their weapons and get down. Hopeless. Officer after officer quietly dies. The enemy has turned the tables, stalking our scattered remnants. This is Ready or Not, and if everything goes right (wrong), the next five minutes of survival will have you and your mates gasping, cackling, and cheering. 

You and up to four other players will embark on S.W.A.T. operations as a well-oiled unit for the fictional Los Suenos Police Department. The story is sparingly delivered via briefings that precede each operation, but the telling is best observed in the immaculately handcrafted and detailed mission environments. A verbal warning at the start of a mission often does little to prepare the player for the confronting situations they’re about to wander into. To witness my teammates’ audible dread upon piecing together the context behind certain scandalous objects on the scene. The gut punch is priceless, but also not for the faint of heart. Mowing down an apartment block with the express purpose of raiding a livestreamer is a particularly bloodthirsty situation that will occur to most players in an early mission. The quickly escalating violence and subsequent settling of the dust effectively caused us to reflect on the brutality of our actions. Causing grievous harm is strongly discouraged in this game, but when it inevitably goes that way, your only reward is the shock, horror, and thrill of survival. With the only material reward for a successful, non-lethal operation being new wearables and clothing with a mere shade of colour, emotional reflection fills the void of progression grind. That’s pretty special. That’s pretty Ready or Not.  

The shield provides a necessary lifeline, but it will quickly trigger your claustrophobia

A different beast of a cooperative shooter, I never thought that this game could work on any platform other than a PC. The wild, keyboard-engulfing control scheme was the most obvious inch-high barrier for developer VOID Interactive to surmount. Not only have they succeeded in this endeavour, but the snail-paced tactical S.W.A.T. simulator has landed on PS5 in a much better state than in my original review last year. Crucial additions such as difficulty options greatly increase the approachability of this previously hardcore-only shooter, creating the perfect time for new players to jump in, with crossplay working seamlessly in tow.

As far as port-specific features, there’s a decent bit here. The DualSense’s adaptive triggers feel perfectly utilised in tandem with the weapons’ devastating ballistic simulation. A frankly extensive options suite will allow players to tweak the controls to their tastes, even catering to their hometown keyboard and mouse. To my delight, I discovered that all of my control bugbears were addressed in some manner in the options. The standard couple of graphics settings can be toggled, but I found that the performance mode would take minor but noticeable frame drops. This becomes a more frequent stutter when you have your teammate’s tactical camera live on the HUD. Strangely, I noticed that the DLC missions (which only the session’s host needs to own) almost didn’t skip a beat even with a lot of on-screen action. Graphically, everything else looks as good as it did on my PC with two exceptions. The headcam texture looks distractingly low-resolution when spectating allies, and character faces can look a bit funny. Lastly, quick camera movement on some missions causes the screen edges to flash white. Interestingly, this was something that I reproduced on PC, so it may be a legacy graphical quirk. Altogether, the very minor and infrequent graphical hiccups do little to sway my recommendation for this port on a base PlayStation 5.

You can’t even trust a fella in scrubs not to pull a firearm

Multiplayer options do not boast the same level of consideration. There remain virtually no multiplayer options outside of enabling crossplay and selecting a difficulty. As a result, no matter what time of day, public matchmaking will always match me with folks from the States. This results in a constant ping warning on the screen and the anxiety that I might miss a shot during a crucial firefight. Despite this, my international matches worked flawlessly once they finally connected. The camaraderie fostered in the intensity of this game’s low bar for failure has produced positive interactions strengthened by good communication, and with no observable impact from the 250+ pings.

In last year’s review, I advised that the single-player Commander mode was an alright training tool to onboard for the unforgiving multiplayer. But its friendly AI kind of sucked, and still does, creating frustration that disrupts the otherwise perfect tension that RoN produces. Now that players can select a difficulty between casual, normal, and hard, I would advise incoming players to ignore Commander mode completely. Slumming it in a public game with a squad of silent randoms is now viable on casual and normal difficulties. Players are unlikely to wind up spectating within thirty seconds due to a stray bullet to the head. As somebody accustomed to the prior default difficulty, I found I had to switch to hard to chase those same thrills. On normal difficulty, an enemy contact is likely to freeze on the spot during a firefight. On hard, they will suppress you, run and hide to regroup, and then find a way to flank you, or play possum until you turn your back. No place is safe for your squad. Legitimately terrifying behaviour, reserved for only the most hardcore thrillseekers.

Ready or Not is no horror game, yet it strives to get under your skin

Final Thoughts 

Ready or Not continues to thrill and shock me in equal measure. However, it is the subtleties that keep me hooked and coming back. The environmental storytelling, simulation, and the gut-wrenching impact of your split-second decisions work together on a level that other tactical shooters could never hope to match.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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