Ready or Not Early Access Review

With thanks to developer and publisher VOID Interactive, we’ve been checking our Ready or Not. This title is still in development, and so we’ll be bringing your our Early Access review, which won’t come with final ratings for the title. check back closer to launch for a full and scored review for the title. With the extremely sensitive nature of this title, we have included our common-sense parent’s guide. While this contains a run down of troubling content within the title as it stands, this can change prior to release.

The Basics – What is Ready or Not About?

Ready or Not provide a tactical SWAT Simulation, currently available on PC through Steam Early Access. The team at VOID Interactive have said that they’re definitely interested in bringing the title to console, but are focused on getting the PC version right first. You take the role of Judge, the leader of a five-person SWAT strike force. You’ll approach each area with a number of objectives, leading your team to arrest or neutralise enemy combatants, and secure civilians. There are currently 14 missions to play through, each bringing a tangibly different operating environment.

Each level comes with the standard Barricaded Suspects mission type. Within this, you’ll have varying objectives between levels, with a common theme of neutralising enemies and rescuing innocents. In some levels you will also be tasked to apprehend certain individuals, or secure specific evidence.

When coming across suspects, you should give them a chance to surrender. While armed suspects rarely do, this is one easy way to quickly tell the difference between enemies and civilians. When taking out enemy assailants, you’ll need to report activity, restrain the suspect and bag weapons to take as evidence. Reporting of arrests, casualties and civilians is important to maintain a high score, which you’ll get at the end of each level.

In addition to the regular Barricaded Suspects, certain levels also have up to four other options. These include active shooters, bomb defusal and others to vary up gameplay. Ready or Not really sets itself apart from other shooters (even tactical experiences such as Rainbow Six Siege) and taking things low and slow is important if you want to hit the top scores.

You can play Ready or Not on your own, using AI team members who are surprisingly effective. You can also play with up to four friends or randoms, which is a great strategic experience. When playing solo, I’ve been surprised at the ease of communication with my AI team, as well as with their effective operations, as they are often better at the title than I am.

Is Ready or Not Safe for Children?

Rating: 1 / 5: Adults Only.

While it is not rated by PEGI or the ESRB at this time, Ready or Not is not a title suited for younger gamers. The title contains a significant amount of violence, as should be expected from a title in this setting. In addition, however, there are also sexual themes and themes of specific sexual violence, sometimes involving children.

The title also comes with warnings for children and adults who are living with PTSD, especially from similar real life events. With active shooter modes, night club levels and a gritty real-life perspective, we’d urge survivors of these events to consider this carefully prior to playing. Ready or Not never attempts to glorify this violence, or make it cool or funny, but scenes such as ringing phones, next to victims and sexual themes can be jarring even for regular adults.

Overall it’s not one which should be available for those under the age of 18 and adults should also consider the visceral and realistic nature of the title.

Is Ready or Not Accessible?

Rating: 2 / 5: Intense.

Ready or Not has not been made as a walk in the park. There are no difficulty options here and each mission must be approached carefully. It’s incredibly easy to fail a mission, and this can come swiftly and at any point. As such this one is getting an accessibility rating of Intense from us here, and is not one for the faint of heart.

The Run Down – Our Five-Point Rating for Ready or Not

As a preview, and with the title still within early access, Ready or Not is a work in progress. As such we will not be giving our usual point-scoring run down as with other reviews. We’ll bring our usual full review after Ready or Not “goes gold” to give these ratings, after development has completed.

Within Gameplay, we’re really enjoying what Ready or Not currently has to offer. The realism in the title really speaks to a deep level of research, and it’s clear that VOID Interactive have been working with law-enforcement professionals to make this happen. While there are bugs and glitches within the title (we’ve had “dead” suspects back on their knees, floating handcuffs and rapidly-shifting characters) this one has been a real joy to get involved with, even at this early stage.

If you’ve played early access titles before, you’ll know what you’re getting yourself into, but even here, the current build for the title is really stable, and it feels like this will only get better towards release. The tactical action and call outs are really satisfying, and a tough but fair point scoring system gives you something to aim for.

For a work-in-progress title, the visuals in Ready or Not are pretty impressive. Lighting effects really work well to bring atmosphere as well as providing contrast within each level. This gives you an actual need to take things like torches and night-vision, to help you progress through each area.

There’s also an incredible level of detail which makes each area feel realistic and really boost immersion. We’re forgiving the visual bugs and glitches here, as while they can be a little silly at times, there’s nothing at the moment which is game breaking for us, and they seem relatively few and far between.

Audio is also a strong point, though it does suffer from repetition currently. Call outs and effects work well and help to build real texture and realism within gameplay.

There’s not much in the way of narrative or tutorial currently, and this is something which we’d definitely like to see improvement on before launch. A story and some level progression would sit nicely within the title to provide some extra replay value.

However, replay isn’t bad as it is. There is a huge selection of weapons and equipment, and you can kit yourself out nicely. When you get boots on the ground things like enemy locations and building access change, meaning that each playthrough manages to provide a challenge regardless of how many times you’ve already played.

Overall while we’re not giving it a final score, we do think that this is one people should be looking at. It’s not going to suit anybody looking for a run and gun experience, however fans of tactical action should definitely enjoy it. We’re definitely looking forward to seeing how this one progresses to launch, but it’s already a well-built game, with plenty to be getting on with. This is especially true when approached with friends, as while the AI teammates do a great job, communications and planning become a lot easier.

Let us know if you have any questions about Ready or Not in the comments, and we’ll get back to you with this one again as the title launches.

As ever, to provide this preview and common-sense parent’s guide, we received free copies of Ready or Not from the folks at VOID Interactive.