Ready or Not was announced in 2017, but for a long time it was a complete joke among insiders. However, since December 18, 2021, the game is in Early Access on Steam and has been celebrating great successes since then and is considered a spiritual successor to the beloved SWAT games. MeinMMO reveals to you, as part of FYNG Summer 2022, what makes the game so good.
Even though the name sounds like hide-and-seek among children, Ready or Not is anything but a tender-hearted shooter. In fact, behind this name lies a realistic police simulation in which you want to arrest criminals as part of a SWAT team. And that if possible in handcuffs rather than body bags.
Because although Ready or Not is a shooter, you should avoid wild shooting. If you break the strict operational rules of the SWAT and take out everything that crosses your sights, you will be punished by the game.
The game is still in Early Access, but it already has a lot of content for the price of €35.99 on Steam. That is also why the gameplay trailer is a full 8 minutes long, as it explains in detail the methods you can use to bring law and order to this completely corrupt version of America.
Especially from minute 2:30, the trailer makes it clear how different and unique Ready or Not plays:
A whole game like the best level from CoD: Modern Warfare
The hardcore shooter thus strikes the same chord as SWAT 4, a game that made a small niche of shooter fans incredibly happy shortly after its release in 2005. Even ancient Rainbow Six games like Raven Shield or Rogue Spear are the clearer inspiration than franchise offshoots like Siege – not to mention the alien shooter Rainbow Six Extraction.
If you can’t imagine this because you missed these games or belong to the younger generation: Do you remember the best level in CoD: Modern Warfare (2019)? Where you as a special unit clear a house in pitch darkness with night vision scopes, which is simultaneously full of armed terrorists and innocent civilians?
Ready or Not is that level, expanded into a whole game. In a modern urban setting, you are a team of the best police officers, equipped with the latest military technology, and you have to make the right decision in extreme situations. Because situations escalate quickly and you can go down in a split second, the game is often more thrilling than the most intense horror games.
Furthermore, all levels in the game have multiple missions to choose from, which vary in difficulty. Additionally, the distribution of enemies, civilians, and their behavior changes with each new attempt at a level.
Whether your mission is in a cluttered house, a school, or a nightclub: Your goal is to resolve each situation with as little bloodshed as possible. For this, you can sneak up on enemies, intimidate them by yelling, fire a warning shot into the air as a last warning, or incapacitate them with tasers. Only when all else fails should you shoot to kill.
To make that work, especially in the harder missions, you must assess the situation with your team in front of almost every door, devise a battle plan, and carry it out well-coordinated. You can do this either as a solo player with commands for your bot partners or in co-op with your friends.
From “Fraud” to Savior of the SWAT Fans
As early as December we reported on how well this game is received by shooter experts. This has only become clearer since then. At that time, the game still had 5,000 Steam reviews; about 6 months later, there are nearly 44,000, of which 93% are positive.
Some of these reviews say that Ready or Not is “what Rainbow Six Siege should have been.” Others go even further and say: “This is not what Rainbow Six could have been; this is better.” It is even said to be a kind of savior for fans of SWAT simulators, who have not received a truly new game of this kind since 2005.
But it wasn’t always so positive. In an alpha version, the game was considered “fraud,” which had taken €120 from gullible players to throw them a bad PvP shooter in the form of a CoD clone against great promises (via reddit). This reputation seems to have been shed by the game at the latest with its Early Access release now.
In addition to the gameplay, which is “simply a tactical delight” and “is fun with two or more players,” the Steam reviews also praise the continuous updates. Just a few days ago, a comprehensive update for June was announced (via Steam), in which primarily the AI opponents are to be made significantly smarter and more unpredictable.
The full release of Ready or Not is announced for around December 2022. Until then, more maps, weapons, as well as UI and gameplay improvements are to come. A PvP mode is also expected to be added.
Ready or Not fills a gap that benefits the market
A tactical delight for fans of hardcore shooters
When I heard that Ready Or Not is supposed to be the spiritual successor to SWAT 4, my heart leaped. I played the Gold Edition of this classic for years, always trying to improve the same levels even better.
However, SWAT developer Irrational Games had a hit with Bioshock two years later, and the genre of realistic police simulation seemed to be dead, I thought.
Fortunately, Ready or Not shows me how poorly I can predict the future. Despite Early Access and a few related quirks, VOID Interactive offers me here a kind of unofficial remake of one of my favorite games.
With all the unique facets that every shooter fan should try at least once, this could also become your new favorite game. It doesn’t matter whether you prefer to play this intense simulation with adrenaline guarantee in co-op or solo.
Marko Jevtic
Freelance author and shooter expert at MeinMMO
