Bugs and gritty realism show that this one's been underbaked.
One of the first games that I can truly remember playing and enjoying as a kid was Police Quest 2 The Vengeance. I was terrible at it and I daresay some of its larger themes flew right over my head, but it nevertheless made me enamoured with the idea of being a cop.
Ready or Not is more akin to Police Quest‘s successor, S.W.A.T, though here I’m surely showing my age and should be comparing it to Rainbow Six instead. A first-person procedural, it puts you in the boots of a squad leader (at least in single-player), charged with bringing order to chaos (the lives of civilians, perps, and even your crew seemingly come second).
It’s been a long time since Police Quest; times have certainly changed, and my attitudes regarding law enforcement with them. This notion, plus a truckload of bugs, makes Ready or Not a tough sell.
Ready or Not pushes its tactical nature right from the get go in a tutorial that teaches you how to best use its contextual commands. Walking up to a door, you’ll see that several options are present; gaze at the doorknob, and you’ll be able to check if its locked or open it just a smidge, while looking square at it will let you open it fully. Look closer to the bottom half of the door and you’ll be able to kick it in, while looking right at the door’s base will offer the chance to slide a thin mirror between the gap, revealing what’s waiting for you on the other side.
These contextual commands and pretty much all others — a majority tied to commanding subjects to drop their weapons, raise their hands, and then to eventually handcuff them — are executed by a single button if you’re the one undertaking them, though you can enter wheel-based menus to command your squad in single-player. You’ve also the option to hit R1 for contextual orders — looking at a closed door and hitting R1 will generally tell your squad to open and clear the adjacent room.
Things are slow and calculated, and this appealed to me right away. My enjoyment diminished quite quickly, however, as my character absolutely unloaded on the very first innocent civilian I ran into, screaming obscenities and threats at her before smacking her in the back of the head, all as she was being fully compliant.
Since that time, I’ve heard perps call me the c-word, and I believe I’ve heard the n-word slur used on one occasion. This is just a small example on how gritty and realistic Ready or Not aims to be — perps want you dead, and civilians are angry that you’re throwing them to the ground and handcuffing them for your own safety. There’s enough thin blue line nonsense to turn me off of this product right there.
But wait, there’s more! Playing single-player mode will lead to incredibly inconsistent results. I’ve had to restart most encounters numerous times as I’m unable to complete them due to bugs. Generally, I’ll find that I’ve slowly and meticulously cleaned out all perps and found all civilians bar one — and it alternates between either.
In one mission, “A Lethal Obsession”, it’s a perp in a ghillie suit named Gerard who either fails to load or gets stuck in geometry. In overly large maps like the one found in “Greased Palms”, you’ll have to wander through too many rooms and around too many corners hoping your missing civilian eventually pops up. In that latter mission, enemies clear across the room — and we’re talking a football pitch-sized room, here — have laser focus and deadly aim, able to pick you off with a handgun or assault rifle.
Worse yet, ending a mission early because it’s broken, or getting shot and killed because a perp has become The Bionic Man means you fail that mission. You receive a horrible score, your squad gets traumatised, and you need to go back to the police station and requeue the mission; there’s no restarting anything.
The bugs I’ve detailed above are not only plaguing console players who’ve jumped into Ready or Not for the first time late in July, but to PC players who’ve had Ready or Not since early access in 2021 and its full fledged release in late 2023. I’m astonished that some problems continue to be persistent, and that developer Void hasn’t squashed them or delayed the larger console release in order to do so.
When things are working, Ready or Not can be a lot of fun. The problem, is, Ready or Not rarely works, either as expected, as intended, or as I’d like it to. Some may enjoy its edginess, and others may find a completely different experience engaging in multiplayer. I’m frankly too concerned about toxicity from what I’ve heard in single-player to dabble in this exercise with randoms on mics.
Ready or Not is available now on Windows PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, alongside Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5.
Ready or Not was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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