Ready or Not is easily one of the best first-person tactical shooters ever. Even today, mind, with the game still firmly entrenched in its Early Access roots, it's a celebration of everything that makes the genre great, and it takes its cues from some of the most popular games of the niche. Like, say, the classic Rainbow Six titles and the legendary SWAT 4.

One particularly notable aspect of tactical shooters - and one that doesn't get discussed often - is the sense of community these games foster. These are, by and large, not dedicated PvP experiences. They're tense and tactical PvE ordeals with virtually no live-service elements. Old-school communities are what you get here, and with old-school gaming stuff comes modding, almost by default. And, indeed, Ready or Not modding is a thing.

Today, we'd like to go over the current state of the scene, why it's a key feature at this point in the game's production cycle, and why Ready or Not's mods are a key factor in deciding whether to buy it or not.

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The State of Ready or Not's Modding Scene

First, we need to discuss the basics, of course. There are several different ways for you to get mods for Ready or Not:

There are many double-uploads across these services, naturally, but some modders do keep their stuff limited to just one or the other. To that end, the particularly picky mod users may wish to pore over all of these goodies with an eagle's eye. As for ourselves, we're huge fans of the truly remarkable array of gear replaces and retextures, as well as all the different maps that the community's come up with.

Mod developers such as Ballistique, for example, have ported and produced such a wealth of mods that you could potentially replace all of Ready or Not's core content with new, modded stuff several times over. In other words, the game's going to look, feel, and play precisely the way you want it to. And remember: it's not even fully out yet.

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Replacers, Retextures, Reimaginations...

The odds are that you've already detected a particular pattern with Ready or Not's mods for now: many of them are replacers, rather than straight-up additions. Indeed, that's because Ready or Not is still in Early Access, and the game doesn't currently have a mechanism to add all-new weapons and gear without developer input. That's why, even though you cannot add the Sig-Sauer MCX to your in-game arsenal, you can download a mod that replaces an existing weapon. The effect is much the same, but it's less than ideal.

This is bound to change sometime down the line, but it's something that you'll need to contend with for the time being. Thankfully, it's a non-issue when it comes to maps.

The Ultimate Tactical Flexibility

Indeed, modders have already found their pace when it comes to introducing new maps to Ready or Not's content roster. The flexible and moddable nature of the game means that it can (and likely will) be turned into any and all of those games that once inspired it. SWAT 4's maps are already being actively remastered for Ready or Not's purposes, for example, and this practice is bound to continue as time goes on and the game is finally finished.

The reason why we're talking about all this, really, is that Ready or Not simply shows more promise for the average tactical FPS fan than almost any other game on the market. Two other phenomenal tactical shooters, for example, are Insurgency: Sandstorm and Six Days in Fallujah, but neither delivers the same flexibility as RoN.

Notably, Insurgency: Sandstorm has no official single-player content, while Six Days is kept deliberately lean and focused. It is about an actual historical event, so you can't really shove cutting-edge guns, maps, and gear into it for obvious reasons.

Still Early Days, but It's Looking Good

Overall, we're hard-pressed to find a true contemporary competitor to Ready or Not. One might argue that games such as the admittedly phenomenal Ground Branch come close, of course. The thing about Ground Branch, specifically, is that it's been in production for a very long time already, only to not have yet left its alpha production status. It'll take a while for it to reach the state that Ready or Not is currently in, in other words.

As it currently stands, Ready or Not is a phenomenal game made better by its burgeoning community. And, again, it only gets better from this point onwards. Ready or Not is due to launch in full before the end of 2023, according to the devs' latest blog post. This is happening, and it's happening soon. And, naturally, there are big plans ahead for the game's content post-launch.

More on that when we reach that point, however. In the time interim, the important bit for you to know is that there's a big community of modders supporting Ready or Not. So, if you're in the market for a hardcore, borderline horror tactical shooter - this is the ticket.

CHECK OUT: Ready or Not's Particular Brand of Horror

Ready or Not is easily one of the best first-person tactical shooters ever. Even today, mind, with the game still firmly entrenched in its Early Access roots, it’s a celebration of everything that makes the genre great, and it takes its cues from some of the most popular games of the niche. Like, say, the classic Rainbow […]