Why Now’s The Time to Play Ready or Not!

Having spent some quality time in Steam's Early Access program, the time to play Ready or Not is - you've guessed it - now. Not only has the game matured substantially over the past few months, with substantive content updates, fixes, and improvements delivered at a brisk pace, but it's also the very end of Spooktober!

We may have talked about classic, baseline horror games for the most part, but now's the time to look beyond the obvious. Make no mistake - Ready or Not is a horror game of a sort, with a dark, grounded narrative taking place in the background of each and every mission. Today, we're going to explain what this is all about, and invite you to give Ready or Not a fair shake.

For fans of hardcore tactical shooters and SWAT 4, specifically, this may well be a dream come true.

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You Should Play Ready or Not: Here's Why!

Our long-time readers will know that we're big fans of hardcore tactical shooters here at 2Game. Don't get us wrong, FPS titles like Call of Duty or Destiny are phenomenal in their own right, but sometimes, all you want is a good ground combat scenario where the ROE is strict and every move could be your last. Ready or Not is that, almost exactly, but with a twist.

Here, players step into the shoes of a SWAT officer that's working from a hopelessly decrepit police station. Woefully underfunded and beset with conspiratorial problems, wherein some previous members of the SWAT had moved on to form the extremist Mariposa Lily Order, Ready or Not's LSPD is in trouble. Everything is working against you and your team, and not only will you need to deal with the game's hyper-realistic gameplay mechanics, but also its environmental storytelling.

Being in Early Access at this time, not much of Ready or Not's story is spelled out for the player. Instead, the game tells you everything you need to know as you go. This, as it turns out, is often more horrific than even the scariest horror game.

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Where Horror Combines With Tactical Gunplay

The thing to keep in mind here is that Ready or Not is scary in moment-to-moment gameplay, yes, but that's just one small part of the game's horror. Specifically, what we're getting here is an exercise in so-called fridge horror.

Since the game saddles you with realistic objectives that are never truly straightforward, you'll need to spend much of your time in Ready or Not looking for stuff. Sometimes, "stuff" is a curiously sneaky AI perp. Other times, it might be a bundle of drugs that just won't rear its ugly head. Whatever the case may be, the game forces you to really look through its maps, comb them for details and look for clues.

It's a huge testament to VOID Interactive's level designers that each and every one of them truly feels like something is deeply wrong with it. There are few punches pulled here, we think. In some cases, the situations may even want to make you forego your ROE entirely and shoot everyone you come across. Valley of the Dolls, in particular, is infamous for this.

So, yes, you do go into these places heavily armed and, realistically, ready to gun the perps down. Since SWAT is a last resort, though, you never really go in to prevent a crime from taking place. Instead, you're there as a reaction force - to capture or to kill. The horrors of what had gone down are yours to witness before anyone else comes in.

Will Map Stories Play a Greater Role in the Future?

These details aren't necessarily hidden away, mind. Ready or Not's level design is very particular and deliberate. It's put together the way it's been put together specifically to unnerve and disturb you. And, worst of all, your SWAT team will often be on the perps' home turn. Not only do you need to deal with their crimes in real-time, but you also need to contend with traps and other dynamic problems that the game generates on the fly.

All of these things come together with incredible effect. The sheer atmosphere of Ready or Not's level design is effectively second-to-none in this genre. Each and every new map tells a terrible new tale, and most times, you can't truly stop what had been going on for - often - a very long time.

We cannot overstate just how scary this game is if you take the time to consider what it's telling you. Worst (or best?) of all, its message is clear: people did these things. There aren't any mysterious monsters or magical beings rampaging about in Ready or Not, after all. It's just perps running amok in Los Suenos. For VOID Interactive to realize such a vivid world while containing it to a few disparate levels is nothing short of incredible, and very worth your time and money, we feel.

What Comes Next in Ready or Not?

The sheer terror on display in Ready or Not is hard to put into words. It's the sort of thing where the final product is more than the sheer sum of its parts. Things just come together in some situations, and the game delivers in a way nobody expected it would deliver. Fascinating stuff, truly, and a testament to VOID Interactive's expertise.

Make no mistake, much of Ready or Not is still a tad janky, and though we're big fans of games that know they're janky and embrace it, this is an Early Access title that will move past that stage when all is said and done.

If you're looking for an awesome new horror gaming experience that sets its own stage and delivers something new, exciting, and honestly quite terrifying, then now's the time to play Ready or Not. What better way to cap off Spooktober, right? Give it a shot!

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