It’s not unusual for a game to go through a few PR crises during its life cycle, but you’d be hard pressed to name a title as prone to controversy asReady or Not. Here you have agritty shooterthat has been criticized for not enough censorship, fortoo much censorship, and for just about all development decisions and changes that have taken place since it entered early access in late 2021.
The game has remained mostly unchanged since the 1.0 release in December 2023, and that includes since I started playing it exactly a year after that.
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Ready or Not is not the only squad-based hardcore shooter out there, but it’s easily the most popular today, with good reason.I’ve sunk over 100 hours into this game on PC; some of them glorious S-rank runs, others marked by kicking a trapped door and paying the price.
This is a visceral game at heart, the kind we rarely get on the generally more sanitized world of consoles, so I was buzzing when VOID reached out with the opportunity to play it ahead of release on PS5.
I was inevitably curious about whether the game would feel the same given thechanges made ahead of the console release. The short answer is yes, this is the same game. Port Hokan does not get any easier on the heart, and FISA can go do one.
Tactical Controller Business
Walking in the console release feels much nicer with the stick deflection instead of a toggle. The controller aiming is not as good though.
I like howthe DualSense triggers were used to give a smooth aiming transition, with a light press of L2 canting the gun while a full press makes you aim down sights. However, the sensitivity is extremely low, and I feel it would have been better to have canted handle closer to free look.
The leaning implementation is clunky, with L3 and R3 working as toggles to lean left and right respectively. The ‘free lean’ mode doesn’t really serve much of a purpose as you can’t aim or walk with it, and would have been done better if you could control leaning with the left stick while aiming with the right.
This is not entirely VOID’s fault—first-person shooters are not great on console, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. I am, however, going to blame that on me putting a hole through a hostage’s head. If I had been playing on PC, I would have shot the kidnapper too.
Level Design
Ready or Not helps set the scene with immersive briefings including 911 audio recordings, information about suspects and civilians, and maps, but that’s not where it shines.
This might be a bold claim, but I’ll stand by it:no modern shooter comes anywhere close to Ready or Not as far as environmental storytelling goes.
You can obviously just run and gun through the level without a care in the world, and the game doesn’t force you to pay attention, but you’re not getting your money’s worth that way.
Once you start paying attention to the little details, you pick up patterns across other levels, and suddenly get invested in situations that look just like any other old raid otherwise.
Getting that full picture influences how your raids play out. I know I always try to take it as slowly and peacefully as possible when visiting the Tran brothers, because I understand why they’re doing it. Meanwhile, members of The Hand get a nice serving of 7.62x51mm to the head, no questions asked.
I like that Ready or Not gives you suspects, their motivations and their crimes, but leaves the outcome up to you. It’s a nice way to check one’s moral compass.
Without spoiling too much,the levels added as part of the Stories from Los Sueños free DLC are large without feeling obnoxious, and offer some nice CQB challenges.
I was curious about the added difficulty selection, but after a few tries, I can’t really justify straying from standard. The casual mode feels like suspects took a little bit of Ambien before we got there, while the hard version gives suspects some of that legendary Crackhead Sniper vibe from early access builds. The increased traps do add some variety, but it would have been nice to have a modular difficulty selector to mix and match.
Commander Mode And AI
For those unfamiliar with it, Commander Mode puts you in the shoes of David ‘Judge’ Beaumont, a cute little guy who leads D-Platoon as it tries to clean up Los Sueños.
It’sa crude little career mode slapped over the game’s quick mission system, but I find it compelling all the same, especially if you do thematic runs like Iron Man mode or full non-lethal. You get to hire teammates based on their specialties, but if they die, or you botch a mission too hard, you have to replace them.
Both command mode and single-player quick play rely on using the AI command menus, and the PS5 interface is still noticeably less friendly than its PC predecessor. Let’s start with the good, though.
The original Ready or Not command menu is hard to tell apart from your Windows 95 Start Menu. It works incredibly poorly on a controller unless you’re doing a turn-based slogfest with the Square Enix logo on it.
VOID replaced it on the console with a radial menu, and for basic commands, it works well enough. However, pulling a tight raid in Ready or Not is anything but basic, and it can be easy to fumble due to the depth of menus.
During a friendly visit to the Mindjot data center, I set the blue team to breach a door on cue, and wanted to lead the red team around for a simultaneous entry on another side. Queuing blue’s command was easy, but there is no quick way to tell red to follow me.
I had to open the menu, hit the right arrow to bring up red, then select ‘Fall In’, and finally select the formation. If I dropped the action without selecting formation, rather than issuing the default ‘Fall In’ order, it would cancel the entire sequence.
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On the PC, this would have been a case of scrolling up to select red, hitting Z, and done. There’s no way to cycle teams without opening the wheel first on consoles, and closing the menu does not save your selection.
Another advantage the PC menus have is the use of number keys to navigate them more easily. Once you figure that out, the flow of ‘MMB, number, number’ becomes second nature. Some shortcuts for the PS5 would have been nice.
The radial menu obviously gets easier with practice, but it significantly affects your tempo, and everybody knows that feeling cool and slick is half the job when going doorkicking.
Through the Bodycam
I did not notice any serious performance or quality change between the PC and PlayStation 5 versions of Ready or Not. The game runs smoothly and looks good, even if it occasionally falters in terms of photorealism.
Much like the level design,the visual identity of Ready or Not feels deliberate, with design choices that evoke certain moods rather than blindly chasing lifelike visuals. Some of the face models do feel a little jarring for 2025, but you’re typically too busy to have a stare-off with those Madame Tussaud’s escapees.
Going into this review, I was a little concerned about whether the audio would have the same punch and intensity over the TV speakers compared to headphones, but those worries faded away the second the first flashbang flew through the door of that 4U gas station.
The soundscape of Ready or Not keeps the game intense, with booming gunshots and plenty of shouting punctuated by quips from both team members and suspects that make it feel very lifelike. Hearing a guy tell you he has a prescription while you run a bust on a meth lab always gets me.
Ready For Court
After playing through the base levels plus the new DLC, I was pleased enough with the PS5 port, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t fall short of the PC version.
The game looks and sounds great, and bar a few minor interface choices, I think VOID did the best anyone could have done when porting a game like this to the console world. That said, it’s a platform that’s intrinsically worse for tactical shooters.
Now, odds are you are reading this and not really caring how it compares to the PC version because you own a PlayStation 5 or Xbox and want to play it there, so I’ll put my PC elitism aside for a bit and say this is the best tactical shooter you can buy for consoles today.
Closing Comments:
Ready or Not can be a little formulaic at times, but so is police work. It’s the second police game I’ve reviewed this year, but the first one I can wholeheartedly recommend. If you are here for the multiplayer, the PC players might move too fast for you, but you can just disable crossplay. The controls are intuitive, the AI is generally easy to command apart from some menu clunkiness, and the dystopian grit looks great on a big TV screen. I’m definitely going back to playing the PC version most of the time, but that doesn’t stop Ready or Not from being the best tactical shooter available on consoles today.
Ready or Not
Reviewed on PlayStation 5
