Prepared or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s a brilliant critical PC launch that’s lastly made its method to PS5, providing up a darker and grittier co-op expertise than the rest at present in the marketplace. However does that imply it’s value your time? Whereas Prepared Or Not gained’t be for everybody, for us there’s a visceral edge to the sport that we simply couldn’t get sufficient of.
Prepared or Not places you within the footwear of a SWAT officer within the Los Sueños Police Division. Groups of 5 will head out on numerous missions, the place your process is to convey order to chaos. What that entails is both restraining or taking out hostiles, securing civilians, and reporting any proof again to base — all with as few casualties as doable. It’s a really simplistic gameplay loop at its core, however Prepared or Not spices issues up with its ambiance, its darkish topic issues, and its tactical mechanics.
There are 18 totally different ranges throughout the principle Prepared or Not marketing campaign, with an additional eight missions accessible by DLC. We had been bowled over by how various and distinctive every of the degrees fels. From dingy drug dens to millionaire mansions, every degree has a particular ambiance about it.
One mission sees an ex-intelligence officer turned conspiracy nut lace his log cabin with booby traps, that means each door might imply loss of life, and its tight-knit corridors dictates the forms of weapons you will herald with you.
One other takes place in a neighborhood school, the place the lengthy hallways are the supply of fixed paranoia. A hostage scenario in a resort meant we needed to systematically make our manner by every room whereas continually watching our again.
That’s to say that whereas visually there’s a pleasant selection, the design of every degree brings its personal challenges, which counterpoint the hardcore model of gameplay. You see, Prepared Or Not is not some lock-and-load motion shooter. A single stray bullet from an enemy or teammate can imply loss of life, and even on the traditional issue your complete squad can go down if you happen to aren’t cautious. We would not say the AI is sensible however it’s aggressive and fairly unpredictable.
There’s a relatively steep studying curve in these early hours as you learn to navigate the sport’s finicky merchandise and command wheel, or familiarise your self with the six (sure, six) other ways you possibly can work together with a door.
This studying curve makes the one participant mode way more of a chore. You might be joined by 4 AI teammates who should be commanded always. These might be fairly particular and may take a while to come back to grips with.
You may order your crew to stack up on the door, specify which facet of the door, inform them tips on how to open the door, and if you would like them to throw in some flashbangs within the course of. All this by a reasonably rudimentary command wheel means you will spend your opening hours preventing to get your instructions throughout appropriately.
You may definitely benefit from the ambiance of the sport when enjoying solo, and it may be approached like an immersive single participant expertise, however we did not discover the deep command techniques all that enjoyable to navigate. It definitely will get simpler the extra you utilize it, however it’s apparent that this isn’t the way in which developer Void Interactive desires you to play.
As an alternative, Prepared or Not is at its greatest while you’re enjoying with a full squad of actual teammates. In our early missions we had been all scattered, aimlessly blasting our manner by the missions. Nonetheless, with no respawns on loss of life, we fairly rapidly began to type technique and coordination.
Communication is essential in Prepared or Not, and we reckon these enjoying solo and never eager to leap in a voice chat could lose out on a number of the appeal. Earlier than lengthy, our crew was performing pincer actions, tossing timed flashbangs, and clearing rooms with none casualties. Turning into extra in-sync with the rhythm of the sport and creating our tactical abilities was probably the most satisfying components of Prepared or Not.
Nonetheless, it does serve up an attention-grabbing contradiction of tone. On one hand, our squad had so many hilarious moments the place tripwire bombs had been triggered, or there have been pleasant fireplace mishaps. However on the opposite, there have been disturbingly quiet moments as the sport faces themes of medication, intercourse trafficking, and even paedophilia. What many might see as a po-faced police sim, really paints it in a really miserable mild.
That’s particularly prevalent when bullets begin flying. There are not any hit markers or directional injury indicators. Killing enemies might be fairly harrowing really, as they stoop in opposition to partitions and begin to choke on their very own blood. At any time when anybody pulls the set off, chaos ensues. It didn’t matter how composed or tactical our crew was enjoying, firefights would usually lead to a panicked barrage of bullets.
What we liked about gunfights from a gameplay perspective had been the aiming mechanics that had been constructed into the DualSense controller. With the faucet of L3 or R3 you possibly can tilt your weapons left or proper, and you’ll both intention down the canted sights or full scope with a half or full squeeze of L2. It means clearing rooms feels extremely tactile and cinematic at instances.
There are various choices in the case of your loadout too. There’s a reasonably in-depth customisation system, which lets you change every little thing out of your ballistic face guards to the quantity of magazines you convey on a mission. This implies coordination with the crew permits somebody to convey a Mirrorgun to look underneath doorways, whereas one other squadmate might convey a battering ram to breeze on by.
With assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and pistols, we liked how totally different missions require or encourage a unique sort of gun. And every handles with a satisfying kick due to the DualSense haptics.
You’ll actually get to really feel the distinction between these weapons with Prepared Or Not’s sluggish tempo gameplay. This isn’t a twitchy shooter, and for some it’ll transfer at a glacial tempo. There isn’t any run button, which we expect works brilliantly for the way in which the sport desires you to play. Nonetheless, it might probably grow to be a problem while you’re scouring the map for one final hidden goal. A lot of our missions ended with the entire crew silently wandering round at a snail’s tempo for minutes on finish.
Coming throughout from PC, Prepared or Not is a soild port on each PS5 and PS5 Professional. There’s a efficiency and high quality mode possibility on each consoles, with the previous providing up a secure 60fps. The latter drops right down to a uneven 30fps, and the visible distinction is mainly unnoticeable. The varied perps and civilians you will be coping with all look very rubbery, however the environments look unbelievable with positive particulars and atmospheric lighting bringing every of its settings to life.
