Prepared or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s a brilliant critical PC launch that’s lastly made its technique to PS5, providing up a darker and grittier co-op expertise than the rest at the moment in the marketplace. However does that imply it’s price 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 deliver 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 attainable. 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 completely different ranges throughout the primary Prepared or Not marketing campaign, with an extra eight missions accessible via DLC. We had been bowled over by how assorted 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 may imply dying, and its tight-knit corridors dictates the sorts of weapons you will herald with you.
One other takes place in a neighborhood faculty, the place the lengthy hallways are the supply of fixed paranoia. A hostage scenario in a lodge meant we needed to systematically make our method via every room whereas consistently 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 type 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 dying, and even on the conventional problem your entire squad can go down in case you aren’t cautious. We would not say the AI is wise however it’s aggressive and fairly unpredictable.
There’s a reasonably steep studying curve in these early hours as you discover ways to navigate the sport’s finicky merchandise and command wheel, or familiarise your self with the six (sure, six) other ways you may work together with a door.
This studying curve makes the only participant mode far more of a chore. You’re joined by 4 AI teammates who should be commanded always. These may be fairly particular and may take a while to return to grips with.
You’ll be able to order your workforce to stack up on the door, specify which facet of the door, inform them learn how to open the door, and if you need them to throw in some flashbangs within the course of. All this via a reasonably rudimentary command wheel means you will spend your opening hours preventing to get your instructions throughout accurately.
You’ll be able to 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 methods all that enjoyable to navigate. It definitely will get simpler the extra you employ it, but it surely’s apparent that this isn’t the way in which developer Void Interactive needs you to play.
As an alternative, Prepared or Not is at its finest if you’re enjoying with a full squad of actual teammates. In our early missions we had been all scattered, aimlessly blasting our method via the missions. Nevertheless, with no respawns on dying, 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 might lose out on a number of the allure. Earlier than lengthy, our workforce was performing pincer actions, tossing timed flashbangs, and clearing rooms with none casualties. Changing into extra in-sync with the rhythm of the sport and growing our tactical abilities was one of the crucial satisfying components of Prepared or Not.
Nevertheless, it does serve up an fascinating 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 hearth 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 may see as a po-faced police sim, really paints it in a really miserable gentle.
That’s particularly prevalent when bullets begin flying. There are not any hit markers or directional injury indicators. Killing enemies may be fairly harrowing really, as they stoop towards partitions and begin to choke on their very own blood. Every time anybody pulls the set off, chaos ensues. It didn’t matter how composed or tactical our workforce was enjoying, firefights would usually lead to a panicked barrage of bullets.
What we cherished 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 may tilt your weapons left or proper, and you may both goal 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 all the things out of your ballistic face guards to the quantity of magazines you deliver on a mission. This implies coordination with the workforce permits somebody to deliver a Mirrorgun to look beneath doorways, whereas one other squadmate may deliver a battering ram to breeze on via.
With assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and pistols, we cherished how completely 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 gradual tempo gameplay. This isn’t a twitchy shooter, and for some it’ll transfer at a glacial tempo. There is no such thing as a run button, which we expect works brilliantly for the way in which the sport needs you to play. Nevertheless, it may possibly develop into a difficulty if you’re scouring the map for one final hidden goal. Lots of our missions ended with the entire workforce 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 choice 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 principally unnoticeable. The varied perps and civilians you will be coping with all look very rubbery, however the environments look implausible with effective particulars and atmospheric lighting bringing every of its settings to life.
