Prepared or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s an excellent critical PC launch that’s lastly made its solution to PS5, providing up a darker and grittier co-op expertise than the rest presently in the marketplace. However does that imply it’s price your time? Whereas Prepared Or Not received’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 sneakers of a SWAT officer within the Los Sueños Police Division. Groups of 5 will head out on numerous missions, the place your activity is to carry 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 completely different ranges throughout the principle Prepared or Not marketing campaign, with an extra eight missions out there via DLC. We have been bowled over by how diverse 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 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 state of affairs 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 enhance 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 traditional problem your complete squad can go down for those who aren’t cautious. We would not say the AI is wise however it’s aggressive and fairly unpredictable.
There’s a fairly 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) alternative ways you may work together with a door.
This studying curve makes the one participant mode far more of a chore. You might be joined by 4 AI teammates who should be commanded always. These may be fairly particular and might take a while to come back to grips with.
You may order your staff to stack up on the door, specify which facet of the door, inform them the best way to open the door, and if you’d like 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 appropriately.
You may actually benefit from the ambiance of the sport when taking part in 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 actually will get simpler the extra you employ it, nevertheless 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 taking part in with a full squad of actual teammates. In our early missions we have been all scattered, aimlessly blasting our method via the missions. Nonetheless, with no respawns on dying, we fairly rapidly began to kind technique and coordination.
Communication is essential in Prepared or Not, and we reckon these taking part in solo and never eager to leap in a voice chat might lose out on among the allure. Earlier than lengthy, our staff 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 growing our tactical expertise was one of the vital satisfying components of Prepared or Not.
Nonetheless, it does serve up an fascinating contradiction of tone. On one hand, our squad had so many hilarious moments the place tripwire bombs have 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 may 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 may be fairly harrowing really, as they hunch 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 staff was taking part in, firefights would typically lead to a panicked barrage of bullets.
What we beloved about gunfights from a gameplay perspective have been the aiming mechanics that have been constructed into the DualSense controller. With the faucet of L3 or R3 you may tilt your weapons left or proper, and you’ll both purpose 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 occasions.
There are numerous choices in relation to your loadout too. There’s a reasonably in-depth customisation system, which lets you change all the pieces out of your ballistic face guards to the quantity of magazines you carry on a mission. This implies coordination with the staff permits somebody to carry a Mirrorgun to look beneath doorways, whereas one other squadmate may carry a battering ram to breeze on via.
With assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and pistols, we beloved how completely different missions require or encourage a unique kind of gun. And every handles with a satisfying kick because of 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 is no such thing as a run button, which we expect works brilliantly for the way in which the sport desires you to play. Nonetheless, it will probably change into a problem while you’re scouring the map for one final hidden goal. A lot of our missions ended with the entire staff 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 steady 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 advantageous particulars and atmospheric lighting bringing every of its settings to life.
