Prepared or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s an excellent severe PC launch that’s lastly made its solution to PS5, providing up a darker and grittier co-op expertise than the rest presently available on the market. 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 job 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 attainable. It’s a really simplistic gameplay loop at its core, however Prepared or Not spices issues up with its environment, its darkish topic issues, and its tactical mechanics.
There are 18 totally different ranges throughout the principle Prepared or Not marketing campaign, with an extra eight missions accessible by means of DLC. We had been greatly surprised by how various and distinctive every of the degrees fels. From dingy drug dens to millionaire mansions, every stage has a particular environment about it.
One mission sees an ex-intelligence officer turned conspiracy nut lace his log cabin with booby traps, which means each door might imply loss of life, and its tight-knit corridors dictates the forms of weapons you may herald with you.
One other takes place in a group faculty, 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 means of every room whereas continuously watching our again.
That’s to say that whereas visually there’s a pleasant selection, the design of every stage 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 loss of life, and even on the conventional problem your complete squad can go down in case you aren’t cautious. We would not say the AI is sensible however it’s aggressive and fairly unpredictable.
There’s a somewhat 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 possibly can work together with a door.
This studying curve makes the one participant mode rather more of a chore. You’re joined by 4 AI teammates who have to be commanded always. These could be fairly particular and may take a while to return to grips with.
You may order your crew to stack up on the door, specify which aspect of the door, inform them the right way to open the door, and in order for you them to throw in some flashbangs within the course of. All this by means of a reasonably rudimentary command wheel means you may spend your opening hours combating to get your instructions throughout appropriately.
You may actually benefit from the environment 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 techniques all that enjoyable to navigate. It actually will get simpler the extra you utilize it, however it’s apparent that this isn’t the way in which developer Void Interactive needs you to play.
As a substitute, Prepared or Not is at its finest whenever you’re taking part in with a full squad of actual teammates. In our early missions we had been all scattered, aimlessly blasting our manner by means of the missions. Nevertheless, 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 taking part in solo and never eager to leap in a voice chat might lose out on a number of the attraction. 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 one of the crucial satisfying parts 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 fireplace mishaps. However on the opposite, there have been disturbingly quiet moments as the sport faces themes of medicine, intercourse trafficking, and even paedophilia. What many might see as a po-faced police sim, truly 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 could be fairly harrowing truly, as they hunch 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 taking part in, firefights would typically lead to a panicked barrage of bullets.
What we beloved 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 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 instances.
There are numerous choices in relation to 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 convey on a mission. This implies coordination with the crew permits somebody to convey a Mirrorgun to look below doorways, whereas one other squadmate might convey a battering ram to breeze on by means of.
With assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and pistols, we beloved how totally different missions require or encourage a unique kind 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 needs you to play. Nevertheless, it could possibly grow to be a problem whenever 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 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 assorted perps and civilians you may be coping with all look very rubbery, however the environments look implausible with wonderful particulars and atmospheric lighting bringing every of its settings to life.
