Ready or Not | Review

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Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke July 16, 2025Last Updated: July 16, 2025

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VOID Interactive’s Ready or Not is a very pleasant surprise. Here’s a hardcore, realistic take on a SWAT team simulator that successfully blends tactical, thoughtful play with plenty of pad-gripping tension and brown-trouser moments. Ready or Not has been in development for several years, and now this unique, tactical shooter is coming to consoles, with cross-play in tow.

Take Command

While you might think that Ready or Not is primarily a multiplayer experience (and you’d be right), you may be just as surprised as I was to find a sizeable amount of single player content. Firstly, you can tackle any of the games eighteen missions solo, with an AI squad of SWAT team members at your side in ‘quick play’ for some one-and-done fun. There are additional missions available via DLC, which is available at launch.

The star of single player however is assuredly ‘Command’ mode, which takes those same missions and essentially places you as the lead commander of the aforementioned SWAT team, leading them through a variety of situations. These are the same missions that can be played in multiplayer with friends, but in ‘Command’ mode, there’s a new wrinkle. Here, you’ll have to manage the wellbeing of your squad. Death is permanent, and can have a serious effect on the morale of your remaining team should one of them fall during a mission.

How aggressive you are, or indeed how lethal you customise your team to be can also have an effect on how your AI squad mates behave. The enemy AI is similarly reactive – in a mission where there are multiple hostages, if you successfully defuse the threat, the enemy AI may start executing hostages as a reaction. Equally, eliminate or arresting most of the the enemy combatants in the field, may see the remaining few become super aggressive in an effort to take you down.

Each mission begins with a debriefing, sharing details on the location, a list of potential suspects as well as any possible hostages. Well acted and pretty immersive 911 call recordings are often included, and going over this information before deploying to the scene can make all the difference between success and abject failure. You’ll get scored per mission based on how many main and optional objectives you achieved, as well as your overall performance – and being non-lethal is more rewarding. Barking orders at a potential suspect and getting them to surrender is preferable to wiping them out on first sighting. I can see chasing S rankings becoming a bit of an addiction.

Flash and Clear

You can command your team via a contextual radial menu with a press of right bumper, which allows for some neat tactical plays. It’s not perfect, and I imagine the challenge of bringing a very complex control scheme from PC over to Console was no easy task, but the developers have done a pretty admirable job here. Point your aiming reticule at a door, and you can order your team to stack up against it, then to clear a room, scan an area for evidence and more. You can even split your five-man team into two squads (red and blue) to set up some staged simultaneous-entrance pincer movements. It’s not perfect, and can be more than a little fiddly, but it gets the job done.

If you’re going into Ready or Not expecting to be able to run and gun, you’d best brace for a swift hail of bullets to the face. This is an extremely deliberate, tactical gameplay experience, that demands patience and forward planning to get the best out of the game. There’s no sprint, with at most a steady stride should you lower your weapon for swifter movement – sacrificing combat readiness.

You can equip a variety of lethal and non-lethal weapon setups depending upon the situation at hand, with authentic equipment available that SWAT teams utilise in real life. There are tasers, shotguns, ballistic shields, mirror cameras to see under doors – I could go on. On the lowest difficulty, you could definitely ‘wing it’ through a mission, but on standard and especially hard modes you will need to be take things at a much slower pace.

There’s no ‘i’ in ‘SWAT Team‘

Of course, as much as I think Ready or Not‘s single player options are worth a look, multiplayer is where the game truly shines. I’ve been playing the game on Xbox Series X (and occasionally dabbling on PC for comparison) and as the game supports cross-play between platforms, enjoying some very tense shoot-outs with pals. In many ways, it reminds me of bouts of Terrorist Hunt on Rainbow 6 Vegas back on the Xbox 360, but with far more depth. I especially love the very cool ‘bodycam’ view, should you die mid-mission, allowing you to see your teammates perspective in a unique way.

The levels start off fairly simple, with a robbery at a Petrol Station and Convenience Store. Things escalate quickly and before you know it, you’ll be dealing with hostage situations, defusing booby traps, investigating meth labs and more. There’s a lot of challenge to be had, and of course you’ll want a good, communicative team to get stuck in with.

While there is matchmaking available, you’re at the mercy of lady luck as to whether you’ll get a team of ‘Chatty Cathy’s’ to help you maintain control and succeed on a mission. I’ve had far more enjoyable sessions teaming up with friends and like-minded players that seek to take things a little more seriously, and relish in the challenge on offer. The game does ship with cross-play which requires players to link their EPIC accounts. From there, we found you could see your Xbox friends and your PC friends without issue – it’s perhaps a convoluted setup, but it does work.

The tension that can be felt throughout a mission is nothing short of palpable, and it’s aided by an impressively immersive soundscape. Guns boom and deafen, and the thud of boots in the room above, along with the muffled cries of “It’s the cops!” all add to a fantastic atmosphere which only helps bring all the gameplay highs together. Some great level design and smart environmental story telling also go a very long way, as you investigate crime scenes and make snap decisions based on what you find. Some of what you can discover is pretty grim – much like law enforcement encounters in real life, I suppose.

There are a few hiccups – graphically, the game looks pretty great most of the time, and offers both performance and quality modes. Some player characters look like they’re made of wax, and some of the animations when restraining suspects, or indeed when they ragdoll can be laughable. Additionally, the default sensitivity for aiming felt woefully slow on controller, but it can be adjusted if it’s not to your liking. It’s important to state that none of that wonkiness or the not-entirely-stable-performance mode detracts from those gameplay-driven highs though, and the occasional bit of jank becomes pretty easy to overlook.

Ready? Or Not?

Ready or Not ushers in the triumphant return of tactical FPS games to console, and I’m all the happier for it. With a decent single player option, plenty of replayability and a multiplayer co-operative mode that absolutely shines, Ready or Not will offer plenty of tactically driven gameplay for those that look for it. If you prefer to run’n’gun, you’d best look elsewhere.