Prepared or Not Overview (PS5)

Prepared or Not is a slow-paced, uber-tactical first-person shooter. It’s a brilliant critical PC launch that’s lastly made its strategy 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 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 footwear of a SWAT officer within the Los Sueños Police Division. Groups of 5 will head out on varied 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 potential. 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 completely different ranges throughout the primary Prepared or Not marketing campaign, with an additional eight missions obtainable via DLC. We have been shocked by how assorted and distinctive every of the degrees fels. From dingy drug dens to millionaire mansions, every degree has a particular environment 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 dying, and its tight-knit corridors dictates the sorts of weapons you may herald with you.

One other takes place in a group school, the place the lengthy hallways are the supply of fixed paranoia. A hostage state of affairs in a resort meant we needed to systematically make our manner 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 model of gameplay. You see, Prepared Or Not shouldn’t be some lock-and-load motion shooter. A single stray bullet from an enemy or teammate can imply dying, and even on the conventional issue your entire squad can go down in the event you aren’t cautious. We would not say the AI is sensible however it’s aggressive and fairly unpredictable.

There’s a reasonably 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) alternative ways you possibly can work together with a door.

This studying curve makes the only participant mode way more of a chore. You might be joined by 4 AI teammates who have to be commanded always. These could be fairly particular and might take a while to return to grips with.

You possibly can order your staff to stack up on the door, specify which aspect of the door, inform them how you can 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 may spend your opening hours preventing to get your instructions throughout appropriately.

You possibly can 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 best way developer Void Interactive desires you to play.

As a substitute, Prepared or Not is at its finest once you’re taking part in with a full squad of actual teammates. In our early missions we have been all scattered, aimlessly blasting our manner via the missions. Nevertheless, with no respawns on dying, we fairly shortly 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 staff 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 creating our tactical abilities was one of the crucial satisfying components of Prepared or Not.

Nevertheless, it does serve up an attention-grabbing 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 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 aren’t any hit markers or directional injury indicators. Killing enemies could be fairly harrowing really, as they hunch towards 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 staff was taking part in, firefights would usually lead to a panicked barrage of bullets.

What we cherished 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 possibly can tilt your weapons left or proper, and you may 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 various choices in terms of 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 deliver on a mission. This implies coordination with the staff permits somebody to deliver a Mirrorgun to look below doorways, whereas one other squadmate might 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 because of 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 isn’t any run button, which we expect works brilliantly for the best way the sport desires you to play. Nevertheless, it might probably turn out to be a difficulty once you’re scouring the map for one final hidden goal. Lots 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 secure 60fps. The latter drops all the way down to a uneven 30fps, and the visible distinction is principally unnoticeable. The assorted perps and civilians you may be coping with all look very rubbery, however the environments look incredible with advantageous particulars and atmospheric lighting bringing every of its settings to life.