In case you haven’t heard, Void Interactive’s Ready or Not recently landed on Xbox Series X/S and PS5, and it’s pretty good. You’re probably thinking, “You would know that if you played the PC release!” and you know what? Fair enough, but better late than never, especially with all the additional content, fixes (fake surrenders are less rare than before) and improvements. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me, especially after I’ve heard about the game in passing for so long, is how good playing solo can be.
While reviewing Ready or Not, co-op play was entertaining in its own right. It was enjoyable to hang out in the police station lobby with my teammates before proceeding to clear out hallways while calling out hostiles, or suddenly being taken down by a single suspect (or, as I would learn the hard way, a door trap). In a sense, it felt like this was what made the experience so endearingly tense and chaotic. Granted, it also depends on your teammates, so your mileage will vary, but it’s still something I could recommend.
However, this doesn’t mean solo play is lacking. It’s a different beast entirely.
The main attraction is Commander Mode, a story campaign where you command D Platoon and take up to five AI squad members on a mission. You’re also in charge of managing their stress levels – if a single civilian dies or other officers fall, they have to go to therapy, making them unavailable. This means recruiting other squadmates to fill those slots, if only to have more eyes to watch your back and bodies to block off any potential threats. After all, once a teammate garners enough experience, they can unlock powerful perks, which are shared across the squad. More health, easier surrenders by suspects – not only will they make upcoming missions easier, but also allow for greater margins of error (which is invaluable in a game like this where every decision is critical).
However, there are other benefits to not taking experienced officers with you. Let’s say you’re running through the story blind and doing relatively well in the first few missions. Sooner or later, you hit that one mission – the restaurant is but one example – where teammates die. If you survive and complete the mission, the campaign continues, and new officers must be recruited. It’s frustrating, especially since you couldn’t have possibly predicted some threats or more dangerous suspects (never mind losing officers with worthwhile perks). But if you take a recruit or two from the start, you’re effectively saving the more experienced officers from potential death. Right?
Callous as it sounds, Ready or Not accounts for this. Stress can accumulate in a myriad of ways, and squadmates will either need a timeout or therapy to bring them down, especially if they have worthwhile perks that you want to unlock. However, the number of therapy slots is limited. While you could take other recruits along for the ride at any point, it’s encouraged to build up a proper roster (by, say, running earlier missions) so that you can cycle out officers periodically rather than waiting for them to crash and potentially quit.
Of course, if you want to attempt a mid to late game mission with rookies, consequences be damned, you can do that as well. You might even be able to take a stressed-out officer on a mission and complete it successfully. After all, you can save time and effectively finish the story faster, but it’s always a high-risk endeavor, especially with veterans potentially quitting afterwards, even if things go well. It’s a XCOM style system of sorts, which adds an extra layer of unpredictability and strategy missing in co-op.
And similar to XCOM, much of your success will depend on your strategy. You can issue commands, like stacking and opening a door, with a dedicated wheel, but it’s possible to mash R1 in different contextual situations. For example, you can direct a squadmate to restrain a suspect while you check those corners for flankers. It’s especially worthwhile when dealing with fake surrenders, or in later missions when almost every suspect has a holdout weapon to pull if you don’t restrain them.
However, you need to maintain awareness at all times, even when proceeding as methodically as possible. Clearing out rooms and covering your squadmates is only the beginning – it’s also important to block doors with wedges to prevent any potential flanks and practice breaching tactics to ensure surrenders. While firefights can be frantic and enjoyable, the risk of losing squadmates or even civilians increases dramatically.
Perhaps the best part about Ready or Not’s solo play is that success isn’t outright guaranteed. You can hone your skills, but there will always be some level of unpredictability, whether it’s in the suspect placements or how they act when ordering compliance. An element of chaos that you can’t always bring order to.
The behavior of AI squadmates is no exception – it’s not difficult for them to shoot a surrendering civilian because they took too long to take out a phone or to take out a suspect that must survive. You can shift the odds in your favor by modifying their loadouts accordingly, ensuring they don’t swap to lethal sidearms when you’re trying to take a non-lethal approach. They also don’t suffer from bleeding and will match your speed. While it’s not full control – you can’t just suddenly tell them to stop firing when a situation goes wrong – understanding all these nuances provides an edge. If that wasn’t enough, even if you die, they can still complete the mission, though it heavily depends on the objectives.
It’s worth noting all of this because the true long-term appeal of Ready or Not isn’t in completing the story once and moving on (even if that can provide more than your money’s worth). It’s perfecting the fundamentals across various situations, which change at a moment’s notice, and improving your score. Once done, you can attempt missions at a higher difficulty to truly test yourself. And if you really feel like putting your skills, understanding of what each mission demands, and roster management to the test, embark on an Iron Man run, where a single death from your side will end the campaign.
Maybe this won’t appeal to many players, but it’s nice to have that kind of mastery aspect in the experience, since the game provides several tools and methods to ensure success. In the same vein, its challenges aren’t easily conquerable, which makes it even more worthwhile when you ultimately prevail. It’s a subtle balance in many ways, and the fact that these options are available for an array of players, whether you want a brutally realistic SWAT-like experience or something far less tense yet enthralling, is great. And for those who are truly insane, you can try to clear all missions as a lone wolf.
At this point, I’m interested to see where Ready or Not goes, and whether more DLC is on the menu or Void Interactive will release a much more extensive expansion, perhaps even a sequel. If it’s proven anything with its 2023 release on PC and its 2025 launch on consoles, it’s that we sorely need more squad-based tactical shooters that encourage tactics over mindless shooting. And with the stories it tells, as indirect as they may be if you’re not paying attention to the briefings, it would be interesting to see what a sequel set in another city would look like.
Regardless of what’s next, if you’re enjoying Ready or Not in co-op and debating whether to dip your toes into solo play, go ahead and take the plunge. You’ll discover a fresh, fun, and brutal experience.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
