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As with the common tale of many early access survival indie titles, the game has a lot of potential but potential cannot be played. The basic premise is simple - You have 2 hours real-time of sunlight to explore the world, level up, find gear and survival stuff, and craft a series of traps and your base to prepare for a short burst of horde siege at night. Every night that passes the zombies get stronger during the night wave.

While that sounds all fine and dandy, polish and a good user experience are not terms synonymous with this title. The game can be summarised as a haphazard cobble web of Unreal store assets and controllers slapped together to function average at best. The melee system is quite literally one of the worst amongst its genre, utilising what the developers have proudly proclaimed as an innovative animation based extremely hitbox precise method of hit detection. In order to deal damage and stagger a zombie, your melee weapon must physically connect its blade to the target. It sounds great until you realise that animations for using melees are inconsistent. You character might swing an axe left first, then try to do a centre smash, then swing it left. Its such an inconsistent system that the only way to properly melee is to get so close right up in the zombie's face that whichever way you swing you make sure it will touch the zombie.

Any time the server lags for a millisecond, the zombie hits you instead. The netcode is so bad that zombies often teleport and desyncs their positions and you will need around 6-10 hits to kill a basic zombie until you reach the lategame weapons.

Vehicles are jank coffins, and the game's APC, despite being a supposedly tanky military vehicle, blows up from colliding into a zombie slightly too fast. We accidentally drove the APC under a ceiling and because we had a flag pole above it flipped our APC and exploded us instantly causing us to lose everything. Fuel is burnt fast and each time you hit a zombie if you do not explode the APC loses around 10% of its health, requiring constant repairs.

There are some positives to this game, and firstly its the map. The map is done very well, despite using a lot of common UE store assets, they are placed well and from the exteriors it looks coherent, and the map has a lot of vistas and landmarks that let you identify your bearing by just looking at the mountains etc. The interiors are kinda bad though, and its not uncommon for the random gen to spawn furniture at an offset, so the fridge clips into the wall or blocks the door.

The base building is decent, and is moreso Sanctum style Tower Defence where you build mazes and towers to funnel them versus 7DaystoDie style where you bunker in for an all round siege. The issue is that the early game is too easy, and ballistas are so overpowered they will one-shot snipe almost any zombie from far away. Build 10 of this and you can survive at least your first 40 real life hours of this game even on Hard or higher settings.

Quick fire points:
-There is a story but its done in just journals that lead you on a goose chase around the map and the ending isn't ready.
-The skills build system while decent is literally unbalanced.
-Zombie variety is good and slightly better than other competitor titles.
-Don't screw around with bears.

Overall its extremely early access and it shows. There is potential for the devs to fix up the issues and itd be a good game, but well... How many early access games that are already 2 years old have ever really been fixed?

Sideways thumb, putting a negative for now because you must be masochistic to a point to enjoy this title as it is.

Good campaign, underwhelming end game content. Buy on sale.

Decent survival action game with a flavouring of RPG combat, although somewhat under-cooked in each aspects of its undertaking.

The game's presentation is great. Although the setting itself isn't unique, featuring very standard fantasy genre trope creatures, set pieces and designs. There isn't anything here that you haven't seen in other fantasy games, but this time you are playing as a vampire, so your castle exudes very Gothic styles and furniture. The graphics are nice, the lighting works well and night and day are remarkably different experiences visually. The only major dissonance here is really the use of low poly character models for the bosses and enemies, visually clashing with the detailed world assets.

There is a decent amount of foliage and clutter, and each biome feels distinct enough from one another to encourage exploration and provide diversity. Sound design is decent, although nothing too memorable.

Moving on to gameplay, the strengths and weaknesses are more pronounced. You play as a vampire with explicit goals of hunting down special bosses that award you new blueprints and powers on defeat. Similar to other genre staples, you can either use an altar at your castle to create a tracking trail that leads to the boss, or you can simply head to the area and find them as they are either always in an arena or have a set patrol route.

The bosses are varied enough to feel fun, although the first half of the bosses are simply just enhanced mobs, and the last few bosses are where it gets more interesting and challenging. There is a need to plan the time you engage these bosses, as the game's day night cycle means that in the day when the sun is out you can possibly be caught in an arena basked in sunlight, which casts a deadly ray on your vampire that can quickly finish you off.

The castle building is decent, and utilizes a gridbased expansion and construction system. This means that you can quickly build structures and alignment is easy, though it also means that the more avid builder might feel limited. There are a decent amount of crafting stations with your standard forge, woodwork, chemistry and sawmill, and a few other specific stations that involve blood refinement. Where the base building gets unique is the introduction of prison cells that allow you to lure charmed NPCs with a high blood quality back, imprisoning them and turning them into livestock. There are a number of farming stations available, although the steep material costs involved to even begin production of other materials can be off-putting.

Crafting is one of the weakest points here, and while its generic tiered weapon crafting system is serviceable, the problem of the material acquisition rate rears its ugly head often. As an example, the mid game to late game crafting utilizes a lot of scourgestone in almost any high end crafting materials. Scourgestone is either found in graveyard areas, or crafted with a set of lesser materials that are still specific to find. Almost the entirety of your progression will be locked by scourgestone production rates, while other materials accumulate well into excess stacks. After the scourgestone drought ends, you will run into the next issue, scrolls, which are needed to randomly unlock a blueprint on your research desk, hoping for armor and weapon unlocks even as the RNG decides to unlock a furniture blueprint instead.

All these crafting woes lead to a massive grind for resources, one that can only countered by playing in larger coop parties or if PVP, raiding other castles. There needs to be more loot spots or more enemies and loot drops per spot for some materials, especially ones that bleed into multiple recipes.

The combat is quite engaging, it allows you to pick two spells, an ultimate and you have three weapon skills preset based on what weapon you are using. There are some neat combos here, and the telegraphing and real time evasion of attacks provide for a rather fun combat system that you can get better at with play. Much of the spell options are however, locked behind boss kills, and there is no other customisation which means that most players you encounter would be running similar builds that lack variety. You can select a class in essence by drinking blood from a creature or human of a particular class, and the quality of the blood determines how much buffs you receive. While interesting, it turns into a micromanagement game that can become annoying later on.

Loot is mostly restricted to more materials for crafting, and bosses do not drop unique gear outside of the one or two that do early game. Gear scales upwards with pure stats, so a higher level sword does nothing but increase your damage, and adds nothing else. This bland tiered gearing system can rear its ugly head later on when you begin to feel like there is a lack of motivation to earn new gear.

The game does have a lot of potential and is a blast to play with friends, but at the end of the day it feels like a lacking title that only slightly innovates from the standard genre tropes and then completely stops and doesn't take the game further. The systems work well together, but they do not work at the levels needed to make the game stand out.

Early Access, keep an eye, decent for its price.

The Crew 2 is actually pretty decent. It is an arcade racer first with some simulation DNA in the mix. The main selling point of the title is the massive open world spanning a replica of the United States. A number of the major U.S. cities from Los Angeles to New York exist here, and you can drive cross-country through the various biomes partaking in various racing focused activities.

The vehicles in this game span a huge array, from flashy supercars, drifters, bikes, Formula-One cars, off-roaders to even planes and boats. The vehicles are pretty well modelled, and the customisation system is quite extensive. Aside from the paint, custom decals can be applied using an editor that combines basic shapes and fonts, and body kit items such as hoods and spoilers are available to be interchanged. Tyres, window tints and under-lights are available as well, and there a few quirky options such as magic infused window tints, or having a small toy plane flying above your car. These cosmetic options may not be realistic, but they pair well with the game's otherwise arcade nature.

Performance however, utilises a loot system, a trend from recent Ubisoft titles. Instead of buying and tuning better parts for your vehicles, you earn loot drops from events and boxes, the loot is colour-graded in standard RPG colors from green (common) to yellow (legendary). Each part has a score rating that directly impacts its performance, and better color grades mean more bonus affixes.

Speaking of driving, the game's driving is much closer to other arcade titles such as Need For Speed rather than Gran Turismo, and there is a quirk to the way the game handles vehicle handling. For one, the driving itself is serviceable, but there is a tendency for all vehicles to over-steer and fish tail out of control very easily with a light tap of the hand brake. Tight corners are somewhat harder to handle, often involving a much more preemptive brake usage than traditional racing games. Still, it is not impossible to get used to this system with play.

Each vehicle category has a list of races and activities that are exclusive to them. Alpha GP car events are mostly hosted on racetracks, while street cars are more focused on urban racing. There are some special modes such as Motoflix, which lets you play as a Police car intercepting and smashing deviant racer AIs off the road, or the Agency, where instead of racing cars you are trying to rack up as much style points through ramp jumps, tight turns and smashing stuff. These modes are a fun break from the otherwise traditional races.

There is a story, and some cut-scenes with your custom character/ silent protagonist, but the open ended nature of how you tackle missions can lead to some confusion in the story itself. Each vehicle category has their own narrative and supporting characters, so it can feel quite disjointed especially if you have not done any of the story races in a while.

There is a motorpass, which is basically the quintessential battlepass, although the dailies themselves aren't too taxing, with most being very general dailies such as "Do any 1 street race category event". The downside is that most of the items and cars in the motorpass are locked behind premium paid credits, which is an additional purchase on top of the main game.

Most of the game is PVE, and can be soloed or done with a crew of 3 players. In races, only one person needs to win for everyone to get paid the top prize, although podium finishes with all 3 players at the top gains bonuses as well. There is a PVP mode, although this is a small portion of the game.

In conclusion, there is a lot on offer here, and it is a result of the years of updates that The Crew 2 has received. The game goes on sale quite often, so it is not advisable to purchase at full price unless you really want it now. Pretty decent game.

//Early Access Review//
The SCP universe has been one of the most prolific assemblages of fan fiction urban legends in pop culture. Although most of the games in the series has been about experiencing the world through the eyes of a helpless D-Class prisoner, this game takes a different approach, placing you in the shoes of a rogue Mobile Task Force operator infiltrating a facility with guns and buddies. In some ways, it does invoke elements of its intended Tactical Shooter genre.
The game is designed as a hardcore shooter first, very low time-to-kill and a heavy emphasis on slower, methodical combat as compared to other action-rich titles in the cooperative horror market. Both you and the enemies die in one head shot, while two or three chest hits are enough to expire your trial of life. There is an emphasis on moving in tandem to clear out rooms before proceeding, without the need to rush or speed through.

Presentation
The world design works, almost. The lighting and brutalist architecture that adorn the facility's sprawling chambers, are visually pleasing. There is a very familiar look to the game, reminiscent of Remedy Entertainment's 2019 action title Control. Modern concrete and reflective floors, with the occasional pillars of artificial light, evoke a sense of surrealism. Sure, the lack of proper detail and clutter is apparent throughout the levels, and at times the game reminds you of its Early Access nature with completely empty rooms sporting nothing else but a single workbench for modifying your weapons, but they have nailed the aesthetics at the very least. The game's aesthetic intentions are apparent from what is available.

Gameplay
From a gameplay perspective, the level design takes a severe hit from its current unfinished state, as too often the game is filled with placeholder areas. Long stretches of redundant corridors, stairwells that are seemingly too long (some are essentially 5-7 stories high and require a lot of 180 degree turns), empty connector rooms that have multiple doors that open to dead ends are examples. The levels resemble blockouts more than actual maps. Some stairwells do not even come with railings, which make them look like basic blockout geometry. In one particular instance, the game requires players to use an elevator to reach the next area. This elevator shaft has no external doors except a main shutter that is manually operated. In singleplayer it's not a big deal, yet in coop it is common for someone to go ahead and use the lift, and everyone else just walks in and its this big empty shaft while the lift has to return.

The levels are really basic, and the flow is often broken at all the wrong times. This isn't helped by the gameplay objectives either. The Area12 campaign map consists of a multitude of simple objectives chained together to form the level. There is no narrative dialog, or any form of in-world text or lore to support the objectives. These are delivered through your HUD mostly by way of white text just informing you to move to a point and press a button. Collection objectives involve you looking all over for files on shelves for example. Sometimes multiple objectives are stacked on your HUD.

Artificial Intelligence is extremely basic, and lacks the capability to provide any form of engagement past running directly at the player and firing their guns, or in the case of the zombie enemies, they run in a straight line at you until they die. There are three common enemies you will fight: The facility's guards which with engage you with firearms, the D-Class prisoners which also use firearms, and the zombie-like SCPs which overwhelm you in hordes. The problem here is that the guards and the D-Class are essentially just re-skins, since they do not behave in any noticeably different way. The way you clear a room is the same for all enemies. More SCPs are in the works, but the game is still lacking a fair representation of the extensive cast of SCPs that they can draw from. You can play with SCP-173 Peanut in the testing room, but it has not been implemented in the campaign mode. Still, the SCP experience has always been about a wide assemblage of anomolous entities, which is absent here.

Conclusion
The result is a very lacklustre campaign experience, one that is just simple "point A to B, stop and fire your guns" experience that really needs a lot more work. There are PVP modes and a wave survival, but if you are buying this game it is unlikely you are looking for those experiences, which are extremely barebones anyway. As of now, almost every aspect is still in a largely unfinished state.

It is interesting at least, rarely does the term “hardcore coop horror shooter” ring a bell, especially one built on the veins of tactical shooters and not a Left4Dead tribute.
As a game, I would not recommend this yet, unless you are comfortable with a very early alpha build. Keep an eye on this one.

Its okay. But that is the issue, it is just okay. If I could try and summarise the game at this state, its well polished mediocrity.

Imagine the most generic 2D dungeon crawler survival voxel indie game you can think of. Basic harvesting, farming, combat, building. The game hits all the standard tropes of its kind. Slime enemies, wooden, copper, iron swords, pickaxes and equivalent tiered workbenches to boot. It runs well, and there aren't a ton of bugs even. The experience is smooth, yet... Stale. There are zero attempts to deviate or innovate from established genre cliches, and when you finally meet something that piques your interest slightly more, its over too soon without any form of followup.

The first six or seven (coop) or ten hours (solo) involves you trying to open the world up. There is an unbreakable wall that encircles your vicinity, and all but one of the game's biomes exist within this zone. You open this prison up by doing world bosses, each exists in their own unbreakable arena, and you summon them with a crafted item which in turn gives you an item to place in a statue at the centre to craft boss loot.

There are five or so biomes as of this review, and within each biome there are two or three enemy types. The enemies in each biome could drop a unique weapon or trinket that is themed for that biome, but there are no general loot drops or items that motivate you to explore and loot. Sometimes you fight through a concentration of enemies to reach a chest that gives you maybe 3 pieces of bread and a wooden fishing rod. Think about that. You are by now a fully clad knight or wizard in boss loot crafted armor, and the game rewards you with... Tier zero loot.

After you finally open the wall up, the game expands massively, you can now freely explore everywhere else. Except.... Imagine a vastly proc-generated biome that is just one singular biome with two or three enemy types, the same small structures, no vast, unique exploration points of interests. There is absolutely no reason to explore 30 or 40 minutes North, because you will just be breaking walls down and digging through vast stretches of the same environment. The early 4 or 5 biomes we mentioned before reaching this purgatory? Well, they do not spawn here. You will run out of resources. You will run out of food. This is literally unfinished content stretched on by a procedural machine that missed its expiration date that was hours ago.

Sure, the game IS in Early Access. YES. The devs promised more, and an ending. However, there are zero attempts to create any form of hook to this game. Every mechanic, enemy, biome in this game exists in almost every other game in its genre, and in other games, these are all just basic foundations that aren't even the main interesting points that other games have.

There are no plans to change this direction, if it even has any at all. The visuals are pretty, not breathtaking, but pretty. Lighting is pretty decent. There is a charm to its top down aesthetics. It looks good. That's it. By the tenth hour, I have lost all interest in pushing through metric bucketloads of thick grass in order to get through to scarlet ore to craft a lantern. Boss fights are only fun because the devs did not attempt to playtest the game enough, so all the bosses are easily cheesed and exploited until this one boss that forgets that scaling to four players does not mean just scaling literally every number in the arena by four times.

The game keeps you playing through forcefully extending your grind. Skills are gained at such a mediocre rate that you can play for an entire forty or so minutes and you get only one skill point to level up an extremely basic skill tree that has only two options for the most part. The simplicity here is not the problem. Rather, the skill system again mirrors everything else in the game. It does nothing unique, or interesting. Nothing new. Again.

There IS potential. The game's one and only unique point is that the entire map is an underground system. You CAN build rail tracks and ride minecarts on them to speed up the hundreds of back and forth you are going to do from the core and back, except this system is barely ever used to its potential. Its there, it works. Yeah its done lets pack up. There could be amazing machines that promote charting and ease construction of complex transportation networks to play in with the whole underground theme of the map. Yet.... Nothing.

Nothing.
Just hours. And hours. And hours. AND HOURS. Of pushing through purgatory only to end up in the same room you were in just now except with a few rocks and branches positioned differently. SOMEBODY GET ME OUT. HELP.
But hey. It's 12 bucks right? I mean.... Oh, you repair everything by crafting and breaking wooden tools, so yes. You repair top tier whatever ore swords with wood.

I guess its an okay game.

In 1982 John Carpenter's The Thing set the stage in pop culture as a keynote for suspense and cosmic horror involving a cell-restructuring parasite. Decades later, the evolution of cosmic and body horror involving alien organisms and grotesque human malformation have spawned games such as Dead Space and Aliens.

Hidden Deep is an attempt at replicating some form of the suspense and horror that iconic alien media has achieved. In concept, it sounds like it. The game mainly focuses on exploring caverns and mining shafts with a soldier character that has a gun and exploration tools such as grappling hooks and scanner drones, then switching to engineer characters that can operate various machinery to solve puzzles to clear the way forward. If the thought of dark caverns filled with unknown hostile alien life and a high mortality rate sound great to you, hold on.

The concept is solid, and there are genuinely good moments that speak well to the horror nature of the game. Rappelling down a dark cave while controlling your descent so as to avoid an untimely death by swinging too hard against a wall, you hear horrific creature noises down in the depths somewhere. Your flashlight extends out and catches a glimpse of some bloody mess of organs that comes towards you. You draw your pistol out and fire into the darkness, each shot having a loud, impactful boom whilst lighting the darkness up, rounds clinking off the ground.

The gameplay does show its potential at times. Between the action focused exploration and combat, engineer based gameplay can be interesting. Remote controlling lifts to ferry equipment across chasms while controlling the speed so as to not accidentally smash or swing the load off the lift, building bridges and pushing boxes with loaders are some of the vehicle interactions available. As a single player game, you assume control of up to five different crewmen, one at a time. While definitely serviceable, there are times when the game feels rather clunky due to enemies attacking an uncontrolled character, which requires you to cycle through to that character and arm your weapon to deal with the threat.

Ultimately though, these mechanics while working, are let down by the lack of user experience polish throughout the game. Trying to attach on ladders is a clunky experience of running back and forth trying to find a pixel perfect point where you can jump to grab a ladder. Your character has a jump and a way to catch ledges, but knee-height ledges are unable to be passed as there are no interactions set up for them. Getting soft locked in a terrain along the main path unable to proceed is quite a common occurrence, so much so that the game offers a stuck recovery option that consumes a life to respawn your character.

Environments, while immersive - are lacking, since most of the game revolves around a very limited set of assets that are the same identical rooms and shafts scattered around the one cave environment. Perhaps more variety would have helped, since by hour three you would have felt like there was no sense of exploration or motivation to continue past getting to the end point of whatever you have ended up in, in large part due to a lack of substantial story delivery or interesting environment changes. There is barely any dialog or story points. You get told to get to the next area at the start of each map, and that is it.

The enemies themselves are interesting, although nothing you won't find elsewhere. The main enemies are flying bat like creatures that can deposit a slug that attacks you. Sometimes there is a noticeable hole in the roof and a bloodworm comes out that can insta-kill you. There are other varieties, but all in all the enemies do not feel much like a danger, rather an annoyance. This is mainly because there is a predefined method of dealing with them, mostly aiming your gun into unexplored areas, then firing a shot to draw them and then just shoot. There is no suspense or fear associated because lives are so disposable and enemies are so predictable, missing the mark of pop culture icons such as The Thing where you never knew who or how to fight your way out. Again, this was a stated inspiration for this game.

Coop is available, but very limited. There is a side challenge mode where coop is optional with a controller plugged in (Splitscreen or remote play) for 2 players and it is the exact same map on the exact same mode.

Overall, do I reccomend it? Not at this stage. There is a solid foundation for a good game here, but unfortunately in its current state it is lacking enough substance to be worth its asking price. The atmosphere? Great. The sounds? Great. Potential? Amazing. Delivery and execution? Lacking.

While the premise of a retro-scifi cooperative horde shooter set aboard a mysterious spaceship is interesting, the game fails to deliver an experience that is capable of immersing you in its setting.

The macro designs of the environment are nice. Bright cheery colors adorn the curvy walls of a retro-scifi inspired map that in essence reminds you of Arkane studios' Prey. There is always something unsettling about exploring a representation of what the 80's thought the future would look like, except this time devoid of the cheery humans that are supposed to inhabit it. There is an interesting spire mall, outdoors garden section and even the residential sectors look somewhat interesting.

These designs however, are failed by their micro level details, where a lack of clutter (Items scattered to make a map feel lived in), lack of in-world lore such as advert boards and objects make the maps feel very blockout-esque and dull. Corridors are empty lifeless tunnels that do not have any personality. You know the feeling when you walk into an unopened mall and everything is speck clean and empty? Yeah.

This lack of map character extends to the characters themselves, where there is barely any dialog that would cast each character as a personality in themselves. The characters barely speak, and when they do its just basic contextual cues about specials or hordes. Lore-related conversations are barely present, or at least so insignificant that playing through 4 maps of the first campaign I still had no clue who these characters are or what they are doing, other than the fact that they are trying to get from point A to point B and that is it.

The gunplay is quick lacklustre as well. There are a few basic guns (Assault rifle, submachinegun, shotgun, pistol) and they are all pew pew blasters which shoot slow moving balls of plasma. While certainly unique, the downside is that the gunplay lacks the impact and oomphf of regular guns. There is no satisfying headshot effects and sounds, since the enemies on death just flail to the ground and lie dead. Without dismemberment, mobs just become sponges to blast at. The ammo refills are a reflection of the bland design, being just a metallic stand with a ball, no lights, effects or designs that make them stand out. The players I played with did not even realise they refilled ammo, until you approached them and saw the "charge energy" words.

Grenades are slightly better, only because they are so abundant and there are more types. There are stasis, shield, frag, slow goo, vortex nades. While varied, in the end there is no tactical decision involved in which nade you want to use. They all pretty much end up doing the same thing of holding an incoming horde and allowing you to dispose of them quickly.

Special designs are even worse. The grabber is a silent ninja that can instantly lock you in a ranged grab from across the room. The flasher literally becomes a light source that is cranked up extremely high to make it uncomfortable for the player to look in its direction. Take a flashlight IRL and look straight at the bulb. It is a terrible concept to make an enemy that is physically uncomfortable to the player as a mechanic. The tankish enemies are basically just bullet sponges that do not stagger, you just run in one direction and dump your blasters into them. The one interesting special is this swarm of spiked ball enemies that will lay dormant until activated and they will roll around to you in droves.

The game isn't really bad per se, and its price is actually somewhat decent (If on sale at 20$). The problem is that playing the game as a whole feels very dull and lifeless. There is no character, no immersion, and you constantly feel like you are just running A to B in a bland map with a lack of user polish.

This is EA though, so maybe it will get better? As always, there is potential here.

The loading screen is literally a sinking boat, very reminiscent of a particular game with a similar title. It's a standard asset flip, but with slightly more effort to make it a meme.

Ready Or Not Review [EARLY ACCESS 10/7/2022]
Ready or Not is a cooperative tactical First Person Shooter with a heavy emphasis on rules of engagement. As a member of the SWAT team, there are rules that need to be followed, and you are not allowed to open fire on everything that moves. This creates a very unique dynamic that is not often present in shooter games.

The game allows for both singleplayer with bots, or up to a five man squad for coop. Although bots are available and work for the most part, having real humans that work on communication and teamwork as opposed to button commands offer a much more complex and engaging experience.

In singleplayer, bots will fill your team, and your AI teammates can be commanded to do most functions such as clearing a room, breaching a door, or being told to move to a point or handcuff a target. The bots are very strong though, and they will almost always win every engagement and clear any room you send them into without any direct action on your part.

As of this review, PVP is still in the works and has not been released.

There are two types of NPCs other than your squadmates, suspects and civilians. Suspects are the main threat of the game, and depending on the map they can range from common armed thugs to fully armoured trained gunmen with better accuracy.

Some suspects have rifles, some have pistols, and some only have knives to rush you with. There are also suspects with explosive vests that will kill anything in a large radius around them, possibly even wiping your entire squad out in one go.

Ready or Not relies on Rules of Engagement (ROE) to create a score at the end of each round that will grade your performance. In order to get a higher grade, your team is required to follow strict protocols when completing objectives. The most obvious ROE is trigger control, and you are not allowed to fire on or hurt suspects or civilians unless they pose a direct threat and have shown reluctance to comply, or pose an immediate threat to your life by opening fire on you first.

The tools to elicit compliance from resisting targets come in the form of pepper sprays, less than lethal bean bag guns and the good ol' rifle butt to the body. Some suspects will even fake a surrender, only to pull a revolver out of their boot to ambush you with. Some might fake their death, ragdolling to the ground only to come back up to attempt to murder you when you pass them.

As for the civilians in the level, extreme care must be taken not to hurt them, and even so some civilians are very reluctant to cooperate, often refusing to get down or just running around the line of fire. Quite often you cannot distinguish a civilian from a suspect with a hidden weapon, so every NPC needs to be dealt with as a suspect first.


The firearms in Ready or Not are well modelled and animated, and come with realistic sounds that enhance the experience. When you fire a round, the reverberating echoes and distinctive crack that is extremely intimidating regardless of which direction the bullet is coming from adds to the tension and dramatic tones of a firefight. There is a substantial visual flair to the firearm operations, with visible smoke and sparks that ricochet off surfaces, persistent bullet holes and damaged environments.

The weapons can be modified with different sights, flashlights or hand grips, and there is no 'meta' loadout that is superior, with each player having their own preferred configurations and equipment. To add to the realism, the game strays away from video game tropes such as suppressors reducing damage and instead increase your weapon's bullet velocity, with the caveat of increasing your weapon length, an important trait that is seen when trying to cut corners around doorways only to get your weapon stuck in a raised position unable to fire as it is too long.Much of the game’s equipping considerations boil down to realistic choices. Do you want to bring flashlights that illuminate well ahead but risk alerting the suspects who will notice the light and perform an ambush? Do you want to bring shorter weapons like submachine guns that allow you to efficiently cut corners but lack the penetrating power of larger calibre rifles when it comes to wallbanging suspects behind closed doors?

A ballistic shield offers almost full protection from the front against small arms fire, but leaves the operator in an extremely vulnerable position with almost no visibility that is completely gone if the small glass slot is shot at. Mirror guns allow you to peek under doors to scope a room out before entering, providing valuable information, but leaves the user in a vulnerable state while scoping and maps have certain doors that block the use of one. C4 door charges blow open doors and create explosive entry opportunities, but also risk harming civilians that might potentially get caught in the blast.

Missions are often quite long, with several objectives and the slow and methodological pace of clearing each room carefully adds to the time. With the exception of Active Shooter and Bomb Defusal gamemodes, which are both time sensitive missions.

Teamwork is absolutely key in this game, and it is more important how well you work with your team than your shooting skills as a whole. Suspect and civilian count and placement are randomised between sessions, providing enough diversity each time you rerun a map to allow for replayability to an extent. Some doors are rigged with traps, some are open by default, and some are locked, changing up the flow of the map and creating opportunities for some intense firefights.

The maps are extremely detailed with good use of clutter and props to paint a realistic scene. The maps are modelled after everyday places such as suburban houses, hotels, a gas station, a hospital and even a school. They paint a grim picture of reality that some might find disturbing, but otherwise are a representation of real life SWAT scenarios that might happen.

In the night club map, countless bodies are strewn around haphazardly as gunmen have taken over and slaughtered most of the civilians within, while the music is still blasting, drinks still poured as if life was just normal moments ago, even though your team has only arrived a long time after the initial shootout has happened.

There is a very unique atmosphere to Ready or not, and the developers have taken the risk to recreate scenarios that might be frowned upon by the more casual observer. The benefit is that the maps create a story on their own. Each map has a specific theme of vice and the more you explore them the more you are immersed and aware of the going downs of the place.

As an Early Access title it still has its fair share of bugs such as teleporting NPCs, weapon issues and a few map related bugs, although most are not game breaking enough to hinder the overall experience. The content available might be a little short of its asking price for some, with only a few maps available with a few modes for each map. There is no progression system, as the game allows you to access all equipment for SWAT officers from the get go, which is great for the gameplay but some players might be hard pressed to find motivation to rerun maps after a few times. Individual mileage varies here.

As a personal recommendation, while solo play is definitely possible, it is far lacking from the experience of having a full squad of players working together on comms, where the game truly shines. Mods are also available, from weapon and uniform skin mods, custom maps to AI configuration scripts, and one that lets you raise the player limit past the default five per team.

If you’re looking for a tactical shooter with a police take and a focus on Rules of Engagement to create dynamic experiences, Ready or Not is highly recommended.