Void Interactive’s Prepared or Not casts you as a SWAT workforce chief tasked with dealing with horrific fight and hostage situations not often represented in motion video games. In a single degree you will need to storm an condo advanced the place a videogame livestreamer has killed his mom and brought his youthful brother hostage whereas nonetheless on stream. In one other you will need to clear out a methamphetamine den whose residents act erratically, forcing you to evaluate who’s and isn’t an precise risk in real-time. Deeper inside you’ll discover an incapacitated youngster on a mattress affected by spasms. A religious successor of types to the SWAT sequence, Prepared or Not differentiates itself by way of its grim dedication to the simulation of the acute, and 6 months after its 1.0 launch, it’s as uncomfortable as ever.
It’s mechanically paying homage to some FPS recreation greats. As a part of a four-person squad, you’ll work collectively to determine your infiltration model, preferrred entry factors, and strategies of entry, which embody explosive fees, battering rams, and lockpicks for a stealthier strategy. You too can combine and match entry factors and strategies after which execute them concurrently if the state of affairs requires it. When you’re inside you’ll start the extraordinary technique of clearing rooms, trying to find hostages, amassing proof, and stopping both actual or perceived threats.
It’s straightforward to get misplaced within the sporadic bursts of civilian panic and the believably sudden and at instances scientific nature of the violence. Screaming at frenzied civilians to hit the ground and put their fingers behind their heads begins to really feel like a part of the grim routine, as do the moments the place you mistake them for a risk, gun them down, and incur a meager rating penalty. Its allusions to realism and ripped-from-the-headlines situations merely don’t sit properly with its want to retain and reward you for a job properly accomplished.
Prepared or Not works finest when tensions are excessive and also you’re but to slide into any type of numbing familiarity. The AI enemies are shocking crack photographs, lighting you up with pinpoint accuracy must you make a false transfer. The traumatic audio design coupled with the plausible enemy conduct often thrusts you right into a horrible recreation of cat and mouse the place you’re the surprising prey. I’ve discovered myself because the final individual standing whereas nonetheless trying to find remaining suspects solely to appreciate they’ve been quietly and patiently lurking behind a door the entire time, giving me the type of jolt you’d count on from essentially the most skillfully executed bounce scare.
In time, nevertheless, Prepared or Not’s simulation begins to really feel like a grind towards a grislier-than-usual and arguably bad-faith energy fantasy. The extra I returned to that streamer’s home, raided that civilian-filled drug den, stormed that nightclub, experimented with my big arsenal, and tried on my tasteful cosmetics, the much less I considered the sport’s dealing with of its subject material.
“Don’t neglect: Our mission is to not create widows and orphans. It’s to deliver order to chaos,” reads a banner hanging on the wall of your briefing room. One other close by proclaims “Cease the killing. Cease the dying,” which makes me giggle after I bear in mind my arsenal contains dozens of deadly weapons and a grand whole of three with non-lethal capabilities. Taking pictures a suspect earlier than they’ve change into an lively risk units you again 50 factors, which could seem to be quite a bit till you notice mission scores typically hit three or 4 thousand in whole. Right here, the police establishment is simply and its strategies needn’t be questioned.
In late 2021, Prepared or Not break up from its then-publisher Team17. It was broadly speculated that this was resulting from Void Interactive’s teasing of a college taking pictures degree. Six months later, the sport was underneath scrutiny once more following the discharge of its nightclub degree on June 12, the anniversary of the 2016 Pulse nightclub taking pictures. Void additionally eliminated alt-right references akin to a redpill field and Pepe meme after Kotaku noticed them in a 2022 preview.
All of this combines to kind a really conflicting expertise. The moment-to-moment motion is mechanically spectacular and the sport has little difficulty ramping up rigidity and terror, but it surely’s additionally unsettling and uncomfortable to play within the improper methods, that means I’m more likely to hand in my badge and retire from the power earlier than lengthy.
