PS5

Published on July 29th, 2025 | by Nathan Misa

Ready or Not PS5 Review – Squad Goals

In the era of run-and-gun live service games, waiting for the next tactical first-person shooter (FPS) feels like being stuck in a desert, waiting for rain that comes only every other year. The likes of Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and SWAT 3 were once just as abundant as our yearly Call of Duty, but tastes change, and low TTK and skins are in.

Thankfully, Ready Or Not has kicked down the door with a gritty, no-nonsense raid that’s ready to fill the void, though its brand of fun depends on how slow and strategic you like your shooting.

Ready or Not originally launched on Steam via Early Access in 2021 before its official launch in 2023. With this console port that has arrived on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2025, console players get the same package as PC gamers, with two DLC expansions, Dark Waters and Home Invasion, available for purchase separately (and a third coming in 2026).

To get it out of the way early, some content changes were made to both the PC and console versions of Ready or Not to censor certain violent and sexual elements (such as gore and nudity). While I’m not a fan of censorship of creator intent to appease console ratings boards, I found the content changes to be minimal and not a deal-breaker for enjoying the core game.

At its core, Ready or Not is a tactical squad-based game that puts you in charge of an SWAT unit where you either command up to 4 A.I team members (single-player, called Commander Mode) or play with 3 other friends/randoms (co-op multiplayer). After a short tutorial that walks you through the controls and basics of leading a squad, you’re let loose to progress through a series of missions that escalate in severity, lethality and complexity. Think by-the-book robberies, grimy meth lab drug busts, chaotic club mass shootings and even creepy cultist compounds. Before every brief comes background information like audio logs, rap sheets and lore that help fill out the deteriorating, criminal state of Los Sueños, which are well-acted even if the world-building and writing is a bit cheesy and evokes an exaggerated caricature of American media and its Los Angeles inspiration (which, admittedly, is hard enough to do these days).

Before each mission you’ll find the armoury, where you can equip yourself and your team’s loadouts (weapons, scopes, ammo, armour, helmets, and more), and choose various operatives with different traits and specialisations to fit your playstyle. There is a satisfying number of tactical options on offer to best create your ideal SWAT team squad and leader, with more customization options unlocked through play. Your armour class also places a limit on what you can bring, so carefully choosing between flashbang or tasers, or that breaching shotguns or stun grenade launchers is crucial. The squad members you get to lightly customize and their unique traits seem to be procedurally generated upon creating a save-file, adding a minor roguelike element to the campaign, and while I would have liked to see more role-playing depth to managing the squad, their professional dialogue and observations during missions is interesting to listen to and adds to the atmosphere and the stakes at hand.

It didn’t take me long to find a hardcore strategic shooter with a gritty tone and hard-as-nails gameplay that emphasizes patience and planning to deliver a rewarding, immersive experience. You aren’t sprinting through maps and no-scoping criminals here, but responding to tense situations that demands your brain to ensure hostages are saved and your squad members live to fight another day – yes, one screw up and you’re out a man for the next mission (or forever).

See, the main difference between Ready or Not and most other shooters is its core gameplay is slower-paced and centered around “bringing order to chaos” – that is, de-escalation and disarmament to save innocent lives, and shooting to kill only when necessary. There are many enemies in the game, equipped with varying weaponry (from hidden knives to simple side-arms to fully automatic rifles) and you don’t have to kill them – they can be shouted down, shot at or incapacitated to surrender and be hand-cuffed before they make a mistake. Each mission also lets you secure the map in the best way you see fit, whether by loudly kicking down the front door with a bullet-proof shield and taking compounds and hostage situations by shock and awe, or taking things nice and slow by stealthily lock-picking and securing the back entrance.

I’m always an admirer of games that offer non-lethal gameplay options, so I opted for a beanbag shotgun and taser gun side-arm to complete missions with as few casualties as possible. That meant careful clearing of rooms, using flashbangs to flush out holdouts, and letting my shielded operative lead the charge first. Along with fostering a squad with traits that boosted health and morale upon arresting suspects, it feels great to save hostages, arrest the bad guys and confirm all the evidence all without a single casualty in ways that many other FPS titles don’t quite capture as effectively as Ready or Not. There are also unique hard and soft mission objectives per map, such as seizing contraband, saving special hostages, and generally finding supporting proof to land suspects in jail for good. The game’s ranking system also introduces an addictive element in striving to get the highest rating (which also unlocks cool customization gear), as this requires map knowledge, planning and a bit of luck to clear the level as efficiently as possible.

Ready or Not presents a genuinely challenging and sometimes frustrating experience on its Hard difficulty mode, which feels a little too over-tuned when it comes to enemy awareness and accuracy. I found the fun in scouting rooms and setting up traps and breaches sometimes got ruined by a NPC who knew of my squad’s presence long before we revealed ourselves, and often I was killed by an assailant who was blessed with the power of no-scoping through walls. Thankfully, the Easy and Balanced difficulties are less ridiculous if you are looking for a more casual and less hardcore SWAT-like experience, and these unfair moments in Hard mode are rare and overshadowed by the thrill of outsmarting enemies with good old fashioned planning.

Experiencing the sandbox nature of each mission in multiplayer presents another interesting spin as you depend on real players to coordinate and follow orders. It’s also a bit of tonal whiplash; playing with randoms while learning the ropes led to one player tossing his flashbangs at the group instead of in the final room full of hostages, resulting in an unintentionally funny albeit frustrating sequence where the team was rapidly gunned down and all the planning was for nought. Combined with the solid base single-player experience, co-op gives Ready or Not some real legs.

With so many tactical options in terms of equipment and weaponry, it’s a shame, then, that certain controller and UI considerations didn’t translate as well from PC to console. The weapon and equipment wheels used to switch between tools, guns and squad orders are clunky to navigate, and the menu text is way too small and not scaled for playing on a big television. I also found certain mechanics like queuing commands to half my AI squad and ordering them to execute when ready often doesn’t activate reliably, but with time and some persistence I got comfortable with the setup. Casual players who are expecting an easy pick-up-and-play controller scheme, however? Beware.

Playing on the PlayStation 5 Pro, Ready or Not offers the customary Quality and Performance modes, and while gameplay remains steady 60 fps, it’s a mixed bang in the visuals department. The detail put into the world-building of each level is impressive, but character face models look uncanny and textures and shadows look like the low-end of equivalent PC settings (which, reportedly, was downgraded alongside the console launch). Other aspects, such as the grim reaction of enemies slumping over when shot, or the stun effect when being flashed, add to the visual immersion of such high-stakes missions, but don’t expect an ultra-realistic aesthetic here.

The Final Verdict

Ready or Not delivers an intensely immersive and rewarding tactical FPS experience on PS5. If you crave deliberate, squad-based gameplay that prioritizes strategy and communication over run-and-gun action, whether with AI-controlled companions or friends in online co-op, this is a must-play game.

Its challenging missions and realistic mechanics make every successful operation incredibly satisfying and the DLC add-ons provide additional content should you seek it, with a few quirks in the console UI and some visual settings being the only minor let-downs. Highly recommended for fans of the tactical shooter genre.

Game Details

Primary Format – Games – PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox Series X | S
Game Genre – First-person tactical shooter
Rating – R 18+
Game Developer – VOID Interactive
Game Publisher – VOID Interactive

About the Author

Nathan Misa A senior writer for ImpulseGamer.com and former writer for MMGN and Ninemsn, Nathan has been reviewing video games and interviewing talented developers since 2012. As a nostalgia tragic eternally tied to the glorious 1990s, he's always playing retro gaming classics whenever he's not entrenched in the latest RPG, or talking your ear off about why The First Law book series is better than Game of Thrones - to anyone who dares listen.

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