Ready or Not
In this tactical first-person shooter, you lead a police SWAT team through hostage rescues, active shooter calls, barricaded suspects and bomb threats in the fictional city of Los Sueños. Shooting first usually works against you. The game expects you to shout suspects into surrendering, cuff them, get civilians out and bag evidence before a mission counts as done. You can play it as a single-player campaign with AI officers or as online co-op.
VOID Interactive developed and published the game. Version 1.0 came out on Steam on December 13, 2023, after two years in Early Access, and the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions launched on July 15, 2025.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- Rules of engagement – You can only use lethal force on someone who poses an immediate threat to life. Unauthorized shots, harmed civilians and uncollected evidence all lower the grade you get at the end of each mission.
- Commander Mode – In the single-player campaign, you pick officers from a roster, and each one has personal traits. Their stress builds up when squadmates or hostages die, and a stressed officer performs worse or may leave the force. Turn on Ironman mode and a dead officer stays dead.
- Crossplay co-op – Up to five people can play a mission together, and players on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S can share the same lobby.
Story and Lore
Los Sueños is a fictional Californian city based on Los Angeles, set in an alternate United States in social and economic decline. By the mid-2020s, violent crime and extremism there have spiked. You play David "Judge" Beaumont, newly put in charge of D-Platoon, the LSPD's SWAT unit.
There are no cutscenes and no linear plot. The story sits in the levels themselves, in documents, evidence and set dressing that link one incident to another. The narcotics arc, for example, starts with a meth operation in a housing project and ends at a smuggling tunnel on the border with Tijuana. Other missions deal with human trafficking, arms dealing and terrorism, and one mission added in 1.0 revolves around swatting and illegal crypto mining.
Home Invasion takes place after Hurricane Antonio, a Category 5 storm, leaves the city's residential districts open to looters and home invaders. Dark Waters moves offshore to islands and watercraft. Boiling Point jumps to 2028, when a terror attack on the city pier sets off riots that eventually reach a downtown bank and City Hall.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Before each mission, you read the brief, study the floor plan and pick loadouts for yourself and the squad, including gear like ballistic shields, door rams and less-lethal weapons. Once you're inside, you can order the AI officers to stack up on a door, look under it with a mirror, breach with a flashbang and clear the room, or hold a position while you move elsewhere.
Ballistics and armor are modelled in detail:
- Bullets pass through walls, furniture and bodies, and a shot at a suspect behind thin drywall can hit a hostage on the other side.
- Heavier armor absorbs more damage but slows you down.
- Audio changes depending on whether a door is open or closed and whether a window is broken, which helps you work out where a suspect is.
Many suspects give up when you shout at them. Others run or start shooting. Once the shooting stops, you still have to report arrested suspects and rescued civilians to command and pick up dropped weapons. The Los Sueños Stories update from July 2025 added difficulty settings, and between missions you can practise at the LSPD station's shooting range and training area.
Characters and Factions
Judge is the playable commander, and the rest of D-Platoon is made up of the AI officers you recruit. Police Chief Galo Álvarez issues the emergency broadcast after the hurricane, while undercover detective Mike Esperanza appears in the Home Invasion mission Narcos, where Los Locos attack his house after his cover is blown.
Main factions
- Los Locos del Pacífico – a cartel-linked gang trafficking drugs and weapons, and the group behind the border tunnels
- Meth cooks at the 213 Park Homes, bankrolled by Los Locos
- Carriers of the Vine, a cult holed up in a fortified compound
- Eco-terrorists who take over a lobbyist's home and hold the people inside hostage in Lawmaker
Editions
The Standard Edition is the base game, and every free update comes with it. The Digital Deluxe Edition adds the Home Invasion, Dark Waters and Boiling Point DLCs plus the Official Soundtrack by Zack Bower.
Sold separately:
- each DLC, with three missions plus new weapons, gear or cosmetics
- the Mission Pass, which bundles all three DLCs for less than buying them one by one
- the Official Soundtrack
The Supporter Edition was a pre-1.0 bundle and isn't sold anymore.