Ready or Not is an intense and realistic tactical FPS where mistakes usually have violent consequences. But the upcoming Dark Water DLC has upped the ante with complex new maps and a new AI that's way too intelligent for my liking.
Like any other map in Ready or Not, you get a choice of where you land in the new ones—there'll usually be three or four options that offer various tactical advantages and disadvantages. On Mirage at Sea, a luxury yacht embroiled in a hostage crisis, we landed on the helipad so we could work through the boat methodically from the top to the bottom. Thanks to the thin corridors, multitude of rooms, and numerous suspects, this yacht was pretty chaotic.
Our first firefight was in the stairwell down to the second floor of the boat. We got pinned down in a corner, so a couple of us backed up and doubled round to try and catch them off guard—the only problem was the suspects had the same idea.
As part of the new DLC, the devs are also introducing squad behaviour to the upcoming content and the rest of the game. This basically just makes the suspects smarter. They'll have certain roles now, like trying to lure players into traps, scurrying around behind to distract players, and working together to alert everyone to where players are.
After subduing the pair of suspects we bumped into on the yacht, we accidentally let one get away, and he immediately went off to tell his friends where we were. Before I knew it, I was the last person standing in a boat still teeming with suspects, and unfortunately, I didn't make it too far before I got cornered and shot in the head.
Similar situations happened on the other two maps: 3 Letter Triad, which is set in an abandoned hotel on a remote island full of shady criminals, and Leviathan, which is located on an oil rig that has been seized by eco-terrorists.
The premise of fighting eco-terrorists on a rig does seem slightly out of keeping with Ready or Not's realistic premise, but it's a great excuse to explore new environments while also expanding on a bit of the game's lore.
I was the last player standing on Leviathan—not because of any particular skill, it was more thanks to luck—but taking down the last few suspects was still up to me. Deciphering what makes a person a suspect or a civilian is part of the fun in Ready or Not, and thanks to the recent upgrades, there are some clues that make it easier and others that can make it harder.
The new interactions and movements make each mission even more exciting and unpredictable.
One positive is that you can now see if someone has a gun holstered, whereas before, they could have equipped a gun seemingly out of thin air. This means as long as you're perceptive, you can tell if someone is going to be a possible threat. However, one feature that can make things difficult is that sometimes a person runs away from you, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're guilty.
During the last sweep on the oil rig after I had apprehended most of the suspects, I encountered one particularly angry lady who kept yelling at me. When I approached her and asked her to get on the ground, she swore at me and ran off, slipping away through a gap in the pipes that I couldn't fit through. As I followed her, I was worried she could be leading me right into a trap, but as I had already captured most of the suspects, there was no one left to help her. Eventually, she conceded and let me handcuff her, but that didn't stop her from yelling mean things at me. I'm actually still not sure if she was part of the eco-terrorist group or just a grouchy oil rig worker.
Coming up against smarter suspects is exactly what I love to see in Ready or Not, a game that is already impressively realistic. The new interactions and movements make each mission even more exciting and unpredictable. It's incredibly fun to adapt plans to the changing environment.
While I didn't encounter the same sort of intellectual fights in the last map, 3 Letter Triad, this map did have something just as exciting in store for me—a massive and complex layout full of armed suspects.
3 Letter Triad is my favourite map in the Dark Waters DLC, not just because the 20-plus suspects make it seem like an action movie but actually thanks to the smart and thoughtful architecture that makes storming the place such fun.
"We did a lot very specifically within the art in [3 Letter Triad] to play with the light, shadow, and silhouettes," the art director Mark Ranson told me. "We wanted to keep the player on their toes."
There are also really cool ways in which players can exploit their surroundings in 3 Letter Triad. Broken windows, architectural holes in the wall, and cracks in the wall can all be used to gather intel or subdue suspects. I was able to bounce flash bangs or even grenades through holes to stun suspects or use the mirror gun under doors or in cracks to gather intel, which I could then give feedback to the rest of my team.
I really only scratched the surface when it comes to using the environment in 3 Letter Triad to my advantage. It seems like there are loads of ways to exploit the map, which I'm sure players will have a great time trying to figure out.
The entire Dark Waters DLC is incredibly impressive. There's something for everyone in the three maps: Mirage at Sea is an active shooter situation that requires hard and fast actions, Leviathan is a hostage situation that is more methodical as players try to round up suspects into the centre of the rig to apprehend them, and 3 Letter Triad is for the players who just want action-packed gun fights. I only got to play a couple of hours, but I can't wait to give each of these maps another go and hopefully learn a thing or two along the way.
