I’m increasingly convinced that Ready or Not is a horror game. Sure, you might be playing as part of a team of highly trained tactical police officer, you might have body armour and automatic weapons, and you aren’t fighting monsters, but it’s still scary to be walking into the unknown, surrounded by death. Also, the newly released Boiling Point DLC includes a level set in an amusement park, and that’s about as big a horror movie trope as you can get!
It’s been a hot minute since the last expansion for Ready or Not – there were two maps released for free alongside the console launch last summer, but it’s been over a year since the paid DLC in late 2024. Life in the city of Los Sueños hasn’t really settled down in that time, though. If anything it’s getting worse, with a horrifying event taking place at the Los Sueños Pier that subsequently triggers rioting and further violence in other parts of the city.
The opening mission goes hard on the visuals and atmosphere, stepping in amongst the still active and moving attractions, the circulating cups, the colourful glow of the ferris wheel, the noises of arcade machines, the added layer of terror of stepping into a haunted house – the only thing missing is really a house of mirrors. There’s great tension added to the scene from all of this, spotting the rising, falling movement of merry-go-round horses catching your eye when you need to be looking for threats, parsing out innocents, and going through the procedure of this tactical shooter.
That gets much trickier as this batch of three new missions then pivots towards the fare of a bombastic 90s crime thriller. With the city rioting, there’s an opportunistic raid on a bank, and again, there’s a great atmosphere here as you start the mission with other police units in riot gear marching past, before you have the difficult task of now filtering out rioters from heisters. It’s a relatively small and contained environment, but blends a large open foyer, some offices and path down to the bank vault, with those heisters ready to open fire as soon as you get onto the bank floor. The finale then heads to City Hall for a tense techno thriller scenario, working your way through multiple floors of eerily quiet municipal offices. You’re clearly expected…
These last two missions also throw in some additional variables, some minor clues and items to find while scouring the buildings that can trigger and enable different outcomes as you go for the ‘hard’ complete instead of merely a level-clearing ‘soft’ completion. This isn’t suddenly a puzzle shooter, but you will be hunting for keycards and codes to get access to certain rooms and outcomes, and this can add a smidgeon of replay value (beyond the general randomisation of locked doors and enemy placement) as you miss an opportunity on the first run.
Then there’s the free additions to the arsenal, including two new pistols (such as the full-auto G18-C), the RTWC-6.5 Battle Rifle which is… fine, and some new attachments like the RMO Sight with 3x magnification to toggle on and off, and a combined laser/IR/flashlight combo. Some quality of life improvements are also here, so you can jump into a quickplay mission from the main menu, instead of having to load into the police station.
It’s been a while since playing Ready of Not for the console launch last year, but it took no time at all to get back into the groove of proceeding slowly through levels, using a mirrorgun to peek under doors before opening them, trying to carefully take corners and quickly taking down hostile targets, while screaming at belligerent civilians to get down on the ground. It’s as engaging as ever, and the trio of new levels provide three contrasting sizes and experiences, while pushing the game’s overarching narrative of societal collapse forward.
It’s a different experience playing with the clinical and accurate AI squad backing you, compared to playing co-op with similarly fallible friends and getting up to shenanigans. Either one is pretty easy to recommend, but Ready or Not is still more “fun” in co-op, that’s for sure.
The Boiling Point DLC is reasonably priced, sticking with the $9.99 / £7.99 price point of the first two. For three levels, and a bunch of that feels like good value to me. Multiplayer lobby hosts who’ve bought the DLC can also let non-DLC owners play the new levels, which is always a nice and generous choice from a studio.
Really, what playing Boiling Point’s three levels told me is that I haven’t played enough of Ready or Not. The tone of the game’s newer missions might be shifting towards more sensational situations, but the tense tactical action that underpins it all is just as compelling as ever.
