Ready or Not: Dark Waters
Review
This newest DLC makes some bold choices; some for the better, others not...
by Dan Lenois
reviewed on PC
Mirage at Sea
The DLC peaks with its opening level. The player must rescue civilians taken hostage upon an expansive yacht, and also apprehend the three key leaders of this standoff. As the player makes their way through the yacht, multiple alternating paths become available, allowing you to approach key areas from a number of alternating positions, allowing for some great ambush opportunities.
That said, there are many tight corridors and small cabins, as well engine and maintenance rooms, all of which keep you on your toes as you peer around doorways, or between heavy machinery, for a possible armed assailant ready to blow your head clean off. It took my trio team several consecutive attempts before we had mastered the layout and were able to apprehend all the key suspects without fatalities on either side. The challenge, as always, is there, but it is more than conquerable if your team coordinates their efforts effectively. This is one of the more difficult levels in Ready or Not, but still well worth the effort.
Leviathan
This second mission is one of those levels that probably sounds cooler as a concept than it does in execution. Your goal is to infiltrate an oil rig overtaken by hostile forces. Your objectives are simple: Incapacitate/Eliminate all hostiles, ensure the safety of civilians onboard, and shut down the livestream set up by the hostage-takers.
While visually one of the most striking levels in the game, the oil rig has easily the worst visual communication of any map in the game, and arguably one of the worst in any tactical game. Many areas look not only similar, but almost identical. Pathways weave up and down, left and right, with no structural rhyme or reason, as if the oil rig were designed around the walkways, rather than the opposite way around. After having completed all objectives, save for locating all civilians, I began my search for the final civilian.
After a few minutes of looking, I started a timer to see how long it would ultimately take me. The search ultimately lasted for over thirty-five minutes. With civilians hiding in random locations like cargo containers, showers, closets, under tables and counters, and anywhere else imaginable, it can be difficult to find that last person in a normal house or multi-level building. But in a zig-zagging floating labyrinth whose construction makes sense only perhaps to Wile E. Coyote? Forget it.
3-Letter Triad
I could think of many three-letter words to describe this level. However, none of them would be publishable. Thematically, it doesn't really feel like it belongs in an exotic water-themed DLC expansion. Visually it resembles some unphotographed part of Pripyat, following the Chernobyl meltdown. Lots of bland, gray concrete. There's nothing particularly exciting to look at, and the objectives are likewise old news to players. Eliminate hostiles, free hostages, and locate the strange bomb device that you have to interact with, but cannot defuse.
If you love walking from one generic gray-colored room to another, mowing down or intimidating the same handful of enemy models, than this mission is the one for you. But for the rest of us, just complete it, get what achievements you can, and then never play it again.
Final Verdict:
In short, Ready or Not: Dark Waters has one great level, one bad level, and one entirely-boring level; a wide degree of variety that may or may not be entirely what you signed up for. At only $9.99 or your regional equivalent, three total levels is not a bad value proposition. One just wishes there was more consistency in the quality department.
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7.0
fun score
Pros
Nothing like close-range combat on a yacht.
Cons
Searching for hiding civilians on an oil rig is as aggravating as it is pointless.
