“Bring Order To Chaos.” That’s how tactical shooter Ready or Not sums up your role as part of Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT. As a commander, you lead an “element” of four officers through a gauntlet of ripped-from-the-headlines catastrophes in fictional Los Suenõs, California—the “City of Dreams,” not angels. Some missions merely touch a nerve, while others evoke mononymic American tragedies like Columbine, Pulse, Waco, or Vegas with the serial numbers filed off. Developer VOID Interactive has stated that it intends Ready or Not to immerse players in split-second, volatile situations, leaving them with an appreciation for the totalizing physical and psychological strain these officers endure for our sake.

Order comes to chaos at the end of a gun. You mash X to scream “I wanna see hands!” at everyone in sight, civilians and gunmen alike. It’ll piss you off when they don’t comply. You’re here to help. Non-lethal means of submission will net you the best rating at the end of a mission, but nobody’s perfect.

Indulge me in a quick history break. In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko says the 1965 Watts riots were “the first major incident to push America toward more militarized policing.” Infamous LAPD chief Daryl Gates is credited with creating SWAT proper after his experience during the riots, which the LAPD had “no idea” how to handle. Nearly 30 years later, Daryl Gates would produce Sierra’s 1993 Police Quest: Open Season, the fourth entry in the series.

Gates was fresh out of the LAPD in ’93, having taken the fall for an entire culture of brutal, racist policing, including but by no means limited to the 1991 beating of Rodney King and the riots sparked a year later by the acquittal of King’s attackers.

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