John Wick Hex - "action-oriented strategy game" by Mike Bithell

vortex · Sep 19, 2019

October 8

Infinitron · Oct 8, 2019

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-08-john-wick-hex-review-sweet-economy

John Wick Hex review - sweet economy
It's got his name on it.

Stylish cinematic super-violence is transformed into smart temporal puzzles.

It all clicked when I got really stuck. I wasn't sure about John Wick Hex at first. I was put off by the lankiness of the art style, where shoulders are quarterback broad and the arms and legs seem to travel for miles. I was put off by the end-of-level replays that squish your brainteaser battles down to a few staccato seconds, with little in the way of cinematic zip. There's John Wick, right in the middle of the screen, blandly double-tapping away as an endless collection of what look like fancy waiters and up-market estate agents pile in on him. Business as usual, but the whole thing didn't truly feel very Wickian.

But then I got stuck. I sailed through the first level, and got thoroughly bogged down in the second. And that's when I realised that, whether or not it tied into my notion of what a John Wick game could be, Hex is pretty special in its own right.

It's all about economy. That's pretty Wickian, right? You start each top-down level with a gun and a couple of bandages. You also start with full health and decent focus, a meter that allows you to do stuff like instant takedowns and combat rolls. The thing is, when the game starts to throw baddies around you, as you hex your way through compact environments, pushing back the fog of war with each step, you need to manage all that stuff. You can shoot people, sure, but you probably want to hold onto your bullets when you can. So just get in close and tackle them, then? Yes, nice plan, but that eats through your focus and there's also the chance that, if the enemy you're up against is armed, they might shoot you before you close the gap. Bandages run out pretty quickly, and they also take time to apply. It takes time to do a little labrador shake that regains focus. It takes time to switch stances so you can combat roll. It takes time to reload your gun or pick up someone else's once you're out of ammo. Everything is sharpened by opportunity cost.

Man, this is where the game truly lurks. And the more you play, the more you realise you're actually playing the timeline that runs along the top of the screen. The timeline shows you the cost in seconds of everything you're planning to do. As time only moves when you do, you can mess around planning things while you're standing still and the world stands still around you. And this quickly becomes a lot of fun, because the timeline also shows you the timescale of everything your enemies are doing. So you can shoot a guy, right, but the timeline shows that he's going to shoot you first. So maybe throw your gun? That will stun him and do some damage and it's quicker than getting off a shot, but then you won't have a gun. Can you then get to him while he's stunned? Do you have enough focus to finish him off with a combat tackle?

It took a while for this to click. At first, all I saw were the percentages that pop up when you pick an action: 90 per cent chance to hit with a shot, 100 per cent chance to stun with a thrown gun. I saw the different weapons, with their different per centage chances, the different hand-to-hand moves with the different amounts of damage they all do. But really, more than it's about the odds, it's all about the time.

Actually, it's about time twice. There's the moment you're in, but then there's also the moment that follows. Each level is broken down into a series of stages, and your vitals carry over between these stages. So you can ace the first stage with no damage, but maybe you've wasted most of your bullets. Or maybe you just squeaked past a mid-level boss but used up all your bandages. You can replay each stage, which is where the real fun lies, but you'll always start with the same hand you've dealt yourself through your previous actions. And you can make the most of the pre-level planning sequence, spending money on perks or on equipment that you can stash in various stages up ahead - but once the stuff is stashed you still have to find it, and that money doesn't go very far anyway.

All of this keeps the game racing along far more efficiently than any quirk or wrinkle it can add to the design as things evolve. New weapons and new enemies are fine, but it's that timeline system that really makes things sing. Bosses are a bit of a drag and the plot is fairly skippable, but those second-to-second decisions retain their appeal, no matter how stuck I am, and no matter how many times I've plodded through the same level, walked the same alleyways or dockyards, the layout remaining the same while the enemy spawn points constantly shift.

There is a great game lurking in John Wick. This series is so infused with the spirit of games, its world-building is so gamey, how could there not be? I'm still not sure that John Wick Hex is actually that precise game, but who cares when it's pretty great in its own right?

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/08/john-wick-hex-review/

Wot I Think: John Wick Hex

You don’t play as John Wick in John Wick Hex. Not really. Instead, you play as Keanu Reeves’ choreographer, in close negotiation with the great man’s agent. Want Wick to dash behind cover while throatslamming a goon, then toss them to the floor, grab their gun and shoot a second goon’s ear off before yeeting the empty pistol at a third? That is absolutely within the terms of Keanu’s contract. Want Wick to dodge an incoming blow, then double-handed-clap-slap his attacker on the cheeks? You’re the boss. Want Wick to jump over a very small object? Ok, so he can’t do that. Union stuff. Lots of paperwork, and no-one wants to let him near a pencil.

Refusal to do very basic stunts aside, however, John Wick Hex is a frequently comical, tightly-tuned, hyptonising murder-puzzler which is — if you’ll excuse the insensitivity — a doggone blast to play.

First things first, though — what’s all this ‘Hex’ business about? Well, it’s the name of the sharply-dressed baddie who becomes the Wickster’s primary murder target in the game, after he takes J-Dubs’ buds Charon and Winston hostage. This gets right on John’s wick, and when Hex dumps a bucket of goons all over everything in his way, the gun-fu begins.

I only watched a JW film for the first time yesterday, after I’d already finished the game, so franchise fans might get more out of the plot than I did. From what I understand, however, the film’s stories are largely vehicles to ferry Wickiam Blazkowick between shootouts, and it’s the same deal with the game. It works for me.

The plot, a prequel to the movies, is delivered via snappy comic strips between stages, in which Ian McShane sounds Bored McShitless as Winston, but Troy Baker’s seething Hex and Lance Reddick’s suave, foreboding Charon more than make up for it. Keanu Reeves himself is absent, presumably still recovering from the trauma of being selected for temporary deification by the internet.

Hex isn’t just the name of a villain, though: it’s also a reference to the near-invisible grid (highlighted by unobtrusive dots), on which Wick dances with goons across the game’s 40+ levels. Rather than the traditional turn-based affair you might expect from this setup, however, all actions are rationed based on time.

Moving to an adjacent space takes 0.4 seconds, for example, while shooting a pistol takes 0.9 seconds of build-up, then 0.3 seconds apiece to fire two shots. Shots fired both by and at Wick have a percentage change to hit, affected by whether the target is moving. Wick can crouch (0.5 seconds), which makes him harder to hit and more accurate, although he’ll have to stand up again (0.5 seconds) afterwards, if he wants to walk instead of roll (0.6 seconds). This might sound complicated, but it’ll all fall into place by the time you’ve finished the concise tutorial stage.

For more complicated actions, J-Wix has a resource called ‘focus’. You can use it to roll, or to dodge an incoming melee attack, but it really starts to define the flow of Hex when it’s used for takedowns, or pushes. Takedowns slam troublesome goons into the floor, and allow you to pick an adjacent hex for John to wick his way into. Pushes let you thrust an enemy back a few tiles (causing damage but also sending John along with them – a great way to avoid bullets), or dash behind cover, or hang around the entrance of a nightclub shouting ‘no trainers’ and punting guards out the doors. Highly recommended, that one.

In each level, you’re attempting to take out screens of goons before they get a shot or a punch off, and weaving around any that do. Throw in rifles and shotguns with different damage and time stats, a few armoured goons, some bosses that require you to melee their focus down before you get a decent hit percentage, and the aforementioned gun yeetability, and that’s you sorted.

There’s a period between getting used to Wick’s repertoire, and the game ramping up in difficulty, where Hex’s toolset can feel quite restrictive. The safest plays aren’t always the most enjoyable, but generally, Hex keeps things challenging and engaging by applying a filmmaker’s lens to enemy placement and environmental layout. Goons emerge from behind stairwells, elevators, and industrial shipping crates. Sure, you’ll be doing the same moves on them, often in the same combinations, but you’ll never perform a spine-shattering Judo throw on a henchmen into the same river twice, as the philosophers say.

So, you’ve got Hex the baddie, and Hex the grid, but perhaps more than either of these though, the titular Hex is the curse inflicted on any simulated mortal foolish enough to step against John Wick.

The internal rhythms of the ready/set/action tactics completely sell the idea of this hitman who has the supernatural ability to storyboard his own reality. Combat is a black magic bullets-and-body-slams-buffet, balletic enough to make Bayonetta blush. Frenetic and elegant, it’s possessed of a self-awareness that stops just short of self-parody.

Austin Wintory’s soundtrack of manic techno and moody, pistols-at-dawn guitar feels integral. So much so that I’d tentatively place John Wick Hex alongside Hotline Miami, Ape Out, Frozen Synapse, and All Walls Must Fall as a work where the player navigates the soundtrack as much as the environments. Melodic, rhythmic, and chemically cerebral, it interprets violence not as a forward hurtle, but a series of call-and-response couplets.

Then there’s the replays, which, as far as I can tell, the trailers have sold as fluid, cinematic coup-de-gras where you sit back and watch your perfectly choreographed action set-piece come to life. They are not this. They’re hilarious and awkward, and I love them for it. Wick jankily shuffles between hexes, sidestepping point-blank shots and crab-walking up stairs, while polite henchmen wait patiently for him to punch them, lie down, get up, and do it again. Audio plays out of sync, Wick lopes around like he’s caught himself in his zipper, and it’s great.

At least the replays allow you a bit more time to admire the levels: labyrinthine clubs, mansions and warehouses that feel like a natural extension of the grid they’re all based on, without giving up a sense of place. One stage has you ducking and weaving behind hexagonal statue plinths. Another has you popping out from behind trees, slapping fools, then disappearing again. A snow-dusted hedge maze and a neon-splashed nightclub are highlights, but there’s a constant effort to change things up. Breaking line of sight is one of the key defensive moves you’ll be relying on, so it’s reassuring that so many architects in the game’s universe have got John’s back.

Those same architects could have done with just a bit more allowance for setpieces, though. The closest you’ll come to an environmental hazard is elevators. Press a button. Wait out a timer. Get attacked by some goons while you’re waiting. Nice surprise the first time, but there’s too much of it. Have John Wick set fire to a big pile of money again and give that a timer. Have him defend a dog rescuer for 20 seconds while all the dogs escape through a special dog escape hatch. Whatever.

Another thing that’s fun the first time but gets increasingly dull is what happens when you’re surrounded by two or three goons. It always ends up going like this:

Punch goon one, which stuns them, giving you time to punch goon two, which stuns them, letting you punch goon three, by which time goon one is just waking up again. I’m not sure whether this is some unintentional oddity with the timeline, or completely deliberate. Either way, the game rewards you for finishing levels quickly, so it probably didn’t want me to keep relying on it. Still, if you offer me cheese, Mr Bithell, I will take it. It does make from some great replays.

The weapons aren’t hugely exciting, either. Every gun but the basic pistol and later, a carbine rifle, felt very situational and a tad slow to suit the way I ended up playing. Given I was playing a character who’s supposed to be able to murder a club full of gangsters with a box of crayola, not getting to experiment with anything but guns and MMA was a bit disappointing.

All that said, I had a great time with John Wick Hex. It tiptoes the line between tactics and puzzler in an engaging way, has a ton of character, and feels exactly as minimal as it needs to be: you pick up a working vocabulary of Wickensian tricks, just in time to be tested on them. Its slip-ups tend to just make it more charming, while most repetition can be offset by going for challenges that ask you to play quicker and smarter.

Hexcellent? Hexceptional? Maybe. Certainly, much better than Hexpected.

https://www.pcgamer.com/john-wick-hex-review/

JOHN WICK HEX REVIEW
An elegant tactical puzzler that captures the pace and action of the movies.

Grunt 1 rounds a corner and I lash out at him like a coiled snake, judo-flipping him to the ground. Grunt 2 spots me, fires a shot, but I duck back into cover with a margin of milliseconds, finish off Grunt 1, then run out to meet the pursuant Grunt 2 with another takedown. Grunt 3 tries running up behind me but I whip round and gun him down, timed perfectly to greet the recovering Grunt 2 at my feet with a climactic smack across the chops.

OK, that last bit may not have been terribly slick and John Wick-like (budgetary restraints reflected in the game’s animations, perhaps), but beyond that this feels just like a movie tie-in—and prequel—to the super-stylish hitman series should.

The above sequence took me about 30 seconds to complete, but I can work out from the all-important timeline at the top of the screen that it took John Wick a mere nine in-game seconds to carry it out. This may be a stop-start tactics game, but it’s one of the fastest /feeling/ games of its type that I’ve ever played, interposing an aggressive sense of flow into a methodical framework that would make Keanu Reeves himself whip off his shades and earnestly frown in approval.

A crucial part of this sense of pace is the fact that the game is timeline-based rather than turn-based; every character on a level moves whenever you move along the minimal hex-based grid. Everyone moves at the same pace, and each action—shooting, melee attacks, weapon pickups—has a ‘preparation’ time as well as the time it takes to complete the actual action. Most actions, apart from regular melee strikes and gunfire, use ‘Focus’ points too, which you can recharge whenever you have a couple of in-game seconds to spare.

Timelines at the top of the screen shows how long it takes for you and visible enemies to carry out each action. This is vital, as you use it to gauge whether you can execute attacks before your enemies do, or at the very least make sure that during their attacks you’re on the move, crouching or dodging to minimise your chances of being hit.

All this imbues John Wick Hex with a satisfying sense of action-movie improv, like a more regimented top-down version of Superhot or indeed the John Wick movies themselves. You often run out of ammo, and health resupplies are at a premium, but through a combination of meticulous melee moves (usually initiated by throwing your spent gun in the face of an enemy) you’d be amazed at how many corners you can fight your way out of.

Hexcellent execution
Certain moves, like Takedown, not only chuck your enemy to the ground and stun them, but change your position, letting you preselect a contiguous tile where you want John to stand after the move. Similarly, the ‘Push’ move lets you grab an enemy and haul them back a few tiles—great for breaking line of sight from a nearby gunman or closing the distance on another enemy quickly. Your position at the end of each action is critical, and at its best John Wick Hex feels like you’re pirouetting from one enemy to the next in a graceful dance of death.

But as I progressed through the six-chapter campaign—no more than nine hours long—I began to find little ways to screw the system that were more redolent of playing ‘It’ around a stationary car than the blockbuster source material. Enemy AI mindlessly homes in on you once you’ve been spotted, always aware of your position whether you’re sighted or not. This meant that, particularly later on with higher enemy counts, I quite often resorted to the ol’ funnel-of-death tactic, luring a hapless stream of goons through a doorway or outwitting them by running around pillars.

The cel-shaded art style is complemented by that colour-de-rigeur neon palette of mostly blues and pinks (the fuschia blood splatters are a particularly nice touch). It’s a sparing aesthetic, and a little flat in detail. Character faces are beady-eyed and blank, and animations are limited. There are no animations for attacking downed enemies, for example, so instead they’re jolted awkwardly into upright positions for the attack, and I’m pretty sure that John’s ‘Strike’ move isn’t meant to look like an open-handed slap followed by a rather dainty kick in the balls. This means that the zoomed-in real-time replays you can watch at the end of each level don’t look quite as flashy as you’d hope for, even though they are a welcome touch.

But beyond that, John Wick Hex is a movie tie-in that doesn’t go for the lowest common denominator. What could easily have been a generic real-time action game works wonderfully in this form—converting the pace of the movie action into a very elegant illusion of it.

It works admirably despite the within this somewhat sparse presentation, and feels like an idea that the developer could evolve into something really special in the future—with or without the John Wick license.

THE VERDICT
80

JOHN WICK HEX
An elegant tactical puzzler that captures the pace and action of the movies.