Bullet Time, All the Time – John Wick Hex Review

I was excited building up to John Wick Hex‘s release for a couple reasons. Firstly, I’ve played a lot (possibly all) of Mike Bithell’s previous titles, and enjoyed them all based on their unique merits. I’ve completed Thomas Was Alone at least twice, I’ve completed Volume at least twice, and if you include the developer commentaries, I’ve completed both Subsurface Circular and Quarantine Circular at least twice.

Secondly, the idea of taking blisteringly fast action and condensing it down into a step-by-step strategy game is a bold move. Making a shooter in the John Wick franchise seems like the obvious choice, but I much prefer the direction they went with. I don’t have to worry about an unreachable skill ceiling or upgrade trees holding me back. With this game, you get to feel like john Wick.

OK, I’m kidding a little there. Just couldn’t resist hearkening back to the Spider-man review line. But really, I think feeling like John Wick is this game’s desired effect. But did it achieve it? Let’s find out.

I do want to disclose, I played a review copy for this review. But prior to receiving the code, I had already bought a copy on Epic and played the opening levels. I then refunded it since I got it for free to review (don’t tell Epic please) but still, thought it worth mentioning that I would pay money to play this.

So before I was playing the review copy, I played the tutorial, and wasn’t incredibly impressed if I’m honest. It isn’t so much turn-based as it is “time-based” for lack of an actual term. Every action takes a number of seconds, and this applies for your enemies as well. Movement will take 0.4 seconds, while shooting may take anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds depending on the gun. Melee combat is similar, and this all adds up to a very confusing time if you’ve not wrapped your head around it.

It took me a good while to wrap my head around it.

I burned through all of my bandages on my first attempt at the tutorial, and was clueless as to why I was getting hit by so many shots. I realise now it’s cause I sucked, but at the time I thought the game was unfair. John Wick Hex‘s tutorial definitely isn’t unfair; it’s just not great at making vital strategies obvious to you. I highly recommend looking up a basic tips guide online so you’re better armed going in.

The tutorial did not once make me consider that breaking sight-lines would force the enemies to re-aim their guns, interrupting their shots. This is crucial to avoiding damage, and without this breakthrough in my understanding of the A.I.s behaviour, I would have had a terrible time throughout. Once this clicked though, suddenly the whole game made sense.

John Wick Hex has you face gauntlet after gauntlet of brawlers and mercenaries on a hex-based grid. In effect, it’s a tabletop game where your main advantage is being faster to react than everyone else. Every encounter tasks you with making streamlined decisions to prevent incoming damage, and take out your adversaries one at a time.

Thankfully, the game pauses between actions so you can reassess the situation and carefully consider your next move. The range of options provides plenty to ponder too. Movement includes walking, dodging, crouching and rolling. Guns range from pistols to SMGs and shotguns. And melee is marvellous, with the options to parry, strike, push, and my personal favourite, takedown. All of these will impact your chances of being shot, your visibility from different angles, and your focus meter (a vital resource for melee and evasion). And of course, it’ll affect how dead your enemies are in comparison to John.

When it works, it works. Some levels were perfectly balanced so I could enter a flow state and find myself at the exit with a line of corpses behind me, and wonder how the hell I’d got from ‘A’ to ‘B’ untouched. This is where the replay feature comes in, so you can gawp at everything you just did in real-time, similar to SuperHot‘s approach.

Sadly, the replay feature did leave something to be desired. It was buggy on occasion, featuring everything from classic ragdoll spasms, to John freezing in place while the enemies were killed by thin air. This is also where the janky animations are most apparent. Having them strung together one after another makes it obvious that they don’t flow together smoothly. Like when John strikes a foe he’s just taken down, they’ll jump back up to be punched. A few animations for these special cases would help a lot. But really, the camera would benefit most from some refinement, since it would get stuck behind walls, jump all over the place, and only rarely cover an angle I’d call “good.”

For each level I loved, there was one that drove me mad though. John Wick Hex is constructed out of 7 mini-campaigns, each with roughly 6 levels to fight your way through. The side effect of this, is that it’s very easy for players to find themselves stuck mid-campaign with no bandages in sight and 4 hit points to their name. You can always restart, but you’ve invested so much time that retrying feels like it would squander the past thirty minutes of playtime.

So, you bash your head against the elevator full of three guys repeatedly, get frustrated every time you restart the level, and inevitably have to take a break and question why the game has suddenly spiked in difficulty as you happen to be on low health. Yes, I speak from experience.

Granted, there are real difficulty spikes that can drive you up the wall as well. As fast as John is, he’s still just one guy, so it’s tricky to fight your way through five opponents when you have nowhere to hide. It’s just the nature of persistent ammo counts and health bars that you’ll find some levels difficult, but the odds being dead against you feels bad no matter how well prepared you are.

It’s almost time to wrap up, but I can’t finish this review without mentioning how fantastic the presentation is. The comic book aesthetic is suitably harsh, especially with the bright neon lights in some campaigns. It fits the orchestrated violence perfectly. Gunshots are punchy, and punches are gunshotty. No wait, that’s not quite right. What I mean is it sounds great. The soundtrack is heavy and aggressive to complete the package nicely.

And I also want to personally thank whoever added the rain sound effect on that one level. Having the sound of hammering raindrops cut in and out as I moved John made me feel practically orgasmic (a word I never thought I’d use in a review, but there you go).

I nearly forgot to mention that there is a story, but it mostly comes down to “John Wick followed this trail and killed guys along the way.” Based off the one John Wick film I’ve seen, this seems to be in line with the usual plot. But it’s well voice-acted and does the job of contextualising (spelled that right first try) the slaughter you commit.

So did John Wick Hex make me feel like John Wick? Yes, I’d say it did.

I enjoyed it despite its flaws in the end. It’s like a point-and-click adventure game, where you point John, and then he clicks and everyone dies. Executing commands (and enemies) in quick succession felt good throughout, and while it could be better implemented, the replay feature was a novel addition. I do recommend that you don’t be as stubborn as me on your playthrough though. Use your bandages when you have them, cause it helps a lot to keep the game moving. You can always come back to the achievement runs later (as I will certainly be doing) with more experience and better know-how.

Now please excuse me while I see if the John Wick films are available to stream.

A digital copy of John Wick Hex for Epic Games Store was provided by the developer.

Find John Wick Hex on Epic Games Store here: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/johnwickhex/home