SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
John Wick Hex is a straightforward shooter game with a well-considered gameplay design. But a neglect for optimal controls, uneven execution and shoddy aesthetic make it a real chore to play.
John Wick’s appeal comes from his superlative status among assassins. He is a seasoned marksman, martial artist, and tactician who never fails to take down a room full of equally trained assassins. We have no doubt about his abilities when we watch him on the big screen, smoothly slamming goons onto the floor, and landing almost every headshot. John Wick is, in a way, a finished product, but John Wick Hex does not feel like one. I believe if this game had not been associated with this character, it would not nearly have gotten the attention it has.
Most people who want to try this game are familiar with the rhythm of John Wick-esque action. It’s fast, fluid, and precise. But it’s a jarring transition from a fast-paced smooth cinematic action film to a slow staccato of gunshots and thwacks. If you were expecting fast paced gunfights, you’ll be disappointed, and if you’ve read about the game beforehand and prepared yourself for the slow pace, you might take a while to get used to the controls and be unable to gain speed.
Fans and gamers alike will definitely find the game’s strategy aspect enjoyable. The core of Hex’s gameplay involves you controlling John Wick, and selecting one of many combative actions that each take up specific amounts of time. The scene pauses about every 0.2 seconds to let you choose your next move. The objective is to move across the room and time your actions such that you deal damage to your enemies before they can hurt you. How you know if your chosen action will be a success is by looking at two timelines on the top part of the screen. The timeline above is yours and the one bottom is for your target enemy. A white block shows you how much time is taken to prepare a certain action (e.g. John preparing to fire a gun) and a pink block shows you how much time it takes to deliver the damage (e.g. time for bullets to fly across the room and wound the target). The bottom timeline shows the same things for the enemies you target - their planning and execution phases.
This timeline based gameplay style and the mix of actions is well thought out. John can not only shoot, strike, and push, but also throw his gun at the enemy to cause melee damage. Success in this game comes down to playing based on what the timeline shows you for each choice you are about to make. For henchman characters (brawlers, martial artists, and gunmen), you simply have to execute an offensive maneuver before theirs begins (i.e. your timeline’s pink block must precede their pink block), because your attacks interrupt theirs. Bosses, however, are not interrupted so you must instead do more melee damage to them to disrupt their focus while taking care not to be picked off by any of their henchmen from behind. A crucial way to win is to consistently evade the sightlines of gunmen that are preparing to shoot at you. Moving behind a wall or pillar makes them lose your location and walk in your direction, and gives you more time to counter attack. Essentially, play defensively.
The game’s “Focus” component is a unique way to dispense and limit John’s fighting capabilities. This metric determines John’s attention and exhaustion levels, and is arguably more important than ammunition or health, since a severe lack of focus can limit the actions you can take, like aiming and shooting, and end up killing you if you don’t take a few seconds to shake off the stress. You spend focus when you do physically intensive maneuvers, like dodging an incoming attack or rolling quickly across the floor.
Now, with all the positives out of the way, let me tell you how miserable I felt playing the game on my PlayStation 4. In preparation for this review, I spent around 3 hours each day playing to get through maps that are supposedly only meant to take half that time. Hex is rife with many problems that are sure to piss off even the most dedicated gamers. Everything about this game is painfully half-baked, especially the aesthetic. My PS4 is set up with a 65 inch TV, while I sit on a couch a little more than ten feet away. It’s healthy to keep a distance between a screen and your eyes. Since Hex doesn’t let me zoom into the scene enough, I found myself squinting or slouching forward to make out the spaces between John and the enemies - especially a problem where there were multiple enemies in close proximity to John. I had to be careful of where I moved my cursor in case I selected the wrong goon to fight at the wrong time. This disrupted the flow of combat.
The most irritating thing about this game is its inconsistency. There is no clear cadence about when enemies come out of their own accord (upon hearing fighting noises probably) or if they just wait until you step onto a particular cell in the room - which most of the time happens to be in an area with two or more enemy doors, in an open area with little or no cover. As you play through the earlier levels of the game you understand there are a set number of enemies that come at you within each map, and after which lets you reach the escape point without sending more goons.
However, my expectation of it being a narrative based game (with a beginning, middle, and definite end) didn’t prepare me for the seemingly endless number of enemies crowding the levels, especially in higher level maps like Lair > Utility. I understand that the game is supposed to be realistic in that John doesn’t know how many enemies there are and how they’re going to approach him. But this really hampered my gameplay experience since each level felt infinite and caused headaches and eyestrain. It seems the developers thought the way to make the game more difficult was just to throw in more enemies instead of designing more challenging maps.
For all the thought that went into the gameplay design, I’m surprised the beta testers didn’t recommend a better mapping for the controls. As you pause every 0.2 seconds to choose your next action, you can choose from two lists: one of tactical actions (wait, change stance, etc.), and the other of combative actions (strike, takedown, shoot, etc.). But why on earth use the list format when you can take all those actions out of the menu and simply map them directly onto the console’s many buttons or the keyboard on a PC? The disadvantage of using a list, other than it taking extra time to act, is when you’re playing quickly you’ll probably hit a different action by mistake, throwing off your entire gameplay, and greatly increasing the chance of death.
The cutscenes are just filler and have no value. The static, unexpressive, faces of the characters (Winston, Hex, Charon) do nothing to help the dry and uninspired dialogue - delivered with some effort by Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, and Troy Baker. Even in comic books, characters are drawn with discernible emotions. The facial expressions of these characters though, remain flat, despite the dialogue being somewhat emotionally charged. The inconsistency of the art style makes me think this game was more appropriate for filmmakers who may want a motion storyboard to help them plan John Wick’s fight choreography in the films. To the folks at Bithell, if you’re gonna make a game this problematic, at least have it look good enough to be tolerable?
John Wick Hex is great for a lazy afternoon when you have nothing to do but want to play a puzzle game infused with some fighting elements. I’d recommend it to chess or tetris players rather than those who like first person shooter games. Success in this game ultimately comes down to some skill, but ultimately trial and error. This is instructive and makes you think but comes at the expense of a smooth and reliable experience. But hey, what do you expect from a cheap game anyway?
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