John Wick Hex Review | TheXboxHub

When John Wick Hex was announced, it was hard not to raise an eyebrow. Anyone who has seen a John Wick movie knows that it is all about spectacular choreographed action, yet they were giving us something in turns, where the action was going to be stop-start. Why would you want to take turns connecting a clamp to John Wick?

Then there was designer partner Mike Bithell (Thomas was alone, Volume) with a high profile IP. Mike Bithell doesn’t have a huge catalog of games, but if there’s one thing that connects them, it’s their signature dialogue and their ability to create worlds. Why would he jump into someone else’s world, then, when he’s so good at building his own?

It feels like a dirty marriage, but John Wick isn’t in a bad movie yet and Mike Bithell hasn’t had a bad game yet. If you were to place a couple of continental coins, you’d bet they’ll nail it.

If you’re used to turn-based strategy games, John Wick Hex immediately pulls the rug out from under you. I was always going to give you control of Wick the lone wolf instead of a squad, but it didn’t stop him from feeling weird moving a lone unit around a map in a turn-based game of tactics. Turn a corner to find yourself in an ambush and there is no one else to cover that you are back; you’re going to stay in ambush. He is in low health and there is no chance to boost a different unit. John Wick Hex forces you to own your mistakes and you will make a lot of them.

Errors are frequent because the John Wick Hex is heavy in the fog of war, perhaps because Keanu’s mop obscures his field of vision. Pillars, corners, balconies, warehouses full of boxes – they make John Wick Hex an Ambush Simulator game, and your ability to anticipate and get out of them is half the skill. Bithell has also employed a procedural troop placement, so each replay (or kill) will place enemies in new locations in the level. If you plan to learn the spawns, you will be disappointed.

The other way John Wick Hex changes traditional turn-based games is the way he handles stocks. Most games of this type will play with action points and turns: your troops or your team can perform a series of actions before pressing “End turn” and handing over control to the enemy. Fair Play for John Wick Hex – He knows changing shifts would hardly be a ballet match, so he quits. Instead, there is a timeline that combines the actions of Wick and the enemy into a single chronology. Do you want to shoot that enemy? Sure, but it will take four units of time, and the enemy will shoot you in three units of time. If you want to dodge that bullet, you may want to consider dodging behind a pillar or roll. The fog of war will hide you and you can make your next decision.

It’s a baffling system at first, and the game knows it, crushing you under walls of text and menus that don’t make immediate sense. These open levels are worth lingering on, as Wick stocks, and the situation where they benefit the most, soon clears up a bit. It takes some time though, and we only felt like we were in full flow halfway through. Some of the options that seem less attractive are the most powerful; Who knew that ‘throwing gun’ and ‘waiting’ could be so effective?

At best, the John Wick Hex can have you do pirouettes from enemy to enemy, thrusting his elbows in the face and firing rapid gun bursts at his knees. It feels good to be ahead of the curve, taking a bullet just before an enemy, and then leaving plenty of time to anticipate someone else’s attack. The time management system makes this possible, visualizing what your opponent’s next three or four moves will be. It’s a huge amount of information to give, and this is how you and John Wick can feel untouchable as you anticipate everything and work the battlefield like a game of chess.

At worst, it can feel like a snowball. Round a corner and chances are good the game has thrown three thugs in your face. The random placement of troops and the way enemies can inexpensively spawn from nearby gates means this happens and occurs regularly. John Wick may be a beast, but he doesn’t have a round house on his locker that can take out three people at once. You will regularly be behind the curve instead of in front of it, with punches that will stagger you and bullets that will go through you, and there is no real answer to these situations. You are almost dead and you will not always feel guilty. Sure, it’s realistic, but it generates random moments of frustration.

The answer, particularly in later levels and difficulties, is to be tentative, spamming your ‘Wait’ button while on your knees, fighting enemies as they approach you. It’s effective, but not particularly ‘John Wick’, and I found myself wishing I could handle a room full of lackeys the same way Keanu does. This hesitancy only increases once you realize that weapons, health, and bandages persist to the next level, so your failures will be taken with you. It is often better to die than to progress.

John Wick-ness also evaporates in animations. There’s a brilliance in the movies where Wick will move from foe to foe in a kind of dance, but then there’s the violent payoff when fists and bullets crack at baddies. In John Wick Hex, the models are too simplistic, the weapons are too flashy, and the animations also stop and start (out of necessity – this is still a turn-based game) to feel like the source material. You look like nothing less than a silly action figure, waving your arms. There is an end-of-level function that allows you to see all your actions condensed into one movie, but it only serves to highlight the mischief of the animations. You will not use it more than once.

There is so much innovation in John Wick Hex, and it is primarily in the service of making you feel like John Wick, but it always seems to have a downside. The oppressive fog of war allows you to slide into the shadows, BUT it leads to cheap deaths. Persistent health at all levels means that you accumulate scars like John Wick, BUT it can mean that you are stuck in more difficult levels with no means to progress.

The double-edged sword also applies to narrative. Mike Bithell tells his story from the perspective of Hex, the villain of the play, telling why Wick follows him. You can see why, as it turns Wick into a bogeyman, someone he clearly fears but has yet to meet. That theme appears in every movie, so it feels natural here. But it makes the story completely static; for most levels, it’s Hex speaking in the same room, with no chance for Wick to say much. Wick’s progression through the levels is also as developed as Super Mario’s. He arrives at a capo’s ‘castle’ in search of what he wants, but what he wants turns out to be in the next castle. It’s a bit rubbish actually and for a master of narrative it seems like Mike Bithell drops the ball with Wick’s narrative framing.

But despite all the initial frustrations, the caution with which you have to approach some levels, and the crooked animations, there is still that wonderful feeling when things fall into place. The various combat systems are beautifully synchronized, enemies suddenly feel fair in the way they approach you, and you’re making the right decisions at the right time. Sure, you can catch a few bullets, but that’s true to the movies, and there will be that moment when you take stock and realize you’ve taken down a platoon of people. You can tell that it is these moments that the game was designed for and you wish they had happened a little more often.

You’ll get out of John Wick Hex in the Xbox bruised and a little scarred, but finally satisfied. He ambushes you with more randomness than you’d like and then kicks you while you’re down, but you’ll dust yourself off and get into a flow that makes you feel like a badass. It may not be the game you were expecting from the John Wick universe, but it has enough spikes to make it worth a try.