John Wick Hex
By: Good Shepherd
JOHN Wick was the Second Coming of action flicks for those who feared Keanu Reeves had whupped his last ass in The Matrix. Offering the kind of daft action a digital Hollywood doesn't make any more, the cheese is stacked increasingly high in each Wick flick, keeping its eerily spry 54-year-old star franchise-worthy.
And, Keanu believe it, there's a John Wick videogame in development – though it's not how you'd imagined. While, on the silver screen, the old-school revengers about one (hit) man and his dog made good on the guilty popcorn pleasures, John Wick Hex is a more highbrow affair, its operatic blood-letting choreographed through noodle-scratching time management and lofty strategy that, according to the blurb, "makes you think and strike like John Wick".
Rather than a blockbuster team of jacked action coders, the franchise was instead parked under the auspices of indie darling Mike Bithell, and the fresh-faced auteur of puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone has been quietly burning his wick at both ends for the past year.
Instead of hair-trigger fireworks, the tactical action aims to capture the movies' gun-fu spirit without requiring lickety-split reflexes. Unleashing Wick fury involves the kind of turn-based manoeuvres familiar to RPG fans as players plan every move to dodge, parry and blast their way through a series of stylish gunfights.
Preparation is key when each move has baked-in costs in terms of focus and time (reloading, for example, can cost you dear) and your aim isn't just to fill coffins but to take zero damage and waste nary a bullet while doing so. Hustling high scores on each mission will unlock new guns, outfits and locations, ensuring sky-high replay value.
Spinning a yarn for Wick unrelated to his celluloid shenanigans, Hex's comic book visuals are every bit as stylish as the snappily-suited slaughterer and backed up by a stellar vocal cast that includes Ian McShane – better known as avuncular camera-addressing antiques flogger, Lovejoy.
There's no word yet on Keanu approaching the microphone, though a solid length of timber would be just as serviceable in the thesping department.
Announced just in time to coat tail publicity for the third in the movie franchise – John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum is due to whet fleapits next week – there's still no release date for Hex, though we know it will grace consoles and PC.
While he's been stalking the virtual battlegrounds of Fortnite for a while, John Wick's first official foray into the gaming world is certainly more left-field than fans would have expected, and here's hoping the testosterone-charged bloodlust doesn't get lost in translation – even if it is akin to making a Fast and Furious chess game.
