In an earlier post giving my thoughts on the John Wick series, I made an idle wish that there was ‘a game in the vein of John Wick.’ One-sentence review? This is that game.
There’s no real story, just short framings for each mission that justify the layout and enemies. What plot elements are told visually, or left to be implied from the players’ actions. The perspective is either top-down or third-person, changed easily via a toggle in Settings.
It does feel like the game was designed ever so slightly to be played top-down, but that’s not me saying the third-person mode is bad. On the contrary, the two modes are a hair’s breadth from parity. Movement is snappy, aiming is perfect, and the animations—while occasionally glitching out—are an excellent blend of punchy and smooth. Some of them even feel straight out of Wick’s repertoire.
Combat is straightforward: your base pistol is highly accurate with a seven-round magazine, and on the base difficulty you start out with 3 units of armor. Each unit lets you take one attack, and if you get hit with no armor you die. It sounds punishing, but it’s very hard to get hit outside of hectic crowd fights. A lot of enemies use melee weapons and telegraph their melee attacks while ranged enemies have visual indicators they’re about to fire.
You can shoot attackers first or dodge—either a single-tap sidestep, a double-tap dodge roll, or a held down combat leap, though that last one is more for movement than actual avoidance. With incoming melee attacks, you can counter as the attack comes in to deal heavy damage and set enemies up for executions—which render you immune to damage while the animation plays out. You also have the ability to take human shields, use dropped weapons or even deal outmelee attacks of your own, which are a great way to weaken enemies for the aforementioned executions.
Beyond the gameplay loop itself, you can unlock new clothing and accessories, lightly customize your character—or ‘Suit’ as the game calls them—and select a handful of modifiers that make the game easier or harder, in addition to changing the overall difficulty. There’s numerous missions with challenges galore to keep replay value up, and as the game released recently the potential for post-release content is high. It’s a simple game that knows what it wants to give the player and does that immediately; my time from launch to playing averages twenty-five seconds. If you aren’t hooked after the first mission, it’s probably not for you. But if you want more? There’s plenty of jobs for a skilled Suit like you.
Oh, and the soundtrack is killer.
