John Wick Hex seems to be its own stand alone story not connected to the movies, however some of the characters from the films are present in the game. I’m not gonna spoil the story for anyone that wants to play it for themselves but if I had to generalize it, “theres a bad guy that has captured Winston, the man that runs the Continental in the movies and Charon, the front door man. The story starts right after Winston and Charon have been taken, sitting in a room with the main antagonist, whose name just happens to be Hex.
The combat system is what separates this game from the flood of first person shooters and battle royale games of today. The game works completely off of time. Every step you take, every time you shoot your weapon, kneel down, whatever; is on a timeline. The timeline for John is at the top of the screen, showing actions and how long they’ll take as well as any enemies timelines that are on the screen, right above your own. Whenever you’re choosing what action to perform, time stops; enabling you to decide exactly what you want to do for that period of time. Whenever a new enemy arrives, time stops as well. Giving you a chance to deliberate on the correct method of handling the situation. Performing actions also has a success rating. Say you were attempting to shoot an enemy. The distance you are away from that enemy, the position you’re in ;be it standing or crouched, and the rate of fire of the gun decides if the shots you take will hit the target ;showing as a percentage of success so you can make that call. There’s also a focus meter. Each action besides normal movement requires focus to execute. When you run out of focus you can’t perform certain actions until you refill your focus. This is done by taking some time on your timeline to stand still and regain focus. Depending on the situation you’re in when you do this it could spell death.
I should also mention the ‘Fog of War’ mechanic. Where you can only see what John Wick can see. If you crouched for example; and are behind a table, you lose sight of everything past that table and the surrounding area becomes black. However, in your top down state you have full view of the room you’re in and any other room in the level, but what Mr. Wick can’t see at that moment will remain black and obscured. There were many times where this mechanic threw my plan right out the window until I got the hang of the angles of each area.
There are also bosses in John Wick Hex. I felt like more could be done with them design wise but they’re not bad. You can’t just shoot a boss. You actually have to lower their focus to increase the percentage of hitting them with bullets. When I played I did this by getting close to them and melee’ing sed boss. I should say that melee actions don’t do damage to bosses but it does make them lose focus and become stunned for a brief period. When a boss loses enough focus they’re easier to shoot. So the bosses become a lot of going up to them, fist fighting them for a few turns and then shooting them. Rinse and repeat until they go down. As long as the Boss is the only enemy on screen it wasn’t too difficult.
The layout for the game is a traditional level style. Levels in the same zone are connected to one another. When one level is complete the next on the line is opened. However, any ammo you had in your gun as well as the amount of health and focus you had will carry over into the next area. It’s more or less like a strategy survival style, completing each level while trying to conserve and manage your ammo and health so you can make it to the last level in a zone without being too unprepared.
To be honest, when I first started playing this I didn’t think I was gonna like the mechanics and play style, since I don’t really play strategy games all that often. You know what, though? I did enjoy myself, a lot, especially after I got into it a little more. You start to learn what works for the AI and the fact you can handle any situation the way you want really keeps the linear game open ended...if that makes any sense.
