Quick Look: John Wick Hex

coming in with tinted glasses.

this QL will be skewed

One minute in and I'm already mad at Dan

I don't get why Dan is leading this Quick Look when Alex has also played the game and seems better equipped to talk about it.

This honestly looks like dogshit.

Man, this looks so cool. I can also see why Dan would hate it. I feel like he would do better with a Stranglehold version of a John Wick game.

Edit: he literally mentions Stranglehold lol. Honestly, a mix like Conviction and Stranglehold could also work for a John Wick game. I'm into this, though.

Never before have I felt more that another team member might have been a better choice to run a quicklook than I did with this.

That said, I completely understand why Dan doesn't like it, and it makes sense based off his game tastes. It's not quite the right type of tactics/strategy game that meshes with the ones he enjoys, which knowing how much he loves John Wick I understand why it adds to his frustration.

I do agree that the replays can be pretty goofy looking at times. Sometimes they look great, though.

Edit: To add to the above, John Wick Hex seems to be a game about timeline management and monitoring your stats. It appears that Dan wants to play it with a larger focus on quickest kills rather than most efficient kills, which aren't always the same thing. Not entirely on him (as the game only briefly mentions it), but realizing that early on greatly added to my enjoyment.

The gameplay looks interesting, I think.

I'm team Dan on this one. All of this is really cool in concept but not execution.

This seems like the most backwards-ass way possible to present a strategy game, by taking a person who doesn't want to play the game as it is, who will impatiently button through bad decisions, and then complain that the results aren't cool.

I'd be impatient too if I lost my cloud save and had to start an already bad game over again then listen to people shout "Throw the gun!" a hundred times when trying to explain basic game mechanics. Also I didn't see Alex disagree with any of Dan's complaints about the game.

A few hours in, and I´m not feeling it, gets very boring very quick. Janky looking animations to boot.

This looks like it needed to be about 200% faster and way less granular with the tactical options. Also, why the fuck is John not shooting them in the goddamn face once he has them on the ground? That's like, THE thing he does, it's his signature move. He doesn't "stun" people, he ends their life with a fucking headshot the nano second he gets them on the ground. How did they mess that up?

@dudeglove: Fair enough, I stopped watching four minutes in and decided to buy the game for myself XD

You should check out Dan's Metro QL.

@archer88: It happens, and I'm not really wanting to dogpile. Heck I thought about deleting my comment after I saw everyone laying in to it in this case already.

I will again state that I get why Dan's frustrated/dislikes the game, and it's entirely possible that those reasons didn't become apparent until after he was already assigned the game and was a few missions in.

It's just unfortunate, is all.

This QL starts off seeming like it's going to be old dan, but then by the end it seems like its new Dan admitting it isn't his thing but it has neat ideas.

Is the name like Johan Hex but John Wick?

Dan might be a poor choice to lead the QL, but from everything I've seen of this game, he's right: this is a tactically boring tactics game. The game doesn't give you enough interesting options to make the turn-based mechanics worthwhile. This seems like the kind of game where you find the optimal strategy to deal with enemies early on, then repeat it over and over for the rest of the game.

this seems ok, i guess. idunno, i'll probly give it a shot

Totally with Dan on this, feel like this game completely missed the mark.

I feel like what this world really needs is a John Wick "Hexen".

This looks pretty awesome actually, definitely a game i'd pick up on my switch at some point (if/when they release on that platform).

Also, knowing the cast of GB well enough, i know when when certain people like Dan or Jeff really don't like a game that it doesn't influence my decision over the game really at all because we look for different things, that said when they're really into a game i generally know i'll enjoy it.

So Dan poo pooing this from the start really holds no sway over how id feel about it, and it doesn't really bother me having him lead the QL. If anything having him and the rest of the East crew on just makes it a fun watch even if I don't necessarily agree with the leads take on the game.

Seems like this game needed another year of development.

I totally get if this kind of game isn't your thing. That's fine. But saying that Stranglehold is the game you wish it emulated? Okay...

The real-time replay is something I've wanted to see in XCOM since forever. At least someone gave it shot!

This is the absolute worst game to have captain open minded play and give his opinion on. And I LIKE Dan.

@cannibaltooth: They apparently have "plans for console releases". A VERY short search didn't turn up anything on when, though.

The thing with Dan's complaint that he wishes it emulated an action game more both makes sense and seems 100000000x harder, even just in concept, never mind execution. The thing that makes the John Wick movies so fun and engaging to me is never being 100% sure how Wick is going to handle a given dude.

Step on foot - hit face with gun barrel - shoot in stomach, causing forward lurch - knee to face - double tap shots to chest and head - enemy defeated

OR

Single shot through eyeball seconds after enemy appearance.

Unless you can capture that kind of chaotic nature to the gunplay, I see no point in making a John Wick game. That's why I was so excited for this, because all the cool "gun idiosyncrasies" would be taken care of simply through gameplay, with little need for fast-thinking input from me. That said, I can also see why Dan wouldn't like how this was handled, but I think it looks dope. But then, I'm someone who will fight to the death over Transistor > Bastion, so that says everything in this case. I'll be waiting with bated breath for whichever console port is most convenient to me.

I'm with Dan on this game, not at all how I'd want a video game based on John Wick to be.

Wow... that playback feature really misses the mark. The gameplay itself looks decent though.

Anyone else keep reading this as "Jonah Hex"?

I'm with Dan on this one, I don't think this comes together for what I'd want to play

This game looks unfinished imo

now this here's a john wick who hecks

Alex says this isn't like X-com, but my favourite X-Com are the old UFO AfterX games from Altar which did exactly this for team based combat. They called it 'interrupt-able real-time'.

. . . or slapping a horse on the ass so it kicks a guys head off. Or throwing a fire axe (into the head of course) from halfway across the room.

But you your overall point, I think my problem with it is that it lacks the flow of John Wick. The beauty of those movies isn't just that John Wick is throwing people into the ground and then shooting them in the head - it's that he's doing that continuously several times in a row and constantly adapting to the changing circumstances of the fight.

I mean, I can appreciate what they are trying to do here by attempting to simulate the calculations that would be going on in Wick's head at a given moment, but I think that would have been better accomplished as some sort of modified Hotline Miami thing. Like, maybe slow down time once a fight pops off and give the player a couple of seconds to choose what they're going to rather than just pausing the action entirely?

Dan would like John Wick Chronicles VR a lot more its not great but more action focused

I think Dan did a decent QL here, regardless of his biases. He knew the game and how it play it. He certainly didn't go all Metro on it. He left it very open that others might find this approach interesting.

Good QL.

Appreciated Dan's candour here.

I'm not sure I follow Vinny's take on John Wick. In the first movie maybe, but the second and third movies paint him as a nigh-unstoppable superhero save for a couple of tough people he runs into along the way. His moves are always graceful to the point of gratuity, or ruthlessly efficient, but I'd never say that he wins solely because he won't give up. He's not Spider-Man or something.

I wonder if this is a proof of concept for something bigger? This system with a huge budget would be really cool.

I enjoy this game overall, but I 100% agree with all of Dan's complaints.

My biggest issue is the boss fights. They just plain suck. Get up on them, take them down, shoot them, take them down, shoot them, hope you can get it done before too many enemies spawn in, that's it. Fighting the regular mooks feels more dynamic than the bosses, which seems weird.

I do like how the takedowns work, though. Getting it positioned just right so that you can chain through multiple enemies without spending a bullet is really satisfying. Unfortunately, it feels more like luck than anything. I also like that you can plant items before each set of levels, although the uneven difficulty usually means you'll find yourself not needing what you planted (meaning, you might place a revolver on level 4 or whatever, but the level is full of better guns for the taking, which you couldn't have known). Again, feels more like luck than strategy.

This looks really cool in concept, but the replay animations just look janky. It looks like there's not enough frames on animations on the character models.

I don't get why QLs that aren't multi-player have the full crew, it's just becomes too busy. To be frank I think I'd much prefer QLs if they were solo affairs, but I really don't get having more than 2 people unless you need them.

For any of you looking for a John Wick-esque action shooter, might I suggest Splinter Cell: Conviction? The melee takedown + mark and execute systems in the game provide for straight-up John Wick moments.

I have to agree with Dan, this seem like a great idea in concept, but the execution is lacking.

So who else wants to go rewatch John Wick after seeing this?

@darkflight: Trust me, you don't want solo Quick Looks. There were some done that way in the early days and they're way more boring.

That being said, I wouldn't mind East making it a little less crowded in the booth from time to time.