I thought about this scene a lot as I played through John Wick Hex, the first licensed game in the series, because it exemplifies a lot of what John Wick Hex is. Hex probably isn’t what you’d expect from a John Wick game. Rather than being a traditional action game, this is a tactical title. You control John from above, guiding him through a series of grid-based levels. The objective of each level is simple: get to the exit, or kill a specific target, which appears as a unique boss enemy.

"The story is told through voice overs during missions and comic book style cutscenes, as Hex relates Wick’s progress to his prisoners. The writing is surprisingly good, as is the voice acting."

The setup goes like this: several years before John meets his wife and tries to get out of the murder-for-hire business, a gangster named Hex has kidnapped Winston and Chabon – John’s old friends from the Continental Hotel – as an act of revenge against the High Table, the ruling authority in the John Wick underworld. He believes this show of strength will win him power, and possibly a seat at the Table itself. The High Table, however, is having none of it, and dispatches Wick to find Hex, dismantle his criminal network, and take him down.

The story is told through voice overs during missions and comic book style cutscenes, as Hex relates Wick’s progress to his prisoners. The writing is surprisingly good, as is the voice acting. Both Ian McShane (Winston) and Lance Reddick (Chabon) return to voice their characters, while Troy Baker admirably handles Hex. Keanu Reeves isn’t present, however, leaving John silent, but since the narrative conceit is that Hex is telling the story, it works pretty well. Overall, it’s a pretty good plot, and listening to the characters banter is enjoyable.

The game’s visual and sound design deserve praise as well. The flat, stylized look of a comic book is a perfect fit for a game like this. John’s face is set in a perpetual scowl, and the enemy types are easily identifiable. The variety in locations helps out a lot, too. John’s journey takes him from dimly lit back alleys to thumping, neon nightclubs, with a few stops at seedy docks, minimalist art galleries, and even snowy mountains along the way. Austin Wintory provides a strong score that sets the tone for each area, and the different locations help everything feel unique, even though the areas largely play the same.

"Actions take a certain amount of time, which is tracked on a timeline at the top of a screen. Every time you finish an action or spot a new enemy, time stops, allowing you to consider your next move."

What will hook you is the gameplay. The game is tactical, but it isn’t turn-based. Instead, actions take a certain amount of time, which is tracked on a timeline at the top of a screen. Every time you finish an action or spot a new enemy, time stops, allowing you to consider your next move. Most moves take a fraction of a second, but planning can take significantly longer. The timeline shows how long the actions you can take compare to what each visible enemy is doing. Picking the right action is crucial. Take too long, and an enemy will be able to interrupt whatever you were trying to do, opening you up to even more damage.

Making the right decision comes down to learning your options. A parry, for instance, is very quick, and will usually beat most enemy strikes, but you have to be next to the enemy in question. Strikes do damage, but they take longer. Crouching can make an enemy miss a shot but limits your movement. Sometimes it’s best to just hide behind cover. You can also push enemies away from you, or perform a takedown which kills most enemies instantly and allows you to change position. Sometimes, though, the smartest thing to do is find a good spot and wait, allowing you to take out an unsuspecting enemy before they even know you’re there.

Your guns come into play, too. There’s a good variety, including semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles, though some are all but useless. Revolvers and shotguns take a long time to fire, leaving you open to getting hit even if you tell John to fire before the enemy does. Others, like the SMG, fire quickly and do a lot of damage, but fire several times, which often means you’ll be wasting ammo firing at an enemy that’s already dead. I found the standard semi-automatic pistols best for almost every situation, but stronger guns are undeniably useful against tougher targets. Managing your ammo is key because spare clips are scarce, so you’ll be picking up the guns of the dead as you progress. You always have the option to throw your weapon, an absurdly quick ability that stuns enemies, but unless you’re going to quickly finish them off with a nearby weapon or John’s fists, it’s best left for a last resort.

"The system encourages you to mix things up between guns and melee, which is a good thing. It’s also necessary for bosses, who can’t be damaged by physical strikes and have high focus. "

You’ll also have to manage John’s focus, which allows him to use advanced abilities like takedowns, dodges, and roll when crouched. Replenishing it is easy – you push a button and John shakes his head like he’s trying to sober up – but it takes more than two seconds. In Hex, that’s an eternity, so you’ll want to be careful about when you do it. Most enemies have focus as well. Someone with a lot of it will be harder to hit from range, at least until you go in and soften them up with your fists. The system encourages you to mix things up between guns and melee, which is a good thing. It’s also necessary for bosses, who can’t be damaged by physical strikes and have high focus. Beating them means beating them up first, so while the initial stages of the fight are challenging as you try to get in range, they’re stupidly easy once you take away all of their focus.

Combining all of these abilities makes for some seriously fun engagements, especially against large groups, and John Wick Hex walks the fine line between making sure you feel powerful – John is more powerful than any given enemy that’s not a boss, and they’re merely his equal – and vulnerable at the same time. Yeah, John’s the boogeyman, and there’s a reason everyone in this story is afraid of him, but he’s also just a guy, and a few bullets will kill him just as fast as anyone else. When you’re playing well, you feel unstoppable, killing one enemy with strikes before parrying another, using a takedown to put yourself out of the line of fire of a third, throwing your gun at a fourth to interrupt his shot, and then picking up a nearby pistol to put him down while he’s stunned. It’s a ballet of bullets and death, and it feels best when you’re executing it flawlessly, pirouetting from one enemy to the next in an unstoppable, relentless advance.

But it’s not all tactics. There’s strategy, too. At the beginning of each chapter – a sequence of levels built around an area like the docks, back alleys, or art gallery – you can spend Continental coins to gain passive bonuses and stash bandages or weapons in a specific level. These coins don’t carry over between chapters, so you should spend them all. You’ll always want to snag the most powerful bonuses – more health, greater chance to evade while moving, reduced Focus cost, better accuracy, etc – but it’s worth stashing some bandages and weapons, too. Things become more expensive to stash in later levels, and you carry what you have between them, so there’s no reason not to stock up early.

"Sometimes it means you’ll enter an area with a poor gun (like a revolver), little health, and no bandages. In these scenarios, you’ll have to play flawlessly to advance, which can be a little frustrating."

This can be a double-edged sword, however. Sometimes it means you’ll enter an area with a poor gun (like a revolver), little health, and no bandages. In these scenarios, you’ll have to play flawlessly to advance, which can be a little frustrating. Dying sends you back to the beginning of the level with whatever you had at the time. Enemies are spawned a little differently each time, so you can’t just autopilot your way back to problem areas. This helps keep the game engaging when you die, so it’s not all bad, but it can be irritating when a single mistake can reset all of your progress, which is often the case in later levels. That said, you can get around this by learning to restart whenever you take unnecessary damage, and Hex almost never feels unfair. Whenever I died, I knew why, and had a better idea of what to do next time.

When you finish a level, you can watch a replay of what you did in real-time. It’s a neat system, but it also puts a spotlight on Hex’s greatest flaw: the animations. They’re stiff and repetitive (there are like two versions of the strike animation, so you’ll see them a lot by the time the credits roll), and the sound effects don’t always line up perfectly with the animations they support.

The latter issue also crops up with the game’s subtitles, which appear after a character has finished speaking, causing an odd sense of deja-vu. These issues are less noticeable as you’re playing because of the game’s pause and play nature, but they become very, very obvious as John moves woodenly from square to square during replays. Replays are optional, and it would be silly to expect a video game to match the smooth, impressive choreography of a John Wick film, but it feels like they didn’t even try here. These technical shortcomings extended to stability issues, too, and the game crashed on me twice during my playthrough.

"John Wick Hex is a solid adaptation of the source material, even if the animation systems can’t always cash the checks the gameplay writes and it sometimes feels a bit unpolished."

John Wick Hex isn’t a long game. Individual levels take mere minutes if you play them well, and I’d estimate most players will finish it in 8-10 hours. There is some replay value here in completing challenges and earning higher ratings or “names” by beating a par time, not using bandages, varying your weapon use, etc, and there’s an “expedited” mode that only gives you five seconds to take an action. Fail to do so, and the enemy gets to move while you wait. I don’t think it will cause most players any difficulty – you take turns pretty fast as it is – but it’s there if you want it.

All told, John Wick Hex is a solid adaptation of the source material, even if the animation systems can’t always cash the checks the gameplay writes and it sometimes feels a bit unpolished. It’s not a great game, but it is a good one, and one well worth checking out if you’re into the films or tactical games. Just remember: plan well, and don’t be afraid to spend some money before you head off on your mission. The tasting is more than worth it. Trust me.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Fortunately for Ellis (and the player), he isn’t alone. Ellis is accompanied by Bullet, a former police dog given to him by Sheriff Lanning. Bullet will find clues, guide you along the right path, bark at you when you’re going the wrong way, and identify the locations of the monsters lurking in the trees so you can defend yourself from them. He’s also Ellis’s emotional support animal, and his presence also keeps Ellis sane. Bullet is the beating heart of Blair Witch. He’s also a very good boy. After about an hour, I no longer cared about what happened to Ellis. He could have died and I would have been okay with it. I just wanted Bullet to live.

"Blair Witch is set in 1996, two years after the original film, and Ellis’s equipment reflects the time period. He has a Nokia cell phone, a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, a backpack to hold anything he may find, and snacks for Bullet. Since Ellis arrives late to the search party, you spend most of the game without any human contact."

Blair Witch is set in 1996, two years after the original film, and Ellis’s equipment reflects the time period. He has a Nokia cell phone, a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, a backpack to hold anything he may find, and snacks for Bullet. Since Ellis arrives late to the search party, you spend most of the game without any human contact. What little there is comes by radio and Ellis’s phone, though reception is shoddy in the woods. Mostly you follow Bullet around the woods, finding clues, listening the whatever comes over the radio (or whatever lurks in the trees), and solving puzzles.

Because this is set in the Blair Witch universe, things quickly spiral out of control. Ellis falls off the main path while running after an excited Bullet, gets thoroughly lost, and starts to lose it. We’re treated to a greatest hits version of Ellis’s past – spoiler: he’s a really, really bad person struggling with serious mental health issues – and he passes out. When he wakes up, the sun has set and the search party that was hunting for Peter now must find him, too. Undaunted, Ellis presses on, either too stubborn, desperate, or stupid to care. On the radio, the other characters talk about the tapes they found from The Blair Witch Project, the Blair Witch, and the monsters who live in the woods. It’s creepy stuff, even though it’s not always the most well-acted or well-written dialogue.

This is about when things start to get weird. Like everyone else who encounters the Blair Witch, Ellis’s reality begins to warp. He comes across abandoned camp sites that the other team never found, concrete trenches and bunkers that shouldn’t exist, vehicles that couldn’t possibly be where they are. At one point, Ellis stands under a particularly notable tree, talking to Lanning on the walkie-talkie. Lanning claims to be under the same tree, but he’s nowhere to be seen. And this is about the time both men start to freak out. At this point, the rules of reality – ideas that objects cannot be in more than one place at once, that two characters occupying the same physical space will also occupy the same observable reality, and that time only flows in one direction, forward – cease to apply. Ellis is in his own private version of Hell, and the only way out is through. But’s he’s not completely defenseless.

"Early on, Ellis comes across a camcorder, and as the game progresses, finds several watchable tapes. These tapes not only help you figure out what’s going on, they also allow Ellis to manipulate reality. If you go to the area in the video, you can pause the tape at specific times, which causes the real world to change."

Early on, Ellis comes across a camcorder, and as the game progresses, finds several watchable tapes. These tapes not only help you figure out what’s going on, they also allow Ellis to manipulate reality. If you go to the area in the video, you can pause the tape at specific times, which causes the real world to change. If, for instance, I pause a tape when there’s a toy police car on the ground, that toy car will appear on the ground in front of me. If I pause a video before a tree collapses, it will still be upright, allowing me to progress to an area I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to. You can play and pause the videos as many times and you need, and your most current video may not be the right one for the current situation. You may have to backtrack or return to an older video to find the way forward, so paying attention to each video, and figuring out where it takes place, is important.

In true Blair Witch fashion, you can also use the video camera’s night vision mode to navigate through the woods. If you’re careful, you can sneak past the monsters hiding in the trees. If you’re not, you’ll have to fight them. Fortunately, Ellis and Bullet make a formidable tag team. Bullet will face and growl at monsters, letting you know where they are so you can shine your flashlight on them, which damages them. It’s a lot like Alan Wake, just with fewer bullets. Unfortunately for Ellis, the monsters are quick, and you only catch flashes of their white outlines and too-long limbs as they flash past you. It’s easy to become disoriented as lose track of both Bullet and the monster, which leaves you open to attack.

Dying isn’t a big deal, though. What’s more important is your relationship with Bullet. How you treat him will alter both his behavior and the outcome of the game, so your relationship – and keeping him safe from monsters – matters. This adds genuine tension to an already spooky game. Sometimes, Bullet will run off. Not only does this impact Elli’s sanity, which makes it harder to see and more likely that scary things are going to happen, it’s legitimately scary because something might happen to Bullet. Sometimes the game does this for story purposes, but the difference between Bullet running off because the story demands it and him getting just far ahead of you that you can’t see him and must call him back aren’t always obvious. Bullet’s safety is paramount, so you’ll want to take care of him. He’s often the only reason you have any idea where you are and aren’t currently losing your mind or being horrifically murdered.

"Interacting with Bullet is easy. You can order him to “seek” an item or the way forward, “stay,” “stay close,” and “come” if he gets too far away. You can also pet him, which comes complete with adorable animations. If you feel he deserves it, you can “reprimand” him, but I honestly don’t know why you would. Bullet is a very good dog and he’s doing his best."

Interacting with him is easy. You can order him to “seek” an item or the way forward, “stay,” “stay close,” and “come” if he gets too far away. You can also pet him, which comes complete with adorable animations. If you feel he deserves it, you can “reprimand” him, but I honestly don’t know why you would. Bullet is a very good dog and he’s doing his best. He’s also often the only way you can find anything and, again, the reason you’re not currently being brutally murdered by monsters. It’s not his fault his owner dragged him into a haunted forest to assuage his guilty conscience. Mostly I just petted him a lot and fed him snacks because I felt that’s what he deserved. Ellis is a jerk, sure, but I had a hard time believing he was that much of a jerk.

Even with Bullet’s help, playing Blair Witch often feels like walking to your death. You know, as you progress, that things are only going to get worse, but there’s no help for it. The forest that Bloober has created is genuinely an unsettling place to be, and that’s without any Blair Witch stuff going on. She’s a constant presence that hangs over everything that happens, and the game never misses an opportunity to remind you that you’re hilariously out of your depth. Winning is out of the question here; the best you and Bullet can hope to do is survive. It doesn’t help that it’s easy to get lost, even at the best of times. You’re rarely sure of where you are in Blair Witch, and the game is not eager to help you. It’s a lot easier to be lost in the woods when you’re lost in the woods.

This sense of atmosphere, and the clever puzzles, makes Blair Witch’s issues more glaring. The game doesn’t run particularly well, though I easily cleared its minimum requirements. More than that, the visual settings seemed to be bugged, and would often display settings that I knew I wasn’t running on. I had to run the game on low to get a steady framerate, though the game generally looks fine on those settings. Were those the only technical concerns, I would have little problem, but they’re not. The game features several bugs, many of which occur when you pick up objects or Bullet tries to bring you something. You can usually get out of these scenarios by crouching or moving away from the bugged object and resetting Bullet or yourself, but it’s irritating that this is happening at all. There are also typos in the game’s subtitles, and in one glaring instance, the subtitles don’t refer to the actual words being said. Everyone in the game calls the local sports team the Baltimore Crows (probably because Bloober wasn’t allowed to name the Baltimore Ravens), but the Ravens are mentioned explicitly by name on a police report you pick up. It’s a small moment, but it’s exceptionally jarring.

These issues are a shame because when Blair Witch works, it’s quite good. Ellis may be a jerk, but I understood him and, after a while, I even wanted him to find a little bit of the redemption he’s so desperately seeking. Bullet is an absolute joy to pal around with, and the forest, monsters, and the Blair Witch herself are genuinely scary and well-handled. Blair Witch isn’t a long game – Bloober estimates most people will finish the game in about six hours, but I would say it’s closer to four or five – but it does have multiple endings depending on the actions you take and your relationship with Bullet.

What Blair Witch offers at its best is quite good, and I imagine most fans of the franchise will be happy with Bloober’s take on it. Unfortunately, the game is still a rather iffy product that needs more patching. If you’re looking to be scared, you could do a lot worse than talking a walk into the Black Forest Hills with a very good dog. Just remember that these are the Blair Witch’s woods. It doesn’t matter how well prepared you think you are; you’re not ready for her. Once you step inside, the rules of reality cease to apply. If you walk in, you’re off the edge of the map. There are monsters here, and some of them are the ones with bring with us.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Power Rangers: Battle For Grid is a brand new fighting game based on Power Rangers that was announced earlier today. It’s headed to PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and will be a tag based fighting game (somewhat in the vein of Dragon Ball FighterZ).

When the game launches, it will actually probably be worst on the PS4, however. The developers confirmed in the press release announcing the game that the Switch, Xbox One, and PC versions of the game will have cross-platform play as well as cross-platform progression, which means you can play with players on other systems with these versions, and carry your progress across these versions. However, the PS4 version will not have either of these capabilities. If nothing else, this means that finding matches on the PS4 will be harder, theoretically, than it will be on the other versions.

It’s unclear why the PS4 version of the game is left out of the unified pool in this instance, because with games like Rocket League and Fortnite, Sony have begun to allow cross platform play and progression to some degree. Hopefully, in the future, that capability can be patched into the PS4 version of this game as well.

Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid launches for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC later this year. Check out the game’s announcement trailer below.