John Wick, ruthless assassin with a love of dogs, joins us for this week’s IGP First Look. Are we rough and tough enough to fill his shoes? No, not so much.
Some of the folks behind Blazing Chrome put out some mock pixel artwork of a John Wick NES game a few weeks ago. It was a shame that it wasn’t a full game, but they did make the art assets free to use for anyone who wanted to make one. This is where MuriloDev comes in, creating a NES-inspired action game where you’d need the reflexes of the skilled killer to have any hopes of surviving.
John Wick is hard. It seems like you have a large pool of health, but enemies are quick on the draw, and you can only soak up a few bullets before dying. A generous checkpoint system will keep you in the fight if you can keep calm, but memorization will be your friend as you cruise the dark streets of the cruel city. Does everyone have a shotgun but you? Yes, they do.
This difficulty feels appropriate, as it should be impressive for someone to be able to beat this. With the odds the character overcomes in the movies, you’d expect a near-insurmountable challenge from a game based on it. Dodging cars and bullets as you shoot down a helicopter should be a challenge, if only to make you feel what poor old John has to go through every day. It’s not easy being the cool assassin guy.
Part of the challenge turned out to be a controller that didn’t jive with the game! When we switched to keyboard, we could duck and move much more smoothly, resulting in a fun, but still demanding action game. We have much more training to do to become the legendary assassin. Here’s a second run at the game where we use this improved control style.
John Wick is available now on Itch.io.
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