John Wick is arguably the most simple-to-understand blockbuster franchise to have come out in the 21st century. As blockbusters and high-value IPs continue to lean heavily on reliable nostalgia pops, name brand recognition, and in-universe lore expansion, John Wick thrives on the simplicity of its high-concept hook. 4 movies in and despite a gradually built-in lore to keep the universe alive, John Wick’s appeal boils down to two factors: an inciting revenge story and nonstop, bone-crunching action.
It is a formula regularly found in the world of action video games, wherein the story – or what little of it there actually is – serves almost purely as the inciting incident for the exhilarating action we hope to experience. John Wick has delved into the land of gaming within its IP, first with the 2017 VR shooter, John Wick Chronicles. Followed in 2019 with the tactical RPG game John Wick Hex, the franchise’s attempts to expand into video games have been often met with a muted reception.
Despite having crafted the kind of hokey and bombastic universe that is frankly tailormade for a large-scale and definitive video game adaptation, the Keanu Reeves-led franchise has yet to fully take advantage of the medium with a true breakout gaming project. Sure, dressing up as the Baba Yaga in Fortnite can make for a good laugh if you want the visual of Wick engaging in gun play with Rick Sanchez, Vegeta, and Thanos.
But as of this writing, only one game has managed to honor the spirit of the John Wick franchise. A revenge plot serving as the base for an entire narrative driven by an inhuman need to mow through crowds of NPCs, not unlike the humble beginnings of the John Wick series. A game where almost every character in sight aims to kill your player character – and can do so with a single bullet. A game that John Wick 4 paid homage to in arguably the most famous sequence in the film.
Vreski’s revenge crime thriller The Hong Kong Massacre is the John Wick experience decanted into a tight, top-down action spectacle. Released in 2019, The Hong Kong Massacre burst onto the scene a mere five years after the release of the first John Wick film and the same year that Parabellum broke franchise records. On the other end, the top-down shooter did not break out in the same regard, quickly fading into the background after initial interest from gaming YouTubers.
A revenge story concerning a former police detective taking on the Triad in 1980s Hong Kong to avenge the death of his partner, The Hong Kong Massacre’s thinly layered plot is told through various short flashbacks sprinkled throughout the game’s levels. The simplicity of the game’s narrative hook lies in the many levels the player character must shoot his way through, alternating between warehouses, kitchens, apartment complexes, and more warehouses.
Taking inspiration from classic Hong Kong action cinema, The Hong Kong Massacre also takes a page from Hotline Miami – one of the most notorious and influential top-down shooters – in both its gameplay and setting structure. Immediately dropping the player character in the heat of the action, the enemies in HKM have the ability to drop you with a single shot. Pistol, rifle, shotgun, any weapon is a one-shot like Hotline Miami, with your character able to dodge roll and briefly slow down time to help compensate.
The illusion of invincibility is stripped away as you are essentially forced to learn level layouts through near-endless trial and error. Level runs can end as quick as a stray bullet catching you as you poke your head out into the hallway. Unlike Hotline Miami allowing you to engage in fisticuffs with enemies, HKM has you picking up guns and ammo from the floor. With ammo being extremely sparse, stealing people’s guns after killing them is part of the norm, encouraging you to experiment with different guns and play styles to get through the levels.
A game with a top-down visual style of Hotline Miami and the slow-mo gunplay mechanics of Max Payne, The Hong Kong Massacre does not attempt to hide its clear appreciation for both its video game and cinematic influences. While Hong Kong cinema is the game’s most apparent and intentional homage, it’s difficult to not think of the Baba Yaga as you clear out room after room of armed men with a single pistol.
Though many of the films revolve around Wick being on the run from an entire assassination organization, the simplicity of the first film’s puppy revenge tale is the energy that permeates throughout The Hong Kong Massacre. Playing as a one-man wrecking crew faced against a whole crime organization, Wick’s one-track mindset towards bloody revenge lives on in the player character’s descent into land of the Triad.
The callbacks – intentional or otherwise – don’t stop at the revenge plots for each character. Shooting your way through the Triad is a trial in both endurance and on-the-spot thinking, given the game’s tendency to start your character off with minimal ammo for each gun unlocked. Though guns can be upgraded with star points, you are still likely to survive through scraps found on the floor and guns you swipe from their now-deceased owners. Whatever your initial setup is at the start of a level, don’t expect to end the level with anything close to your original inventory.
The cyclical act of emptying guns of their ammo and improvising kill weapons is one of – if not the strongest hook for any John Wick action sequence. From using pencils and books to putting together an antique revolver while getting chased by assassins, Wick’s combat ingenuity is peak video game energy. He can use anything as a weapon and even running out of ammo won’t stop him from speed reloading while the other guy is unfortunate enough to not even notice his window of opportunity shrinking by the second.
Despite the game itself having nothing to do with the John Wick universe story-wise, that combat ingenuity is the biggest draw of The Hong Kong Massacre. The game accomplishes making the player feel like a legitimate badass with its slow-mo mechanics and its push to use every weapon available to you at any moment’s time. Mowing through a living room of Triad thugs feels significantly more satisfying when you run out of shells for your shotgun, dodge roll to avoid the rain of bullets coming your way, and swiping the fully loaded pistol one of the casualties just dropped to finish the job.
That is but one of countless potential scenarios that are designed to make you feel like the Baba Yaga himself, embracing the game’s limitations by putting that much more into the simple, yet versatile gunplay. It could be argued that any action revenge game could present similar scenarios to accomplish the same goal, but the all thrills, no chill pacing of HKM is another seemingly intentional callback to the John Wick movies’ similarly paced action showdowns. Revenge and murder are the only driving forces for both the game and movies’ early beginnings and despite being an original standalone story, The Hong Kong Massacre is as close to a definitive John Wick game experience as you can get.
‘John Wick: Chapter 4’
Franchise helmsman Chad Stahelski evidently believes something similar in terms of The Hong Kong Massacre. In a recent interview in SlashFilm promoting the franchise’s fourth outing, the director/veteran stuntman directly shouted out The Hong Kong Massacre as the inspiration behind one of the film’s final shootouts. The now-acclaimed action sequence sees the camera slowly rise until everything is shot in a top-down motion as Wick clears out an abandoned building of assassins with everything from regular guns to an incendiary shotgun literally lighting up the scene.
The scene displays Wick shooting everywhere around him with the expert precision we’ve come to expect from him, all the while diving in and out of rooms to avoid certain death. If the inspiration in the game can be boiled down to circumstance or intentional homage, then the John Wick 4 shootout is as direct and complimentary as homages can be. A game with a closer connection to the John Wick franchise than we realized is now part of the behind-the-scenes lore of what is now one of the series’ most noteworthy action set pieces.
The Hong Kong Massacre is the rare action game with a throwback charm that never dates itself in spite of its clear limitations. No connection to the story of John Wick and yet somehow this under-the-radar top-down shooter captures the silly action ingenuity of one of the 21st century’s most popular action franchises. Seeing everything come full-circle with the fourth entry’s shoutout to the game has not only provided us with another jaw-dropping action set piece for the series, but will hopefully rejuvenate interest in one of the most underrated shooters of the 2010s.
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