There's no shortage of games that try to sell the John Wick fantasy and they mostly do it with sharp suits and huge handguns, neon lighting and ultraviolence. Suit For Hire – an indie shooter that's quietly been gathering steam for the last few months, but has blown up after its 1.0 release on June 20 like someone murdered its dog or something – has all of those things. But it also has something else, a little spark that takes the simple environments and turns them into brilliant gun-fu arenas that'll make you feel like Wick himself.
You might be clearing out storage crates at a dock or parrying blades with a katana in a museum exhibit on ancient warfare. Whatever the setting, you're never standing still. Every level is a sandbox built for murder and motion, where each move flows into the next with the kind of mechanical confidence that few games manage to show off.
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The influences are right there on the surface – Baba Yaga's shadow looms large, from the way you execute enemies at point blank range to the slick transitions between pistols, SMGs, and blunt-force kicks to the face. Suit For Hire is more than just a pastiche though, it's a game that feels like the idea of John Wick. Fast, brutal, stylish. Less of a homage, more of a playable action montage.
The entire game is built around high-speed combat as you take your anonymous suit-wearing assassin and blast your way through a series of different action movie cliches that stay just long enough to fulfill the craving, but only rarely long enough to outlive their welcome.
The most impressive part is how it captures the fluidity of the Wick movies. Firearms are important, yes, but they're only part of your toolkit. You'll grapple enemies, kick them into walls, steal their guns mid-roll and come up blasting. A dedicated kick button lets you punt enemies into each other like they're trapped inside a sentient pinball machine, and I have a soft spot for grabbing an enemy and tossing them into the middle of a crowd of baddies just before you splatter their brains all over the place.
"... What you see is what you get with Suit for Hire: tightly controlled violence, and an intensity dial that's been turned all the way up"
Suit For Hire rewards you for precision – kill an enemy with all seven rounds of your handgun and you'll get an instant reload – and that means you'll start clearing rooms with a mix of brutal efficiency and cinematic flair, every move coming together to make the action feel like less a video game and more like a choreographed scene from a movie. Momentum is worshipped – miss a shot and you're suddenly scrambling for control, low on bullets and one bad choice from death. Lock in and it feels like you're conducting an orchestra, but all of the instruments are, er… doing murders.
The game is lean too. You are given most of your tools as you start the first level with only a few different unlockable weapons that will meaningfully change how you play, and some cosmetics that are handed out as rewards for completing challenges. Otherwise, what you see is what you get with Suit for Hire: tightly controlled violence, and an intensity dial that's been turned all the way up.
There's also an option to switch perspective and play either as a third-person shooter or as a top-down blaster, the latter clearly inspired by Hotline Miami or The Hong Kong Massacre – which, not-so-coincidentally, inspired one of the coolest scenes in John Wick: Chapter 4. While the third-person view has its moments, the top-down mode is where the game really shines. You can see the whole battlefield, read the flow of enemies, and choreograph your attacks with far more precision. When you start trying to ricochet bullets off of mirrors or shoot enemies through flimsy wall panels, you'll be glad you made the correct choice.
If there's a criticism, it's that some players might bounce off the minimalism. There's no story to hang onto, no emotional hook beyond "look cool, kill fast." But that's not really a weakness - it's a choice. This is a game about gunfeel, and I admire the swagger to let that speak for itself without adding any fluff to the experience.
I've played a lot of shooters this year. Some have deeper systems, most people have a bigger budget. None of them made me feel the unadulterated thrill of violence quite like Suit For Hire. While the ever present threat of Lionsgate's lawyers mean you check into The Continental, there's nothing stopping you from trying this suit out for yourself and seeing if it fits.
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