Month: October 2019

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  After completing each mission in John Wick Hex, players are invited to review the results from a cinematic perspective, where it plays out in real time. It's a cool way to recap your tactical efforts. [credit: Good Shepherd Entertainment ]

Can a proper John Wick video game truly be made? You may look at a film series like John Wick and assume its guns, martial arts, fast cars, and worldwide mafioso hideouts are the stuff of a dream video game.

But for me, I imagine that game's design perspective and start sweating bullets. The character of John Wick is a laser-focused, ultra-durable hit man, all perfect aim and uproarious slapstick. How do you translate that hero's superhuman prowess accurately in a video game yet somehow make it challenging to play? Can a real-time action game, either first- or third-person, ever do that sensation justice without automatically cheating its players into Wick-like perfection?

The first true game based on the series, John Wick Hex, answers this quandary with a clever angle. The films' hero has an uncanny ability to scan and understand an entire room full of bad guys like he's a supercomputer. If he can figuratively slow time down and pick off his foes with precision, couldn't the video game version do the same?

Enlarge / It's a bird! It's a shark! It's Invictus, Bell's proposed Army scout helicopter. (credit: Bell-Textron)

Bell Textron has unveiled the design for the company's entrant into the US Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program: a single-rotor helicopter called the Bell 360 Invictus. The shark-like design, which uses rotor technology developed for the Bell 525 Relentless medium-lift helicopter, will be "optionally manned" capable—meaning it can either carry a crew of two or fly autonomously.

The Army is looking for a "knife fighter" for the FARA role—a high-speed, agile, and lightly armed helicopter capable of defending itself while probing enemy positions—rather than a heavy attack helicopter. A winning FARA design will have to be able to maneuver in urban environments, fly at speeds above 200mph (322km/h), and fly without pilots to perform intelligence and reconnaissance missions.

The Army retired its last dedicated scout helicopter, the Bell OH-58 Kiowa, in 2017; since then, the Army's armed reconnaissance squadrons have flown the Boeing AH-64 Apache instead. But the Army is looking to retire about half of the Apache fleet with whichever aircraft wins the FARA competition, beginning in 2028.