Ever since John Wick first came out over a decade ago, we’ve all wanted a video game that captures that same essence of that film franchise. Thus, the developers at Nekki decided to create that game, and, they dove into the world of creating their own engine. Thus, for their first PC and console game captured the essence of “Gun-Fu” with their upcoming game SPINE which we got to go hands-on with during our time at Summer Games Fest this year.

We got to spend about twenty minutes with SPINE, and experience how the “Gun-Fu” combat works. The game looks very much movie like in its presentation with the third person camera and constant flow of taking out enemies with the plethora of takedowns you can do. The developers didn’t want the game to be too difficult, and want you to feel like you are truly playing through an action movie. As mentioned, Nekki created their own animation engine known as Cascadeur that pairs incredibly well with the graphical fidelity of Unreal Engine 5, to make the cinematic takedowns look incredible.

While the game mostly stay with a cinematic focus, there will be times where the camera angle changes. One such time happened in the demo where the camera shifted and gave us an isometric view of combat. We didn’t get to play that long with that angle, but the developers assured that there would be more instances of it and hinted at other possible camera angles that’ll showcase the game differently. With learning that the game will be around 20 hours, the mix up of cameras should keep it fresh if the mixes happen throughout.

The combat mainly focus on melee with a freeflowing nature, and you can see the inspiration the combat feeds on from the Batman Arkham series, but sans the combo based nature of those games. Aside from the melee, you are equipped with a pistol and a trusty can of spray paint to blind enemies as they approach you. You will be able to find different weapons, such as a shotgun, which has you blasting through enemies as you hit your finisher on them. These guns run out of bullets after a few shots and you can’t pick up a new weapon until your ammo is depleted.

SPINE is still in early Alpha, but it is definitely shaping up to be a unique action experience, and we shall see how the final prduct turns out as they plan to release the game at some point in 2026.