A game where you split your time between running a video store and being basically John Wick is an unusual pitch, but it is also what immediately caught my attention about Blackwood. After playing through the opening hour, I think there is a promising game here, even if its different parts do not quite come together yet.
Blackwood immediately throws you into the mix as you wake up badly injured in a sewer being pursued by people who want you dead. What follows is a quick trek through the network of tunnels as you solve puzzles and even take down an alligator lurking in the rancid waters.
Things pick up once you reach the surface. Several SUVs arrive full of sharply dressed henchmen carrying high-end weaponry, reminiscent of most action films. A firefight breaks out in the middle of a busy road with the traffic and bullets whizzing past me in equal measure. Some enemies were stuck behind cover and some tried to flank me but couldn’t quite make up their minds.
At one point I pulled a civilian from a crashed vehicle, something that reminded me of Aiden Pearce from Watch Dogs. On paper, what I am describing sounds really cool but in execution it never felt as exhilarating as it should have, a theme that sadly applies to most of the game.
Blackwood is much stricter about what you can interact with and how, which makes the store feel more like a list of chores than a place you are actually running.
I usually enjoy shop management games, but the store in Blackwood has not given me much to sink my teeth into so far. Customers wander in every so often and the money counter slowly ticks up. Most of my engagement with this store was clicking through menus or using objects through interaction.
During my first shift, I cleaned some spilled coffee, scrubbed a dirty patch of floor and refilled the comic-book rack, even though I had not seen anyone buy a comic. I returned the following day and found the exact same jobs waiting for me. Coffee had been spilled in the same spot, the floor I had just cleaned was dirty again and every comic had apparently vanished overnight. Seriously, who is buying all these comics?
Games such as Gas Station Simulator make these ordinary jobs entertaining by letting you mess around with the environment. You can pick things up, move them and throw them around while arranging the station yourself. Blackwood is much stricter about what you can interact with and how, which makes the store feel more like a list of chores than a place you are actually running. More activities may open up as the store grows, but its early routine becomes repetitive very quickly.
The store and contract work also seem strangely disconnected. Contracts earn dirty money, which pays for mission related items, while the store brings in clean money that you spend on stock. These two halves of the protagonist feel a little too separated. Perhaps later acts will tie everything together, but for now it feels like I am playing two separate games that happen to share the same character.
As a huge John Wick fan, what I wanted most was the ability to blend seamlessly between gunplay and hand-to-hand combat. Blackwood usually keeps its firefights and fistfights separate, aside from the occasional takedowns.
The combat does have some good qualities. The gunplay feels weighty enough, bullets produce believable impacts and several of the takedowns look genuinely cool. The gun customisation mechanic is pretty in-depth as well, but I never found it meaningful enough to change my combat approach.
Automatic cover is enabled by default, which often left me awkwardly crouching in front of cars and small covers during firefights. I found the game works better with that setting off. The hit markers are also inconsistent. Regular hits show a white cross but the kills only make the crosshair flash red, which makes the response hard to read in the middle of hectic shootouts. What is confusing is how the cross returns in red when you perform a headshot. This makes combat harder to read than it needs to be.
As a huge John Wick fan, what I wanted most was the ability to blend seamlessly between gunplay and hand-to-hand combat. Blackwood usually keeps its firefights and fistfights separate, aside from the occasional takedowns. You cannot pick up dropped weapons either, so running out of ammunition means walking back and forth over guns to collect more bullets. Without that ability to grab whatever is nearby and keep fighting, the combat struggles to capture the improvisational side of John Wick.
The visuals themselves are lacking and most character models feel almost dead-eyed and robotic.
The game could also do a better job of explaining its systems. During the first fight, instructions appeared in a small block of text in the top-left corner while enemies rushed towards me. I wasn’t sure what my character could actually do or why takedowns worked in some situations but not others. The rules may become clearer later, but the opening does not teach them particularly well.
It feels like the game could overall benefit from a clearer combat loop. For example, in the more recent Splinter Cell games, close-range takedowns earn executions that let you mark and shoot several enemies. Getting close puts you at risk, but successfully doing so rewards you with the ability to quickly remove multiple threats. Blackwood may introduce more depth as it continues, but during ACT I, I never found a similarly clear rhythm to its fights.
The enemies didn’t particularly feel smart either, as some would get stuck behind cover, while others took strange detours. The hand-to-hand animations have a tendency to become repetitive as well, with the character regularly using the same few moves regardless of where an enemy is standing. There are flashes of cool choreography here but it needs more variety and clarity to properly sell the fantasy. In this area, I wish the game would have taken more lessons from games like Mad Max and Sleeping Dogs.
I also ran into several bugs and quality-of-life problems. Changing my key bindings caused the interaction prompt to stop showing, leaving me stuck during the opening because I did not know I could interact with a notebook or move the cart blocking my path. Characters clip through each other during cutscenes in the shop, and dialogue sometimes plays in situations where it makes no sense. One customer brought a T-shirt to the checkout, only for the cashier to say something like, “Oh, this movie made me cry.”
The DVD covers parody real films, but many of the people on them look AI-generated.
The DVD covers parody real films, but many of the people on them look AI-generated. This stood out because the developers have not declared the use of generative AI on Steam and have denied using it in a Steam discussion. I could be mistaken, but several of the covers certainly have that appearance.
With only Act I currently available and the rest planned for next year, I cannot help thinking Blackwood would have made more sense as an Early Access release. That would set clearer expectations about its current state while giving the developers time to improve the combat, add more to the store and find better ways of connecting both sides of the game.
Blackwood promises a lot with a ton of different mechanics and features that should have all come together to deliver a mind-blowing experience. Sadly, however, due to the numerous bugs, rough combat and contrasting features, the game never really delivers on the fantasy it promises.
Review Summary
There is a genuinely exciting game buried somewhere inside Blackwood, but janky combat and buggy systems keep it from breaking through. This is an Early Access experience without the Early Access label.
- Weighty Gunplay With Strong Sound Design
- Some Cool Takedown Animations
- Repetitive and Restrictive Store Management
- Janky Combat That Fails to Blend Gunplay With Melee
- Poorly Explained Mechanics With Inconsistent Visual Feedback
- Numerous Bugs and Quality of Life Issues
- The Game Doesn't Feel Complete Despite Not Being In Early Access
