Cyberpunk beat 'em up Spine wants to be Sifu meets John Wick

rockpapershotgun.com:

Tonight's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted stream may have been mostly focused on games we already knew about, but there were a couple of surprises hidden away in there, too. One of them was Spine, an upcoming action game that asks the question: what if Sifu also had guns? The new gameplay trailer shows street artist heroine Redline punching, kicking and shooting her way through a cyberpunk-themed world of thugs and armoured guards, and her fancy footwork and the equally agile camera framing looks like it could be quite the combo when it eventually comes out in 2025. Alas, the trailer doesn't give away much else, but I spoke to developers Nekki ahead of tonight's showcase to find more about it, and how it's taking direct inspiration from Sifu and John Wick to become the next big cinematic beat 'em up.

The eponymous Spine is hard to miss. Latched onto the back of Redline's bright pink and black jacket, this AI combat implant is "a character of its own," chief operating officer and producer Dmitry Pimenov tells me. It will guide and talk to Redline as she goes about her personal vengeance quest to rescue her brother from the game's autocratic AI government, and it will also help her out in combat, providing visual, Spidey-sense-style alerts when she needs to dodge incoming fire, and unlock new abilities for her as their relationship grows and the pair become more attuned to each other.

The halo of Spidey-like exclamation marks I see during a very early gameplay presentation aren't a coincidence, either. During our chat, Pimenov directly references Insomniac's Marvel Spider-Man games as one of their chief inspirations, along with Slocap's Sifu, the work of John Woo, as well as other action films such as John Wick, The Matrix and