Black Myth: Wukong is a video game obsessed with spectacle – but inspiring awe requires confidence. Such self-assuredness is a rarity in big-budget games, where concerns about mainstream palatability often inspire timidity instead on the part of their developers. Thanks to its state-of-the-art graphics, Black Myth: Wukong looks as though it belongs among the blockbusters, but this action game is actually the product of a Chinese indie outfit, Game Science. Yet the experience is so fully formed that it’s hard to believe that this is the studio’s first “premium” game.
It is based on the seminal 16th-century east Asian novel, Journey to the West, which has already inspired enormous swaths of modern pop culture, from Dragon Ball to the 2010 game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. You play as a stone monkey, Sun Wukong, a major character in the novel whose description always seemed destined to become a video game protagonist. In the original story, Wukong is said to possess incredible strength and speed – but that’s not all. He can also transform into all sorts of animals and objects, and can manipulate the weather. Oh, and he can make copies of himself, too, just in case one all-powerful monkey isn’t enough to take care of the job.
