From the legends of the famed 16th century novel “Journey to the West” written by Wu Cheng’en, a new game has emerged surrounding a notable and loved character in the novel: the Monkey King, also known as Sun Wukong. With the characters and story being beautifully translated into the modern day and age, the new game “Black Myth: Wukong” made by Game Science and released on Aug. 20, 2024, on PlayStation 5 and Windows, seems to be a new hit in the gaming industry. Its popularity is largely due to its unique and interesting game mechanics, story and adaptation of the characters as well as adding a new character to this single-player game to traverse this new yet familiar world.

The origins of the Monkey King in the original “Journey to the West”

The game, “Black Myth: Wukong” follows the original story of “Journey to the West” where the main character of the story, Tang Sanzang — a spiritual monk and disciple of Buddha who’s not actually the Monkey King — has the responsibility to travel to India to collect Buddhist scrolls and bring them back to China. Accompanying Tang Sanzang on this journey are his three disciples: Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing.

The first disciple is Sun Wukong, a monkey born from a stone who despite possessing a chatty and rebellious spirit, was still able to master many ancient disciplines including immortality and shapeshifting. Throughout Wukong’s journey, he is accompanied by his magically empowered staff, helping him in battle to easily defeat his enemies. 

The second disciple is Zhu Bajie, a gluttonous general of heaven who was reincarnated as a half-man and half-pig creature.

Finally, the third disciple is Sha Wujing, a celestial general who was transformed into a river demon as a punishment from heaven. Wujing accompanies the party on their journey in search of self-redemption. 

All three disciples were prominent characters in the original story “Journey to the West”. However, in “Black Myth: Wukong”, only Wukong and Bajie have prominent roles in the plot. While the third disciple, Wujing, does not make any in-game appearances, leaving no clues to the character’s existence in the game.

Your role in “Black Myth: Wukong”

While not all of these familiar faces appear in the video game, a new character takes the stage: “the destined one,” another monkey who is on a quest to restore Sun Wukong. But unlike his other monkey counterpart, you play as a silent and mostly emotionless character throughout the entire game, allowing you to project your own emotions through the character and immerse yourself personally through all six chapters of this game’s mythical world of gods, yokai and monsters, with exploration and secrets around every corner.

Mechanics surrounding the game.

The mechanics surrounding this game are certainly unique to an action role-playing game that has souls-like elements.

The game combines the regular mechanics of a souls-like, with bosses with multiple phases and limited resources such as heals and stamina. The most notable aspect is the extremely hard combat that punishes the player for poor precision and timing in between the bosses attacks, which can quickly lead to you breaking a few controllers.

This game also differs from your typical souls-like games, spicing up the combat with abilities inspired by the lore of the Monkey King from the original story. This change leads to a more fluid feeling and more acrobatic movement, being able to quickly turn the odds in your favor during gameplay. 

Using the Monkey King’s growing staff allows one to fight from a distance or to attack enemies in the air. Your cloning ability allows yourself to bombard the enemy with a flurry of attacks. Using the 72 different shapeshifting transformations in the game grants the player access to switch up your movement and play style to your liking, using different elemental and a range of largely differing attacks to defeat your foes.

“Black Myth: Wukong’s” is taking the spotlight.

“Black Myth: Wukong’s” release changed the scaling in the gaming industry, with the game becoming the most played single-player game on Steam, as well as  Steam’s top-selling game following the release. Attracting 18 million players worldwide only in a matter of weeks, “Black Myth: Wukong” surpassed other games like “Elden Ring” and “God of War” in player count. “A great action game with fantastic combat exciting bosses and tantalizing secrets,” IGN said.

With the numbers of copies sold, it seems this game is in an excellent position to be a contender for getting game of the year, or even some other award for being such a near masterpiece and a hit with the fans. 

But what are your thoughts? Do you think “Black Myth: Wukong“ could win game of the year?