Black Myth: Wukong is currently dominating the gaming landscape, setting new records for peak player counts on Steam and surpassing notable titles like Counter-Strike and Palworld.
Since its release, the game has sold over 10 million copies across various platforms, becoming one of the most talked-about games of the summer. Unfortunately, much of this discussion revolves around controversy rather than the game’s merits.
Social media conversations about Black Myth: Wukong have become highly contentious. Critics and reviewers frequently face harassment, and the level of toxicity has escalated to the point where potential new players might be deterred.
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The virulent nature of these discussions raises important questions about what constitutes valid criticism and healthy community interaction within the gaming world.
At its core, Black Myth: Wukong is a retelling of the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West. The game’s initial segments feature stunning cinematics and engaging gameplay, depicting Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, in a thrilling battle against a godlike adversary.
However, the excitement wanes as the game progresses. Despite its breathtaking visuals, the simplistic combat mechanics lead to a gameplay experience that is, at best, mediocre.
Players initially control Sun Wukong, but following his defeat, they must navigate the storyline through a different character seeking relics to awaken the Monkey King.
Wukong has some elements of a souls-like game. Its various user interface elements remind me of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Death causes enemies to respawn and reset. The player progresses back to checkpoints called shrines, but it does not cause the player to lose levelling-up currency.
The Destined One (DO), as he’s called in the game, can string together combos of light and heavy attacks.
There’s a dodge system that rewards you with essentially more powerful attacks when executing perfect dodges. You also have magic at your disposal that lets you freeze enemies for a short amount of time or transform them into creatures that have combat capabilities.
I’ve been playing on the Steam Deck, which probably isn’t the best device for the game. (Wukong isn’t labelled as Steam Deck certified, but that hasn’t stopped it from being the most-played game on the platform over the last week.) In some spots, it chugged ferociously, even at the lowest settings.
Nevertheless, the game’s environments are wonderful to behold, and I respect that the developers built moments into the game specifically to appreciate that beauty. Early on, I found a spot where DO could meditate, and the camera pulled back to show off an utterly gorgeous vista of a mountainous forest.
Despite its bombastic opening, the next few hours of the game did not come close to those initial heights — and combat is to blame. Enemies were trivially simple, and beyond one aberration of an encounter very early in the game, the bosses were, too.
Black Myth: Wukong players are struggling with this boss pic.twitter.com/ahXhgsk26c
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 22, 2024
After suffering ass-beating after ass-beating in Shadow of the Erdtree, I didn’t mind Wukong’s button-mashy combat style, but after a while, it got boring. The game’s narrative offset my boredom enough to keep me going.
There’s a bestiary with highly descriptive entries that read like fairytales. Every time I defeated a new enemy, I’d immediately pause to read the new entry and see the enemy’s portrait that looked like a traditional woodblock painting.
It’d be nice if the conversation about the game ended here, but unfortunately, Black Myth: Wukong has launched with a lot of baggage. In 2020, the game was introduced in the West with a slick, 13-minute trailer highlighting graphics and action that were impressive for a game still early in development.
However, in November of last year, IGN released a report on Game Science, the studio making Wukong, that featured sexist comments from the game’s developers made on Chinese social media. When asked about those comments in recent interviews with other outlets, Game Science’s response has been “no comment.”
Then, in the run-up to the game’s launch earlier this week, screenshots of a document from Game Science began circulating on social media featuring instructions on what influencers were and were not allowed to discuss.
The prohibited topics included COVID-19, politics, the Chinese game industry, fetishization, “feminist propaganda,” and “other content that instigates negative discourse.”
Prerelease embargoes are common, though they’re usually limited to things like special character appearances, boss fights, plot twists, or anything the developers want to keep as a surprise for players. But it’s odd for a developer to dictate how a reviewer can talk about a game.
This strange move has made Wukong a cause celebre within certain video game communities on social media.
There is a small but loud contingent of gamers who applaud Game Science’s refusal to speak on the sexist comments made by its employees, seeing the game’s success as a repudiation of what they call the “woke” video game industry and its concerted efforts to include the opinions and perspectives of marginalized identities.
So much so that reviewers who don’t enthusiastically praise the game, or bring up its developers’ history of making sexist comments, have received Gamergate-levels of harassment.
