Black Myth: Wukong First Impressions

Despite this being a first impressions for Black Myth: Wukong, I am most assuredly not your dancing monkey, and will play the games I want to play, when I want to play them.

Ok, maybe I am a little bit; I'm delaying the MW5: Clans full review because I have a new PC coming, and wanted to finish the game out on a higher-end rig to see the comparisons in performance.

Since this monkey is just waiting for the right slow dance before he gets up his nerve to ask the .. Ok, you know what, this metaphor just isn't doing it for me, and it makes me feel almost as awkward as school dances were for many of us (no assumptions here, but I was most assuredly a wallflower).

Anyway, I'm playing Black Myth: Wukong now, because as I noted previously: I was wrong about any blatantly anti-woke sentiment with the game's devs.

I'm glad I was wrong, because this game is fucking awesome.

Disclaimer: I haven't defeated a single boss. Not one.

In the first "region" of the game, there are 3 bosses you can encounter (as far as I can tell): A fire-blade-wolf-guy, a giant-man-baby-pinhead (as pictured in the hero of this article), and a big white puppy that most assuredly does not want to snuggle.

Fire-blade-wolf-guy was the first I encountered: He was.. Tough. I tried to find my way back to him after he handily set the seat of my pants aflame, but given that there is no map, I ended up instead running into giant-man-baby-pinhead.. But what was interesting is he didn't insta-aggro on me, so I went around and ended up encountering the big white non-cuddly puppy (with warnings from your NPC buddy that he is not to be fucked with, so turn your ass around).

Big white puppy had a fast travel/respawn point right next to him, so I said.. "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" (I don't think that's what Rage Against the Machine intended, but given how much time I spend in political discourse as a crazy hard-left nutjob, I think they'd forgive me this time) and proceeded to..

..Get spanked like the bad monkey I am.

In case you couldn't tell, giant-man-baby-pinhead went about the same as the rest.

Additionally, if it wasn't clear: I don't care that I haven't beaten any of these assholes yet.

The fights themselves are fun. That's the ultimate goal of Black Myth: Wukong: Crafting interesting and epic fights.

I've had a few moments where I got my foes down to the halfway point, but then they changed things up, and the fight became a new kind of challenge.. And it was done flawlessly. No cutscene with "Watch me flex and power up with rage, transforming into my ultimate form", but a seamless, immersive transition to new techniques designed to keep you on your toes.

I know that - with practice, and good pain days - I can get passed these bosses. I'm slowly grinding up against the handful of regular foes in the region, too, building up my skills a bit more with the hopes of finally eliminating these enemies.

I can do this because of one key difference between this and souls-likes: There is no actual penalty for death aside from respawning at the last incense altar you burned one at.

That is exactly what I needed to make this a fun game, rather than a frustrating one.