You’re also very quickly given a wide range of tools that you can use in collaboration with your standard attacks and spells to make fights easier, including a huge number of transformations. When you take down a tough enemy or a boss, you’re frequently given either a spirit you can briefly transform into, or a lengthier transformation that gives you a completely different moveset. There’s an impressive range of enemies you can transform into, from lowly grunts to massive abominations, and it’s always exciting to find one while exploring each location and try it out on the next poor, unfortunate enemy you come acr

Aside from a few exceptions, most boss patterns are quite forgiving, however, and many bosses have predictable and repetitive movesets that are quite easy to learn, which can lead to fairly swift defeats . As you progress, there are still many challenging and satisfying fights, and they become slightly less forgiving as you progress into Chapters 2 and beyond, but for soulslike bosses, they are probably the easiest to overc

This leaves out Persona 3 Reload and Tekken 8 , both of which cleared 90 on Metacritic, as well as Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (which scored 87), plus Hellblade 2 , Star Wars Outlaws , Avowed , Rise of the Ronin , and any other games the Switch 2 will launch with. Add in that Sony is yet to reveal PlayStation's slate beyond spring, and this could be a packed race.

Moreover, bosses also don't seem to use their environment very much , except Lingxuzi and Whiteclad Noble bosses in Chapter 1 - but even so, to a limited degree. Boss areas serve as nothing more than an arena. It is extremely contrarian to how the arenas are designed, as they appear to have utility, but don't at

Black Myth: Wukong takes place in mythological China, with it being loosely based on Journey to the West. This isn’t really about Wukong himself, or the trickster’s actions through the ancient writings, but instead you take up the mantle of his successor of sorts. You play as a young, voiceless monkey many years after the fall of the god. You basically go along a similar path, trekking through a long and treacherous journey to recover many of Wukong’s relics and restore realms to their former glory. Well, more or less. The world is in less of an appealing state, with leaders being driven mad and there’s a struggle for power. Aiding these areas isn’t your main objective, but it just happens to be the side effect of following in Wukong’s footsteps.

We have had this certainty before, very often. We knew it would be Elden Ring in 2022. We knew it would be The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, despite the stacked field. 2021 was a little more open, but the pandemic-hit year was without any stone cold classics, especially compared to the nominees in 2023 or 2020. 2018 was the last big shoot out, when Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War were both in with an even chance, but that's the exception that proves the rule. I've missed 2019 out there. Let's talk about 2019. Then, I promise, onto 2024.

Each stance also gives you a different kind of heavy attack you can perform, which can then be upgraded with the game’s elaborate skill tree. Your light attack combo will remain the same no matter which stance you adopt, but each heavy attack has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, your starting stance is all about hitting your enemy as hard as possible, while you also have a thrusting stance that lets you hit enemies from a distance and push them away. It can feel incredibly satisfying to recognize an enemy’s attack pattern and swap to the right stance and capitalize on their weaknes

With that said, while we make the comparison to Souls games, Black Myth Wukong updates Myth: Wukong is much easier than what you might expect. There were only a handful of bosses that we ran into any sort of trouble, namely taking five or more attempts, with the majority of the encounters taking one or two tries. The normal enemies do get progressively more advanced as the campaign progresses, and there are the staple traps that will send you over the edge of a cliff, but for the most part, Black Myth: Wukong rarely puts you up against more than one or two enemies at a given time. We found the balance of difficulty good, though, as learning patterns is enjoyable and never feels like they punish too harshly. You can die from a couple of hits, but most of the time it’s easy to recover.

It’s clear that Game Science is very aware of the discourse around its game; it’s just actively choosing not to say anything. That isn’t really a problem in itself – while it’s a clear effort to wait the allegations out and hope they’re simply forgotten, I can understand a smaller studio choosing to just shut up and let the game speak for itself instead of creating a politicised firestorm around a decidedly unpolitical game with a statement. It’s not great optics-wise, but there’s logic behind