MANILA, Philippines – Ambition is a key element to any aspiring AAA game and with The Game Awards 2025 coming right up in a few days, it’s going to be interesting to see gaming titans clash with the new frontrunners that have just recently joined the fray.

One particular game that I’m going to be rooting for is Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game that pays homage to the 1592 classical Chinese novel, Journey to the West.

I’m a huge fan of games rich with storytelling so I’m definitely biased towards games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the entire Fallout series but it looks like Bethesda’s bets didn’t make it to the list of nominees for Game of the Year 2024.

Instead, we’re going to be seeing Astro Bot, Balatro, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio fight it out to be the best game of this year.

Of course, Wukong isn’t going to be missing out on the action. We’ve seen some good reviews from gamers who’ve tried it at the time of its launching in August and some fairly constructive feedback from critics as well.

For a product that’s being lauded as China’s first attempt at a AAA game, there are some really high expectations and with the amount of budget and passion put into it by developers at Game Science, who knows? It might just take the prize.

But the question is: will ambition be enough to bring this monkey king his glorious crown?


‘Black Myth: Wukong’ – how China’s gaming revolution is fueling its tech power

Destined for greatness

I remember seeing the game’s first trailer in 2020. I knew from the start that it had a crazy amount of potential for three main reasons: respect for the material, respect for the community and respect for the developers.

At first, it was like seeing an illustration from the novel printed by the Shidetang Hall of Jinling come to life. 

There were numerous faithful references to the novel, like how Wukong shrinks objects and stores them in his ear or how Wukong’s staff is spelled out as Ruyi Jingu Bang in Chinese characters — it means “As desired, golden-hooped staff.”

It also didn’t feel like it was being developed as a typical cash-grab that would disappoint gamers that just want to enjoy playtime and not have to pay-to-win or purchase every chunk of the game in installments. 

Frankly, it wouldn’t become that kind of product for good reason — Game Science’s history.

Before being founded in 2014, the company was just a low-profile team of seven ex-Tencent Games employees. According to a Shanghai Daily article, the founders used to work on an MMORPG based on Eastern culture called “Asura.”

The problem with the Asura project was how it was modeled against the team’s single-player orientation, which caused some challenges in development and soon after, less profit for Tencent and more pressure on developers.

Eventually, some employees left the project, later pursuing development on Black Myth: Wukong, while Tencent turned Asura into a highly monetized game that turned off thousands of players. 

Passion-borne

Besides lore and valuing mutual respect for gamers and developers, it’s worth noting that the game doesn’t impose on itself to be game of the year right away.

On Metacritic, Wukong has the lowest metascore rating at 81 or that it’s “generally favorable” out of its competitors while Elden Ring, the game it’s often compared to, has a metascore of 94, which means it’s highly recommended or a “must-play.” 

It is a steep competition for Wukong but let’s also consider that out of all of the nominated games, Wukong has the most number of user ratings with 5,495 users giving it a positive score out of 6,868 total ratings, as of Wednesday, December 11.

That tells us that a lot of people have downloaded this game — obviously, with expectations and maybe, to some degree, the intention to make comparisons with games in the souls-like genre since Wukong retains some of those characteristics like checkpoints and healing flasks.

But the gameplay escapes the genre through passion. Let me explain.

First of all, the game is inspired by one of the oldest novels in the world that has inspired numerous iconic animated characters like Goku in Dragonball or Jin Mori from God of High School and throughout the game, you play as the Destined One who is inspired by the Sun Wukong — it’s a tale as old as time!

Every chapter we progress throughout the story brings various enemies and non-playable characters that transform into familiar contexts that help us understand Chinese mythology and philosophy better.

In every cinematic, there is a masterful weaving of musical score, animation, and even poetry that guarantees gamers will not want to miss any moment of the play that’s happening on their computer or console.

The combat is also an ode to traditional Chinese martial arts, especially considering that the Destined One is confirmed to have been using monkey-style kung fu or Hóu Quán, according to a Global Times article.

To put it simply, diving into Black Myth: Wukong should feel like diving into a new book or anime we’ve seen countless of times but done differently and it does a fine attempt in doing so through its own portrayal of epic Chinese gods and monsters.

While I think that the other nominees may have their own respective narratives and storytelling devices, I cannot help but feel that they get away with an age-old formula that gaming giants have been using repeatedly.

Black Myth: Wukong deserves to get GOTY 2024 not just because it is incredibly ambitious in making its rise in both the east and west but also because it is passionate about telling its own story no matter how many times people have heard of it before.

That’s just grit you cannot replace with genius. – Rappler.com


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