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Black Myth: Wukong is pretty, intriguing and as challenging as it looks

Black Myth: Wukong is gorgeous. It’s built up a lot of momentum, feeding trailer after gorgeous trailer, and at Summer Game Fest this year, We finally got to play it. Is it just a gorgeous tech demo with a heavy dose of Chinese mythology or your next gaming challenge?

I was given the higher-specced (though undisclosed) PC rig to play on, ensuring all that Unreal Engine 5 eye candy had a fighting chance of running smoothly. Midway through the demo, an old man with a head like a ginseng root gave me an immobilization spell with its own cooldown meter and offered me a brief reprieve against more dangerous foes, like the final giant wolf. More risk and reward: If you don’t use it in a timely way, you’ll die and get reincarnated a few minutes down the mountain and have to face (or run past) most of the enemies you’d already dispatched — the fundamental backbone of soulslike games like Wukong.

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