Black Myth: Wukong is what happens when you take ancient Chinese mythology, crank the graphics up to 11, and then throw a staff-swinging monkey warrior into a Souls-like fever dream. You play as the Destined One, a shape-shifting badass based on Sun Wukong from Journey to the West—which is basically the original superhero road trip.

Armed with a magical staff that grows, shrinks, and bonks like a champ, you’ll battle everything from giant wolves and angry monks to nightmare-fueled dragons and whatever that spider-lady thing was. The combat looks smooth enough to butter toast, and the boss fights? Brutal. Think: “Oops, I died again” on repeat.

The game’s packed with mystical vibes, gorgeous environments, and a healthy dose of “Did I just get one-shot by a bird?!” moments. It’s like Elden Ring, but with more fur, folklore, and monkey flips.

If this monkey doesn’t become your new favorite video game anti-hero, you might need to get your inner child reacquainted with magic sticks and flying clouds.

Oh man, I was hyped for this game from the very first teaser I saw online. You could’ve hooked me up to a heart monitor and seen it spike like a boss fight health bar. I’ve played Souls-like games before—without any of the fancy adaptive gear I now use and talk about constantly on this site—and, well… let’s just say I got steamrolled so hard I considered joining a monastery. At least there, no electricity = no more getting dunked on by digital demons.

But The Monkey Game (as I affectionately call it) looked different. Special. With its deep roots in Chinese mythology and my eternal love for games with a good story and strong characters, I wasn’t about to throw in the towel this time. This wasn’t just a game—this was my holy crusade. Me vs. destiny. And also vs. about 60 horrifying bosses.

Yes, I died. A lot. Over 800 times, in fact. You can literally see the death counter in my videos climbing like it’s trying to break a high score. But every time I finally smacked down a boss who’d had me by the metaphorical nuts for hours, the satisfaction was unreal. Like, “I deserve cake and a parade” levels of accomplishment.

To get through this beast of a game, I cycled through a whole arsenal of adaptive devices. What finally worked was my favorite setup: the Proteus Controller left stick block firmly Velcro’d to my desk so it didn’t try to escape mid-fight, which I controlled with my left index finger.

For my right hand, I used a trusty MMO mouse, mapping dodging, jumping, and attacks to the side buttons like a one-handed ninja. And when Wukong started unlocking spells and magical nonsense? I brought out the big guns: VoiceAttack. Saying “one” into my mic to cast spell 1 felt like I was commanding the game with the power of my voice—and let’s be honest, in the chaos of boss battles, remembering which button did what was just not happening. Talking it out was way more effective (and made me feel like a wizard).

So yeah, no surprise here—I LOVED this game. It was gorgeous, brutal, satisfying, and spiritual in that “I died 800+ times but I’m stronger now” sort of way.

Final score? 9.8 out of 10.
Highly recommend. Just don’t give up—like I gave up on running marathons. Or eating salad.