Black Myth: Wukong – the summer’s most exciting, and most controversial, video game

This beautiful-looking action game is based on Journey to the West, the great Chinese novel – but its own journey to release has hit a bump in the road

When Chinese developer Game Science revealed its debut console game Black Myth: Wukong last year, it immediately caused a stir. Inspired by the great 16th-century Chinese novel, Journey to the West, the action-packed footage featured the titular mythological monkey Sun Wukong battling Buddhist-folklore demons and sword-wielding anthropomorphic foxes in lusciously rendered forests. Smartphone games are inordinately popular in China, but console game developers are still few and far between, and the excitement for Wukong in Game Science’s homeland reached fever pitch. Within 24 hours, the trailer racked up 2m views on YouTube and more than 10m on Chinese video sharing site Bilibili, much to its creators’ shock and delight. One excited fan even broke into the developer’s office, desperate for more info on the game.

After playing Wukong for an hour and half in a London hotel suite, watched nervously by several Game Science employees, I can confirm that – somewhat miraculously – this stunning Chinese mythological twist on Dark Souls delivers on that showy trailer, marrying fluid-feeling combat with reflex-testing difficulty and the expensive filmic sheen of something like God of War. As I sprint through Wukong’s dense jungle, ducking and dodging through its deadly array of flora and fauna, I come face to face with everything from gi-wearing toads to nightmarish, gigantic-headed infants. Unlike many of its brutally challenging, FromSoftware-inspired peers, the difficulty in Wukong feels expertly judged. My simian avatar met a grizzly end more times than I’d care to admit, but I persevered. Eventually I defeated enough foes to unlock new abilities. Soon I can perch atop my staff mid-attack, giving me an edge against its murderous mythological monsters. I can buzz around the forest as a stealthy cicada, summon flames with my glaive, and eventually topple a snarling, lorry-sized werewolf atop a crumbling temple.