Black Myth’s exciting first few minutes have me nostalgic for some all-time greats.
Black Myth’s opening 10 minutes have two things to say. First, that if you know Journey to the West or some version of the story of Sun Wukong, this is the monkey king you know and love: a supernaturally powerful trickster, cocksure but able to back it up with the strength of a god and a deep well of special abilities. He can surf on clouds, transform into animals, create clones of himself, and freeze even mighty warriors in place to bully them with his staff, and you get to flex all those powers within minutes, as Wukong literally faces off against the armies of heaven who want to control his destiny.
Second, those 10 minutes are a statement that GameScience really wants to make a splash—that the Chinese studio founded to create this game can punch it out in the same weight class as the FromSoftwares and Capcoms of the world. I don’t think the combat is quite that good from the couple chapters I’ve played ( though associate editor Tyler Colp notes it’s a perfect entry point into the ’soulslike‘ world if those games are usually a bit too tough for you). But the scale, seamless transitions from combat to cutscenes, and especially arresting, dynamic camera work absolutely accomplish both those goals in Black Myth’s first few minutes. It’s the most wowed I’ve been by the start of an action game since God of War 3.
That PS3 game, released in 2010, took the „throw you into a dramatic action scene from the jump“ mentality of its PlayStation 2 predecessors and literally HD-ified it. When Wukong saunters across a heavenly battlefield towards a seemingly infinite army and an entourage of gods a hundred times his size, I immediately thought back to the start of God of War 3, which opens with Kratos scaling Mount Olympus on the back of the titan Gaia. At the time it was a real „look what this console can do“ showstopper, with the ground you’re standing on constantly shifting as Gaia ascends.
