Connor, you have played and beaten Black Myth Wukong, one of the most anticipated titles this year. What are your thoughts, and what would you give it out of 10 on the club 64 scale? Black Myth Wukong is an emphatic highly recommended eight out of 10. It is a great video game, but there’s just a few flaws. That kind of brought that score down to an eight. But like I said, I would highly recommend this game to anybody. I think it’s a great time. Eight out of 10. But let’s dig into why it’s getting that eight. We’ll start with the positives, as we always do. The game starts pretty linear. A lot of people were talking about this like it’s a boss rush kind of experience. It’s not that. This game starts linear, but then really does open up quite a bit and ends up, um, having winding paths. They might be a little bit congested, um, like the actual path, but you can go in different directions, handle things in different orders. There’s a ton of side content to get into that’s really impactful. Some side quests, like, are multi phased quest lines that lead to completely different areas. That have new boss fights and interesting areas to traverse and get through. That always lead to something really rewarding. An item that will help you in a later fight. That I found really interesting and really fun to dig into. So that linearity is hidden. Really? Well, in my opinion, it’s not this straightforward, linear game. It has that side content to break things up and kind of keep you engaged, which I really enjoyed. The boss fights in this game. It’s known for its boss fights. You’ve heard about them, I’m sure they’re excellent. Just looking at them is always exciting to see what freako you’re gonna run into next. But, like, mixing in your different combos, your, like, charged up attack, your different spells, hitting a perfect dodge. It all feels great against these boss fights. And, well, I don’t think that they’re, like, super varied. They’re just always fun to enjoy and to see what they’re gonna look like and experience. Learn their attack patterns. Come on on top! Some of these definitely were very challenging to me. Um, it’s definitely not closer to a god of war, in my opinion, level of difficulty. I would say it’s closer to an Elden Ring or a Bloodborne, but it’s not on that level, I wouldn’t say. It’s gonna give you some challenge, though. It’s definitely not just, like, a breeze to get through. It’s fun, though. It’s fun to come out on top. There was definitely those moments that you get in souls games where, like, you’re. You’re, like, really hoping you’re on, like, your last, like, bit of health, and you. You’re. It’s coming down to the wire. You hit that last hit, and it shows up that you’ve. That you’ve defeated Them. you throw your controller in the side and go, yes, let’s go. It’s so good. I love those moments. I had that with the final boss, uh, a couple nights ago, where I spent three hours on the final boss and coming out on top felt amazing. So good. I, I love those moments in games, so, yeah, this has that in spades throughout the entire thing. Some of the bosses are a little bit more of a breezy, easy experience. They, they have, like, a smaller health bar, but still fun to fight. But then there was, like, high budget, high quality fights that come maybe at the end of the chapter are really fun to dig into and really enjoyable visually. On the PS five. I played it on PS five performance mode, so it’s, uh, prioritizing frame rate so that the visuals take a little bit of a hit. Textures aren’t the best, but I would say because of its art style and it’s, and it’s framing, it hides a lot of that really well. There’s some vistas in this that look gorgeous. I love the art direction. Like I said, the freaks, the enemies that you’re fighting look really interesting. I, I think this game looks great. There was a lot of discussion on why everybody only got PC codes and that, what were they hiding on PS five. I think it looks great on PS five, personally, but I would say that It doesn’t. We’re getting in the negatives. It doesn’t run the best on PS five, but not so much so that I think it really detracts too much from the experience. You’ll, you’ll get the occasional stutter or stop that’ll pull you out of the experience. It’ll pull you out of your immersion. But it never got me killed, which is essential here. Like, if I was dying because of frame rate issues, that would be a different story. That would be, like, a huge knock on the game. But for that, I don’t think it’s really that much to write home about. This game is too long, in my opinion. I think that the combat’s really fun and enjoyable, but it’s not deep enough to warrant a 35, 40 hour first playthrough. And that’s not even digging into a ton of the side content. Like, I did a lot of side content, but I know for a fact that there’s more that I didn’t touch. So I would say that it needs, like, one more extra added elements to the gameplay to make up for that, that length and really kind of keep it from feeling really stale and really repetitive. By the end, I was kind of done with the game, and I was just like, okay, I just want to get this over with. But it was still really enjoyable. But I, I, I just don’t think it, it holds up throughout its entire run time. Like, I kind of wanted them to add another weapon or something, like a side arm or something. That. That was my idea of how to fix this problem. But for the most part, there is a lot of depth here when it comes to the stuff that’s added and it’s drip fed to you. But by the end, in the last few chapters, you’re like, I’m not getting a lot of new stuff that’s really enjoyable to. To utilize. So that. That definitely took away from the experience for me. There needed to be a map. There’s no map in this game. I didn’t know when I was on the path of side content or if I was on the path of the main thing. And when I did want to go do, like, go off the beaten path and do some side bosses or whatever, I would find myself accidentally going into the next main quest and I’m like, oh, oh, I’m carrying on with the story right now. So I was. I was confused on that. And lastly, when it comes to the negatives, I really wanted to enjoy the story. And I think thematically and. And presentation wise, it’s really cool and interesting to see, but very confusing and convoluted to understand. I was paying close attention in these cutscenes, and there’s a lot of cutscenes, and I had no idea what was going on by the end of it. Like, I. I wanted to understand it. Cause I know the story is, like, really important to, like, history and everything, so I was really excited to experience the story, but I just could not understand it as hard as I was trying. So with all that in mind, I think this is a great video game. I had a ton of fun playing it, but the longer went, the more the crack started to show, the more stuff kind of started adding up, and. And I was started to enjoy it less and less. I think eight out of 10 is a rock solid score. I know a lot of people, like, look at scores a little bit differently. They might be disappointed with eight out of ten. It’s a great video game. I just can’t ignore those detractors, those elements that I think take away from it. So that’s my review for Black Myth Wukong. That’s how I feel about it. Highly recommended. 8 out of 10. Go check it out if you’re interested. Um, but just be aware of those negatives.