It’s such a terrible shame that we had Brian Mitsoda and Rik Schaffer back and actually working on a sequel and none of it will see the light of day. Say what you want about Mitsoda’s thin-blood protagonist idea (I’m not a fan) but watching the trailers of https://youtu.be/6PM0vb8UCzM" version of the game you can at least see the lineage of the original.
Yes, it’s very very silly and is basically the complete opposite of what it should be. It should be the Olympics for Esports, not a bunch of mobile games tangentially related to existing olympic sports.
Oh I might have forgot to put it in my post, but the original writer/lead and composer got kicked off the project when they dumped Hard Suit labs and gave the project to The Chinese Room. That - combined with the latest trailers - is why people who like the original have very little hope of the sequel recapturing the magic.
Metacritic is not the good gauge for the original, given the circumstances of its release. The game was made on an alpha version of Source without any devkit as Valve were developing Source/HL2. Its development was also troubled, and ultimately pushed out the door before it was ready. It’s a miracle the game even runs at all. Not only is the final third of the game notoriously lacking compared to the early parts, but the game is literally unplayable without the fan made unofficial patch. You run into a bug that hard locks your progression like 80% of the time and cannot finish the playthrough.
Despite all that it has become a true cult classic for its writing, dialogue and characters, its humour, impeccable atmosphere and fantastic sound track. It’s been cited as one of the design inspirations for Cyberpunk 2077, among others.
These are the things the sequel will struggle living up to. The entire thing that got people excited about it was bringing back the original writer/lead designer and composer.
Tell that to the IOC who refused to feature any shooters at the Esports Olympics because they’re “too violent” - they even forced Fortnite to make a target shooting mode for its entry!
The dev has a storied past^[1] of sexism and misogyny, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The COVID stuff is amusing but unsurprising considering it’s a Chinese studio.
Not sure, but to be on the safe side just don’t title it “Black Myth Wukong is the most impactful global phenomenon to come out of China since the pandemic”.
The lack of a modern port makes availability an issue, so it’s definitely more in cult classic territory, but it is definitely a critics’ darling and is often thrown around among the group of best games of all time. It’s not uncommon for it to rank nr. 1 on “Best Final Fantasy Games” lists either.