Monkey King: Hero is Back: Preview-Gamescom 2019

    Monkey King: Hero is Back: Preview-Gamescom 2019

    If I told you that at Gamescom 2019 we were able to see the videogame transposition of an animated film called Monkey King: Hero Is Back, a feature film that earned $ 153 million at the box office, in third place after Kung Fu Panda 3 and Zootopia, would you believe it?

    Well, you better do it.

    It is in the mega-booth of THQ Nordic that we were able to attend the presentation of Monkey King: Hero Is Back, a title that is certainly not well known in the Western market but that does not mean that it does not have all the potential to entertain.



    Shall we briefly review the plot of the film?

    The mighty Monkey King once roamed freely between Earth and Heaven, but after having challenged the gods and defeated the celestial army, he was locked up by Buddha in one ice prison inside a mountain. 500 years later, an attack on a nearby village pushes a very young monk to find refuge in the mountains, seeking safety for the infant he has in his arms: there, inadvertently, he awakens the Monkey King, who will find himself completely stripped of his powers but ready to fight the enemies who are endangering the life of the young man and the child.

    Monkey King: Hero is Back: Preview-Gamescom 2019

    The Monkey King's moral strength is the same, but without his previous powers, due to one magic chain created by the Buddha who deprives him of it. This is where the story of the game differs slightly from the movie and the adventure illustrated in the video game begins.


    Monkey King seems to take on the contours of an action-platfomer a la Ratchet & Clank or Knack, and the graphic style is very much both, especially in the semi-open structure of the level (which gives more than one way to get to the end) and in the color palette, not exaggerated but certainly vibrant in their elementarity. What we witnessed was a hands-off played by one of the game developers present, an opportunity that allowed us to observe the gameplay well: Monkey King has, as expected, the classic light and heavy attacks plus an interesting parring mechanic, which allows our alter ego to counterattack with a quick burst of shots (managed via QTE) able to KO the enemy almost always.


    Some enemies will require ours parry in a specific instant of their attack, a situation that will open them to the massive damage that our fists are able to do to them; in the hands-off we could not observe other such particular types of enemy, but we can imagine a certain variety is planned.

    Monkey King: Hero is Back: Preview-Gamescom 2019

    Very nice element it is the graphic effect that accompanies the defeat of each enemy, that is a short slow motion that sees our opponent absorb the blow in the typical slow motion action movie, or maybe see him crash into the game camera, complete with a sliding noise along the lens. The mechanic of the surprise attack against a hostile who is perhaps distracted or asleep is also nice, a shot that, well placed, is insta-kill.


    After a while of mobs, we get to the fight with the final boss, situation in which the game dev unleashed a special area attack, really appreciable in the graphic effect and high damage capacity, but which for some reason made the enemies freeze for the entire execution of the blow: we honestly did not succeed to understand if it was an effect wanted by the desire to make the game more approachable or just a bug to be fixed in the future. Once the boss is defeated, our alter ego has unlocked one of the powers "sealed" by the curse given him by the Buddha, bringing him one step closer to the boundless power of which he still bears the memory.


    Monkey King: Hero is Back: Preview-Gamescom 2019

    Monkey King: Hero is Back seems to aim at a slice of the public very close to that of the aforementioned Ratchet & Clank and Knack, with combat and exploration mechanics very easy to learn and use, and we recognize the merits, current and potential, in the hope that the relative emptiness of the game levels and slight lag in the execution of the input commands is only an artifact of the still incomplete state of the title, although aware of the proximity to the release date set for October 17 on Playstation 4.

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