Monkey King: Hero is Back (PS4) Review
Release Date: October 17, 2019
Publisher/Developer: THQ Nordic/Oasis Games Limited
Platform: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Steam
Price: $39.99 standard edition, $64.99 “Hero Edition”
The tale of the Monkey King is one of the most popular stories in the East, inspiring countless movies, television shows, games, books, and the like. A good deal of people know an (extremely) loose telling of the tale that inspired the likes of Dragonball, and several artists have gone on to write sequels or story continuations of this classic tale. In 2015 a Chinese animation company crafted the movie Monkey King: Hero is Back. It was translated into English with some big names attached to it, namely with Jackie Chan providing the voice of the titular hero. Now, a video game has been released based directly on this iteration of the property. The developers of the game took this chance to expand even further on the story from the movie. Whilst some liberties are taken in the name of interesting gameplay, it does truly allow us to get a more fleshed-out tale with a more satisfying conclusion.
Monkey King: Hero is Back is the story of the Monkey King, awakened from his 500 year imprisonment to save the children of a village from an evil sorcerer intent on sacrificing them for his own immortality. It’s a traditional third-person adventure game, with a mild skill tree as the Monkey King “does good” to help eliminate the last remaining bit of the curse. The game is amazingly designed and feels like you are playing the movie in it’s moment-to-moment action. Once, three enemies all took a swing at me and knocked me over only for the three of them to all strike a pose. During another battle I chucked an enemy right at the camera who proceeded to faceplant against the “glass” of the television. I regularly saw new animations within the one-on-one battles. The environments themselves are beautiful and fun to run through. There are a few strange sacrifices though. We now live in a world where games pride themselves in being fully open-world with zero loading screens. It feels a bit of a rewind to have our hero walk up to a dotted line that you have to activate to load the next area, or have no door opening animations but instead have to load. The battles are fun and feel like you are playing a cartoon, but the dramatic motions involved sometimes involve long animations, which does hinder basic play at times when you get caught in an attack because you can’t cancel out of a move. There’s a “sneak” option to creep up and take out an enemy stealthily, but the animation is slow and the sneak is so slow that most of the time when I tried to use it an enemy would have time to turn around before I got to them. Dealing with those issues, though, the battles are fun. A lot of enemies boil down to a few color swaps, but the bosses are unique and remind me of old-school battles where you find a pattern and exploit it.
My biggest question about the game, though, comes from watching the film (available on Hulu). While I fully understand two different teams worked on the movie and the game, it is a linked experience, with the characters in the game 100% being the characters in the movie. There are a few things that don’t line up. The Monkey King, by his heritage, actually has several names given to him. In the movie, his primary name is Sun Wukong, though the young boy Liuer often refers to him as the Great Sage. For the game, Sun Wukong is mentioned in the first few seconds, but soon after that (and frequently, as Liuer even talks during battles) he calls him Dasheng. Now, this is the phonetic translation from “Great Sage” so it technically makes sense, but if they’re basing the game off a licensed property why not go with the translation that already exists? For people not privy to the history, it’d be like Marvel putting out a movie with Bob Stark as Iron Man and not saying anything different. Characters are introduced differently than the movie. While the story is the same, I actually prefer the general plot of the game, feeling more like a fleshed-out “director’s cut.” Think of it like if the game was a TV series that had to be adapted down into the hour and a half long movie. The game introduces more enemies and adventures. Overall, it has a more satisfying endgame than the movie, which feels like it just cuts off. The game allows characters to receive a bit more closure. Also regarding the translation, it’s flat-out cheesy at parts. Everyone in the game sounds like they have a high British accent. This is near identical in the movie, except of course for Jackie Chan, who is replaced for the game. The new actor does a great job, it’s just jarring if you’ve seen the movie. Also, in both cases, the evil mountain trolls sound like their menacing growls and roars were recorded by some three year olds playing monster with each other.
My other big beef on the game is the decision to have a “Hero Edition.” I understand some DLC levels are going to be coming soon. You also get some cool outfits (love the pun of the Monkey King in a “monkey suit”). You then get some infinitely usable consumables that change the whole dynamic of the game. Until I leveled up a bit and learned how to properly “generate” healing sigils in battle, I was always extremely low on health. Turns out one of the bonus items will let you fully heal at save statues. You also get an item that fills your magic, and another that instantly spawns one of the sigils that doubles the Monkey King’s speed and strength. These are the kind of items that used to be skil or secret based finds, rewarding for a job well done. Having them as purchaseables makes the game feel cheapened, especially the life one which I feel should be a standard game feature. That being said, though, I do appreciate that the game is cheaper at the base price, only reaching traditional retail price in the Hero Edition, so you could consider it more piecemeal than profiteering.
So in summary, Monkey King: Hero is Back is a wonderful game. It probably won’t thrill hardcore gamers with the cracks present in the combo system, but the fluid and beautiful animations are entertaining. If you are a fan of the movie, you owe it to yourself to play this game and see a more fleshed out version of the tale.
Pros:
-Feels like playing the movie. Great care was done to add personality to the combat
-Beautifully detailed world to roam around
-Actually a better telling of the story than the movie it’s based upon
Cons:
-Combat can be a bit slow and clunky
-Odd translation choices (won’t be noticed if you hadn’t seen the movie)
-Certain DLC consumables feel like they should be a natural part of the package
Special thanks to THQ Nordic/Oasis Games Ltd. For providing a code for review!