Black Myth: Wukong – Patch 1.020 NXG Review
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Monkey Magic Update
Game science exploded into the gaming sphere from Nowhere with 2024’s smash hit Black Myth Wukong, or Monkey Magic or Journey to the West for us older peeps. But, as I covered in my pre-launch review over on IGN. It took some choices on PS5 and PC that reflected a few more months in the bakery would not have gone amiss. Now, a few months after the Xbox release and over a year since 1st launch, the Chinese studio have released their biggest patch yet, adding a brand-new performance mode on PS5 and Pro, removing FSR3 Frame Gen and a little more whilst increasing Image Quality. But the PS5 Pro was apparently patched much earlier as I discovered during this review. I had the PS5 Pro patched to the v1.013 that dropped in December last year, and this added PSSR to both Quality and Balanced from a 2304x1296P approximate base. The result is a slightly softer but more detailed image that is less impacting by the break-up and ghosting of the PS5 FSR2 Quality mode, which operates at an approx. 1440p base resolution reconstructed back to 4K also.
Monkey see, Monkey do
Patching both consoles to version 1.020 that dropped this week, we see a slew of changes once again over the previous modes. The biggest,the new performance mode disables all Lumen GI and predominantly Ambien Occlusion (AO) causing internal, none sun, shadow occlusion sections to look very flat with no shadows, AO, or diffuse lighting across the normal and surface details. This then reduces the quality of objects & textures. Outside in the direct sun though, which is where you spend most of your time, the impact is much smaller and in places better. Just prior to the White Wolf fight, the lanterns now cast light onto the Pagoda entrances from a much further distance due to the lack of GI bounce diffusing it out, but also sun shadows are much darker now, higher resolution and better filtered than the prior performance and even balanced modes. Grass and AO has also been tweaked with a better blend, again outdoors, in mirroring the previous Lumen GI look for a far cheaper cost. Tone mapping is another that has also changed along some other colour tweaks, such as the aforenentioned Wolf, with the prior patch the white fur is now a light blue hue (maybe from the moonlight?) which along with the improved self-shadow quality increases AO on enemies and Monkey himself. All this does offer another benefit though, two big ones.
Now FSR2 Frame gen is disabled with a native 60fps target on both PS5 and PS5 Pro players, but resolutions have also changed. Base PS5 in its new Performance mode targets 2560×1440 via FSR2 with DRS, with a counted low of approx 1506×847 but often around this or 1080p. The PS5Pro targets approx 36% higher than that, at 3200×1800 but retains PSSR from an approx. 2560×1440 base resolution with a counted low of 2176×1224 , which is significantly better than FSR2. Retaining more detail, high frequency textures with hardly any ghosting, less dither and visual artefacts over FSR2, increasesing the visual clarity and details. Grass and Level of Detail has also been slightly reduced on PS5 now, being below the PS5 Pro and all other modes on PS5, including the old Performance mode with framegen, which remains but is now called ‘Legacy’. Comparing this to the older performance mode though the other changes have also been carried out here with reduced shadow filtering, AO and GI changes to Lumen which carry over to both consoles in the three other modes, Quality, Balanced and Performance Legacy. We see shadow cascades updates which used to create light seeping through onto walls now removed. Shadow map flicker in the background being more stable now in the new mode, shadows are thicker, more stable and darker. With a Penumbra effect in place with the new Performance mode solving the ‘Peter Panning’ on Monkey, which is still present in Balanced and the old Legacy mode on both. This is due to the resolution and filtering cuts not being balanced against the loss of precision, but in Quality and the new Performance mode they are correct and look better.
So, a mixed level of tweaks and changes but the new Performance mode is better or worse depending on in direct sun light or not. The Quality modes are mostly reflective of the visual tweaks to Lumen, shadows and LoD as mentioned, but resolutions have changed, but the PS5 Pro does offer slightly better Shadow and Lument quality in all modes over the base PS5, (watch the video on the page to learn more) in addition to ground tessellation and the GI bounce on the temple roof edge. Some of this may be resolution related as PS5 Pro is also always higher with PSSR. Instead Quality is returned back on PS5 now to approx. 1440P base reconstructed back to 4K thanks to FSR2, with PS5 Pro going slightly higher at a 1620P back to 4K output using PSSR, an approximate 27% resolution increase along with a bump in visual settings.
Balanced is next, PS5 Pro takes a minor haircut to 2688x1512P base now, but still reconstructs back to 4K via PSSR for the 25ms target at 120Hz. Base players now target 2880×1620 from a 1296p base, DRS always possible. In side by sides you can see a small increase in clarity on the Pro and detail with small improvements on visuals but this is closest mode between them. Finally Legacy mode stays as was, a flat 1080p on PS5 and flat 1296P on PS5 Pro, which both look very soft and noisier than all other modes, with the frame-Gen causing some horrendous breakup in action and flicker judder along with lower input latency caused by the delayed frame for the interpolation. The PS5 Pro is even better in its new performance mode due to the higher visual settings and resolution which means this mode, although it has its own issues just covered, is on aggregate, much, much better than the old legacy mod
Input times
The prior Frame Gen performance mode had a cost which meant the median input latency to screen was 152.5ms using version 1.009 on the base PS5. This was improved in the 1.013 patch but the current legacy mode reflects this in 1.020 with a small 4.6ms decrease to 148ms, again using Frame gen to interpolate dropped frames from the circa 42fps average. The new performance mode without framegen is 44ms faster now, some 29% improvement hitting a new median of 108.5ms, which is not lighting fast for 60fps but much better than the old mode. Balanced and Quality get steadily worse as you would expect reflecting the cost of UE5, Lumen and other aspects within the engine and game render. Balanced is best at 127ms and quality the slowest at 171ms which is why it can feel more sluggish playing such a time centric title, and all helps to push more players to the performance or balanced modes.
This new mode leaves Quality capped to 30fps on both consoles, so expect that to be locked now bar the traversal, sector stutter which still occurs on occasion. Base PS5 first, using 120hz output with VRR (which you do not need but I wanted to ensure highest Perf). Pitting balanced next to New Perf mode in the wolf fight which was a stress test, we see almost locked 60 and a decent 40fps readout for Perf and balanced respectively. It can be fillrate and bandwidth bound here with the significant but clever reduction on Fur to more hair cards and less splines than balanced or quality helps. But when filling the screen, light, alpha and such we can drop a couple of frames, It performs similar to the old legacy mode, Helped by the DRS in this mode allowing it to render above and below the old level with a superior IQ and better performance, true of balanced also which appears fixed res and the bigger drops suggest that, falling slightly worse than before but still close enough to maintain a high 39.8 FPS average with a few mid 30s cropping up. You can still run at 60hz and target the intermediate 45 middle ground as before, but expect this to be closer to 40 now than 45 as we see with the Pro.
PS5 Pro does push higher resolutions, superior image quality and effects and as I have covered in previous videos, this means it can run close or slightly worse than base consoles in the higher modes. This is true of performance with it being marginally lower than the base machine, with slightly more dropped frames but in reality, it is a wash between then and more a academic note here that the DRS range used in the performance mode also, at least it appears dynamic, offers sufficient headroom to keep within 98% of the required 16ms. With Balanced we see a similar average with dips into the mid-30s also on occasion, offering slightly better averages as this 60hz mode can offer slightly better frame times on a per frame basis, but if you have the choice play at 120hz output as the 25ms 40fps mode feels more consistent and therefore better to play and should have been how the mode launched with back in 2024, but still welcome after so many moons.
Summary
It may have took a year, but this update is a good one. The PSSR modes are excellent now, potentially a first glimpse of a new PSSR mode with the resolution increase from v1.013 being around 28% more which means they found that with work and improvements in the engine code, or Sony got .5ms back in the LLM it uses, or DRS is running on all versions, and they had more headroom. Either or, the results speak for themselves here, IQ is superior, effects better(mostly) and performance and latency is with a new, true performance mode being a mixed visual bag but still a net win. Image issues, ghosting, noise and such an still remain on all modes and formats, base PS5 with FSR2 suffers the most. But the team have not left it alone and with a final push to add interior GI and AO I think it could be even more monkey magic at play.
