DF Weekly: A snippet of Black Myth: Wukong PS5 footage has arrived – what do we think?

This week’s DF Direct is dropping a little early due to a busy and packed week ahead of us, and our usual two-hour chat show kicks off with a look at the Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool – and the fact that (at the time we filmed, at least) the developer hadn’t shown off any video footage of the PlayStation 5 version in action. Reviewers were told not to expect any PS5 code ahead of launch. However, a short clip of gameplay from the console surfaced online yesterday , so we rushed to take a look and add some thoughts on it to our show.

Let’s talk about the footage itself, which comes courtesy of PlayStation China (though we picked it up from the developer’s feed, which linked to IGN China instead). First up, there are some obvious issues with the quality of the footage. The display of developer IP addresses in the upper right-hand corner could suggest that the PS5’s system-level video capture was used, which was then reprocessed by YouTube’s systems, making for a very muddy image, heavy with compression artifacts. Still, we can see that the game is targeting 60fps, albeit with some heavy frame-rate hits whenever full-screen effects are present on-screen. Black Myth: Wukong as presented here is completely free of screen tearing.

Additionally, it’s difficult to tell you much more about the game without having any context on how the clip was shot and what settings (assuming the console version was used) has settings) it was using. To be honest, the blurriness of the footage left me with more questions than answers – especially after running a performance analysis on the clip. It’s not easy to measure frame-rate from lossy video, but we’ve done it in the past with streaming services and the technique is pretty simple, involving manually scrolling through the clip frame-by-frame and marking duplicates. In the process we got to see what the game looked like frame-by-frame, and there’s some evidence here to suggest that AMD FSR 3 frame generation is being used in this footage.

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:01:48 News 01: Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Drops
• 0:22:35 News 02: Zen 5 launch unravels
• 0:44:24 News 03: Switch 2 possibly further “delayed” until 2025
• 0:54:49 News 04: Unannounced game Deadlock reaches 18,000 concurrent players
• 1:06:33 News 05: Will the third title in the FF7 Remake trilogy be ported to UE5?
• 1:12:32 News 06: Man connects 444 consoles to one TV
• 1:20:39 News 07: Tango Gameworks acquired by Krafton
• 1:24:26 News 08: Forza Horizon 5 possibly coming to PS5
• 1:34:40 News 09: Valve plans to offer SteamOS to other handhelds
• 1:44:58 Supporter Q1: Now that Microsoft is going more multiplatform, what’s the point of Xbox?
• 1:49:45 Supporter Q2: Should Microsoft put older exclusive games on the Switch?
• 1:52:10 Supporter Q3: What can the DF audience look forward to in 2025?
• 1:56:12 Supporter Q4: Which graphics-intensive ports should come to Switch 2?
• 2:00:10 Supporter Q5: What are some technical annoyances you experience with modern gaming?
• 2:04:34 Supporter Q6: What’s the best way to achieve good framerates for PS3 titles?

Despite the low quality, there is a sort of concertina strobing effect visible when scrolling through the footage, which is particularly noticeable with post-processing effects dominating the screen. Quick whip-pans on the camera reveal edge artifacts that appear as a sort of ‘fringe’ around the sides of the footage, but perhaps the strongest indicator that frame generation is being used is the way in which the particles animate. They form fully on one frame, then dissipate into two separate frames before dissolving back into a single particle on the next frame. Another piece of evidence is that the UI noticeably appears to animate at half-speed during the footage.

If this is not frame generation, I’d love to know why so many of the tech’s artifacts are showcased in this mini-clip, but we won’t know for sure what the context behind this video is until we get hands-on with the game. At that point, we’ll also find out if there are quality and performance modes, and whether frame generation (assuming it is frame generation) is a user-toggle. And of course, crucially, we’ll actually be able to tell you about the quality of the game overall.

Ahead of the gameplay clip, I thought I’d get a feel for how the PS5 version might perform by using Digital Foundry’s infamous ‘Frankenstein’s PC’. This is a Windows machine based around the AMD 4800S desktop kit – a micro ATX board built around the Xbox Series X CPU, running alongside an AMD Radeon RX 6700. In previous multi-platform tests, it’s successfully delivered ballpark console performance, and the results from the publicly available Black Myth: Wukong benchmark test are intriguing.

First, a few caveats: based on the foliage distribution, we’re expecting this to be a heavy scene from the actual game, but without reference to the final code, it’s hard to say how representative it is. That said, I was able to run Black Myth: Wukong on our console surrogate PC at a 4K output resolution with both FSR and TSR upscaling in Performance and Balanced modes. Balanced mode sat uncomfortably close to 30 fps at times, but Performance mode offered a welcome buffer of around 20 percent more performance. This was on High settings, with no ray tracing enabled.

I did test out a potential 60fps performance mode (remember, this was before we saw actual PS5 footage), 1440p resolution with either FSR or TSR in performance – essentially upscaling from 720p – couldn’t quite achieve a locked 60fps output. Despite looking blurry, it still looked good, especially with Epic’s TSR upscaler. Given the choice for the console builds, I’d prefer to see Game Science use TSR (tests show near-identical performance, with a small boost seen with TSR), but if FSR 3 frame generation is being used, it could very well be an earlier build that requires FSR input. Still, given that I tested on high settings, there may still be further scaling that could lead to better results. I didn’t use frame generation at all in my testing, so if that’s what the PS5 does, I’m very curious to see why it’s necessary.

Answers are coming soon, though. As I write this, the PlayStation 5 version of Black Myth: Wukong will be unlocked in approximately 36 hours (03:00 BST on Tuesday), and given the attention surrounding the game, we’ll do our best to wrap up our coverage as quickly as possible. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this week’s edition of DF Direct!