Stepping into the world of Sifu is like stepping into the shoes of Bruce Lee. Building on the lessons learned from its freshman effort, Absolver, developer Sloclap has crafted an experience that looks to combine martial arts with the stylish fight sequences of John Wick. Game ZXC was only able to get a small sample of Sifu in a special media preview, but what was on offer left a strong impression.
The best way to describe Sifu is as a melee brawler where deliberate button presses, dodges, and parries are essential. Those hoping to take on a group of thugs and mash their way to victory will find that they are quickly knocked to the floor, and usually will end up adding a few years onto the player character’s life. Like any skilled Kung Fu fighter, patience is key – if players get too greedy or are not mindful of their surroundings, they will find themselves quickly overwhelmed.
Since the preview only featured roughly half of Sifu’s second chapter, the full kung fu arsenal was not yet unlocked. But what was there was a series of options that allow for careful kicks, punches, and combos that, when timed correctly, can make any player look like a pro. The learning curve on Sifu is rather steep and the difficulty can be punishing, but bear in mind that this preview thrust us right into the action without a tutorial. There was a lot of learning on the fly, which won’t happen in the main game.
In the sequence, the player enters a nightclub looking for a specific individual and finds nothing but trouble along the way. Seemingly every member of the nightclub wants to throw down and the only way for the fighter to reach his goal is by taking them out one by one. If it sounds a bit like John Wick, there are some obvious influences on display, especially the use of house music to heighten the action.
Combat, however, is very deliberate and considered. Players can use a combination of light and heavy attacks to open up the fighting, but it’s never that simple. Usually, an enemy will eventually start to block the player’s attacks and they will need to mix up their strategy. Some enemies will also be more aggressive, which requires either blocking and waiting for an opening or creating that opening right away with a parry. Sloclap’s first game Absolver featured some similar systems, but it was limited in terms of its options and it didn’t have the narrative throughline that Sifu appears to. Still, those who were fans of that first game will find similar DNA on display here.
Perhaps the best compliment to be paid Sifu’s way is that the game is challenging. There is a sense of satisfaction to every defeat and a sense of progression as the complex fighting systems become clearer. Sometimes it’s best just to watch an enemy’s attack patterns before making any decision, rather than rushing in with a flurry of punches and kicks. The game’s animation also makes those combos look incredible on-screen, as if the player is a kung fu master. Everything connects extremely well, and nothing looks stiff or awkward, at least from what we saw. It also gives the player a sense of power that they can take on a room of bad guys with the right strategy.
Make no mistake, though; Sifu will punish players if they let it. Getting surrounded, mistiming a parry, or not dodging an unblockable attack are all easy ways to lose a major chunk of health or outright die. Sifu does a cool thing with respawns where each one adds a year to the character’s age (which also changes his appearance), adding a different sense of tension to the idea of failure. Aging does make the character stronger (and slightly weaker in terms of the health pool), but if players aren’t careful, they will find themselves an old man before too long. See, Sifu compounds those deaths in a way that ages the character the more they die in a specific area. One death only adds one year but the second death adds two years. Before players know it, they will be a 40-year-old man with greying hair and a growing beard.
Pulling it altogether with the music, the game’s painterly art style, flashy combat, and a genuine sense of tension, Sifu becomes a stylish character action game that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. Every fight felt like it needed to be treated carefully, and then the tougher enemies like the fat bruisers or the agile female fighters became a challenge all their own. Whether the gameplay on display in our small slice will sustain a full game is yet to be seen, but there’s no question that Sifu is going to make a lot of gamers happy.
Sifu releases February 8, 2022 for PC, PS4, and PS5.
MORE: Watch a New Sifu Trailer
