Earlier this year, developer Sloclap Games thrust us into the world of revenge Kung Fu movies with Sifu. Originally released for PS4, PS5 and PC in February, their brutal martial arts epic has now made the jump to Nintendo’s Switch.
Heavily inspired by the likes of Enter The Dragon, The Raid and other martial arts movies, Sifu puts you in the shoes of a young martial artist out to get revenge on the crew that murdered your father and left you for dead at a young age. Fast forward some eight long years of isolation and training and you’re back to seek bloody revenge against the five people who destroyed your life. And woe betide anyone that stands in your way!
Sifu starts out with one of the best opening prologues of gaming in 2022 so far. Showing the horrendous act that pushes you into your life of violence from the other side of the track, you’re given a brief glimpse into the game’s combat system, its wealth of moves and the visual fidelity that Sloclap have aimed for. It’s a fantastic segment that only whets your appetite for the combat to come while only giving you a brief glimpse into the game’s nuanced combat system.
Once you’ve chosen your gender and jumped into the game properly, you’ll find that the combat eagerly states your desire for bone-breaking revenge. Like Sloclap’s previous martial arts epic, Absolver, Sifu’s combat is incredibly nuanced and in-depth, though it may not seem like it at first. The speed of your strikes makes for some thrilling visual encounters as coupled with the wonderful sound effects, looks and feels quick, brutal and bone-crunchingly effective. But once you delve into the game’s skill tree and move sets you’ll find it incredibly nuanced, opening up your offensive and defensive capabilities.
You can block, dodge and parry hits – which are invaluable – as well as dodge high and low attacks if you’re fast enough. Your moves flow seamlessly from one move to the next, combo to the next and into the rest of your repertoire. Parrying and countering is the meat of the combat system though. You’ll need it to both limits your damage but also open up your opponents to a quick flurry of moves. Do enough damage and you can use a brutal and devastating takedown move on them which also gives you some breathing room in some of the more claustrophobic fights.
Situational awareness is key to fights as the enemies don’t give you room to breathe. They don’t fall into the school of hanging around menacingly in the background until you’ve dispatched one of their brethren. Instead, they gang up on you, bringing blows from multiple directions at the same time. Knowing where you are and what’s around you is key.
The environment is littered with objects to use. Chairs can be kicked at opponents while bottles, pipes and baseball bats all make for some wonderfully damaging weapons. Like the best action stars, you can slide over the table if things get too hectic or vault over railings. Environment takedowns are the most thrilling way of dispatching an enemy. Whether you’re throwing someone through a glass railing or kicking their heads into the edges of tables, it all feels cathartically pleasing while flowing seamlessly into combat regardless of direction.
All in all, Sifu does a wonderful job of making you feel like an avenging badass.
However, don’t rest on your laurels just yet because Sifu is incredibly hard. Enemies rarely go down without a fight and will gang up on you all the time. Bosses really bring the challenge as well and it’s fairly common to find yourself dying multiple times against them and normal enemies. This brings us to the game’s most unique gameplay mechanic that plops Sifu down into the Roguelike genre: its death and resurrection mechanic.
Due to some supernatural shenanigans, death isn’t the end in Sifu. What does happen is that each time you die and resurrect at a level, your age. How much you age is determined by which of the three difficulty levels you select on starting the game. This acts as an extra life system but at the age of 70, if you die it’s a full-on game over and you have to start all over again.
Death is carried across between chapters so if you want to replay one, you’ll start at the age at which you started that chapter. Skills that you can buy from the skill tree are also unlocked for that run unless you unlock them six times which becomes permanent across all runs.
Unlike most Roguelikes, Sifu doesn’t randomise its levels and enemy placement. Enemies are always in the same place and, like Dark Souls and Absolver, it’s about getting good in the name of completing a flawless run. This also helps when replaying levels to unlock new paths or rooms. What makes the death and resurrection mechanic so interesting is its risk/reward scenario. If you die, you can choose to restart the level, end your run or resurrect. But if you choose to rise again, your health pool will get smaller and smaller while your attack strength gets buffed. It’s also really cool to watch the way your character model changes as you go from a sprightly young fighter to a wizened elder.
To help even the odds of this system, scattered across the levels are shrines that can grant you permanent buffs, such as how much health you regain on a takedown. The most useful one for me was the buff that de-ages you by five years. It went a long way to help me reach those later levels at a more sprightly age.
Visually Sifu is absolutely gorgeous. Its stylised visuals and environment design look stunning on the Switch’s smaller screen. The world is chock full of environmental details and props, making the stage design something to behold. The world of Sifu really does feel lived in. The lighting design is also stellar, especially at the Night Club level with its flashing blue and purple neon lights and the way in which the light splashes across the environment. Rain and reflection effects look gorgeous in that opening prologue.
However, this level of detail does come at a performance price. In the games, external areas, especially the ones full of props, the game can’t maintain a stable frame rate with stutter a common occurrence. You’ll notice it as well in the opening prologue when moving between buildings and the rain and reflection effects come into play. Internal areas hold up better with a stable frame rate while combat, bar one sequence, also performs fantastically regardless of how many enemies were on screen at the same time. That one sequence, however, saw some serious frame rate drips when I was fighting one opponent in a heavily atmospherically fogged area. If I had to guess, the Switch was struggling with the post-processing effects at play in this sequence.
Apart from the aforementioned frame rate issues, Sifu is an excellent port of an excellent game. While hard, its cathartic, bone-breaking combat is a constant delight to engage in. Coupled with beautiful visuals and stunning set design, Sifu will draw you in and keep you playing as you search for that one perfect run while honing your skills. There isn’t anything else out there quite like it and that’s high praise indeed.
Grab your copy here https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Sifu-2264655.html
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