(Double dipped on both Epic Game Store and Steam. This review is based on a playthrough on Steam Deck.)
Sloclap’s Sifu sold itself on the idea of faithfully presenting the Chinese material arts discipline known as Pak Mei. Developed to mimic the movements of tigers, the discipline was picked up by a young Jackie Chan when surviving mean streets was his life priority. The game first came on February, 8th, 2022 fittingly and unfortunately.
Fittingly since that day marked one full week into a year of tiger, prime time to do some tiger style even virtually. Unfortunately, because the king of 2022 known as Elden Ring was merely weeks away, so many of Sifu’s target audience were resting their hands and nerves for the bigger release. I got no exception for From’s newest back then, so into Sifu I went and found it to a frustrating but ultimately very satisfying experience.
The “crow” to kill “Bill”
Yang had a grudge against his old Pak Mei Wu Guan after the master there refused to save his family. In a rainy night, Yang along with 4 associates stormed in there, stole its secrets and killed the master along with his only child (A binary gender selection for the player). But the master’s child was revived by a magical pendant made of five coins. After 8 years of training and preparation, they would pay visits to the five who destroyed their life in a day of reckoning.
There is no other way around it: Sifu tells a boilerplate revenge tale. The saving grace being that it does not fall into the dumbest possible variety (The revenger just lies there obviously breathing and visibly pissed as the rogue gallery leaves the scene.) like the Last of Us Part 2 and the very first John Wick did. No, Sifu went for the unexcepted survivor route even though a magical five-coin pendant (All those characters on the coins made one go “There are sure several ways to wish someone a long life here in miHoYo’s country of origin”.) is involved.
Narratively speaking the pendant is here so there will not be no need for friendly non-player character in this little indie game. Unexcepted survivors are usually found by cops in the movies, but there is really no point in creating information gathering NPCs in the game focused on the action of revenge instead of information gathering.
This game is about repeating in terms of narrative as well. The credits will not roll after player took out the rouge gallery of five. End only came after player discovered about their motives then beat and spared the five bosses. Whether one take it as the usual revenge tale circle jerk or as the stoic “not be like one’s enemy” idea of revenge is up to them.
Live, die and repeat in close-quarter combat
Mechanically speaking, Sifu is a third person brawler in which the camera tends to stay close to the player character. The default can be called over-the-shoulder. The camera would pull back a bit when there are enemy crowds and there are 2 profile shot like side scrolling portions in the story.
The offense option is the usual with left face button for light strike and up face button for heavy strike. This game’s more unique aspect is in this defend. Pulling right trigger to evade is a natural reaction for anyone who had played Bayonetta, but in Sifu this evasion is only good for getting away from a crowd before boxed in or closing distances. Once player and one enemy engaged within one arm length, it’s all about the left bumper and the left stick to create opening,
Well-timed push of left bumper is for parry and deflect coming strikes while combining with left stick directions with bumper push is to getting into places where there is no strike. Duck down from a kick intended for the head or lift up the foot before it can be swinged. When enemy limbs are glowing, step aside. The combinations of light and heavy attacks can aim at enemies’ opening, but memorizing those is nowhere near as intuitive as avoiding coming strikes with the joystick.
Despite the surreal imagery the game has, all enemies are human. But worry not, there are variety given their body types. With different heights, lengths of limbs or how board their shoulders are, the enemy types are pretty readable. All combatants have both a life bar and a stand bar. When stand bars of enemies, bosses included, fill up, they are can be taken down with the combination of up and right face buttons. Such takedowns would give player some hit points back, but in a crowd they can also create mini bosses.
With the revival mechanic tied into coins, the game does contain the arcade beat’m up vibe. After player lost their hit points, they have the option to pick up right there and then. But there is a cost of aging up (The characters read as “si wang” in the game’s interface mean “death” to any Chinese speaker. So, I suspect that the French developers of this game mistook those for “mortality”, which would have other pairs more fitting.).
In the default difficulty, the aging number will go the more player dies. 5 coins break one by one as the player ages up pass a decade, starting at 20 and once past 70 it’s game over. All five bosses pulling another life bar out of their asses (With final boss having another stand bar before credits after 2 life bars) seems very fair against the player pulls another one out all the time,
The five stages all have circular sections, making progress in them usually means a straighter line through them to avoid the risk of aforementioned aging. (The stages will have save stats of the youngest age player beat those at.) The third one is particular interesting as the straightest route there is direct to the boss fight. Given this third one is the hardest on the pattern recognition front, it’s only fair.
Kneel to no king
Sifu seems to do well enough for Sloclap as their game after is no longer exclusive to Epic at launch and adds variables. With mostly unarmed combat sports being all about players and their movements while ball games need to keep their eyes on one more ball.
Sifu is a focused game with just enough amount of production value in a world where lots of products attempted the “end all be all” yet amounted to nothing. In a time when Nintendo thinks it’s okay to bring back the “Ultra 64” price tag, we do need more products with focus like this.