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When it comes to martial arts, “Kung Fu” is probably the first phrase that many people think of. The reason is probably due to the emergence of martial arts in popular cultures, such as novels, comic books, and movies.
Possessing a beautiful move, showing the speed and flexibility of a master, it is not difficult to understand when Kung Fu has quickly become a popular martial art.
Slotlap, an independent studio based in Paris – France – is a collection of game developers who are fans of this martial art.
In 2017, they released their debut work, Absolver, a martial arts-heavy online action role-playing game where players compete in Kung Fu disciplines.
Absolver, their debut product, has been relatively successful and with the experience that has accumulated from this game, Sloclap has released their second game, a single-player experience called “Sifu“.
Inspired by popular action movies, Sifu is promised to be an ultimate martial arts experience. Whether the game has done this or not, we will find out through the following article.
Eight years before the game begins, the main character’s family’s dojo is attacked by a former student and his four accomplices.
The protagonist’s father, because of his advanced age, lost his life at the hands of a traitor disciple. The main character, now just a baby, was also killed mercilessly shortly.
Fortunately, before being killed, the main character holds a string of magic coins in his hand. This coin chain revives the protagonist, giving us a chance to get revenge.
8 years have passed, and the main character is now 20 years old and has become a tough martial artist. Our revenge journey also officially begins, with the effective assistant being the coin chain.
In the movie The Matrix in 1999, there is a scene that I remember forever.
That’s when Neo plugged his brain into the computer to learn martial arts for 10 hours, woke up, told Morpheus “I know Kung Fu”, and then had one of the most beautiful martial arts matches in cinema history.
The most remarkable thing in this scene is Neo’s radiant expression, as he did not expect his body to be able to perform such complex martial arts moves.
When the writer plays the game Sifu, the feeling is almost the same as Neo.
With a combination of left and right mouse (on PC) and movement buttons, writers can unleash beautiful martial arts moves. Not only to deal damage, but the chain of attacks also has unique properties, such as kicking the opponent away or knocking down the leg…
The feeling is even more “already” when we hit enough consecutive blows to stun the enemy, creating the opportunity to deliver the finishing blow when the opponent can only stand still and receive the blow like a sandbag.
Besides the usual punching and kicking, another element of Sifu is the “Focus Attack”. This is a special type of move that we can launch when the “concentration” bar is full.
Not as beautiful and brutal as the “Heat” or “Ex Attack” attacks of the Yakuza or Judgment series, Focus Attack serves a different purpose, which is to make the enemy temporarily open so that the player can launch an attack high damage chain.
Combining the above factors with a relatively diverse upgrade system in terms of skills, what we have is an interesting and engaging Kung Fu experience.
In Sifu’s world, probably everyone practices martial arts. The reason we can say this is because…
- A) Entering a crime den but no one uses guns, they only use such as knives, long sticks, short sticks, etc.
- B) Just one minute of carelessness, the enemy will kill you
In many fighting games, players are free to continuously use their strongest attacks to destroy the enemy in front of them, or at least always actively attack to win as quickly as possible.
Throwing out beautiful blows is sure to be fun and easy to give players the feeling that they are an unstoppable force, but that is not what Sifu wants you to experience.
When entering a room with 5-10 enemies, out of habit, you would rush to the nearest enemy and punch him once to start the chain, right? While you do that, others will surround you to attack from behind.
And they don’t do it alone, instead, 2 or even 3 will attack at the same time.
Your first reflex right now will probably be to block, but in Sifu, the number of hits you can block will be limited by the stamina bar. This bar increases every time it is hit and will increase very quickly, because as I said above, the enemies in this game also know martial arts, so their attacks… are very painful!
Once the stamina bar is full and broken, you will be stunned and have to take a hit, after only a few hits from the enemy, you will die.
As such, you will have to get used to Sifu’s on-the-spot dodging, moving, and parrying mechanics to be able to survive the enemy’s brutality.
If Parry gets an enemy attack, then you will also have a chance to counterattack. In general, if you have played through Ghost of Tsushima, then Sifu’s defense mechanism is similar.
Do you remember the magic coin chain mentioned above? It is the most important mechanism of the game.
In Sifu, we don’t have healing items, and the enemies are both strong and numerous, so sooner or later you’ll die.
When this happens, the chain of coins will revive you, for a price…
That is your age. Start your journey at age 20, after death, you will increase your age to 21.
But that doesn’t mean that you will die 55 times in a row to reach 75 years old, which is the limit of the game.
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Sifu: Vengeance Edition (PS5): Buy it now
SIFU: Vengeance Edition (PS4): Buy it now
Sifu (PS5): Buy it now
Instead, the first time you die, you will increase your age by 1, but if the next death happens too soon, you will increase your age by 2, and dying again early will increase your age by 3…
This number only decreases when you defeat the fixed “miniboss” of the level.
When you die, the game will put you in an upgrade “menu” to “buy” new moves with experience points.
This action is as if telling the player that they should learn from experience, just die because of an enemy attack, or buy a move to overcome that attack.
The coin chain has 5 coins, representing the age milestones of 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70.
When you reach an age milestone, a coin will break, and your health bar will be shortened but in return, your attack will have higher damage.
Moreover, when you get old, some skills will also be locked if you didn’t buy them when you were young. This forces you to consider your current playing strategy.
Sifu is a relatively short game with only 5 levels. But with high difficulty and an interesting respawn mechanism, Sifu will keep players for a long time, because you will be determined to complete all levels without dying.
Inspired by famous action/martial arts movies, it’s no wonder that Sifu’s levels take place in iconic locations.
Such as the dojo inspired by the movie Martial art, the narrow corridor from Oldboy, the bamboo forest from the House of Flying Daggers, nightclubs and art galleries from John Wick & John Wick 2, the snowy garden from Kill Bill …
In some corridor scenes, the game intentionally changed the angle to 2D to make sure the player would think of Oldboy again.
All these locations make the writer feel like he is controlling the plot of a martial arts movie, and the feeling is even stronger if we turn off the HUD (Heads Up Display – information display).
You go into battle, knocking down one enemy after another with beautiful moves.
However, to the next target, you stun him, perform the finishing move, then suddenly… he blocks your move, the health bar is restored and doubled, along with more powerful attacks than before…
“What’s going on?” You ask yourself.
As it turns out, this is a mechanism that Slotlap integrates into the game. They want players to understand those good boxers exist everywhere, only when they encounter problems.
But if that’s the case, why didn’t that good martial artist show up at the beginning, until the player executes the finishing move to protest? Also, if the player doesn’t use the finishing move, the boxer will take the fight too?
The second annoyance is the auto-save mechanism.
More specifically, in a “boss” match, I entered the game at the age of 30. After a while of fighting (and dying twice), I had preliminary memorized his moves and decided to exit the game and enter again.
While the game takes the writer back to the room before the boss battle, I am age is 33…
Thus, the game will save your progress at the stop, but take the age when exiting. A rather confusing decision!
Third, it’s a requirement to buy some weird moves.
When entering the menu to buy skills (at the stop or death – NV), we will have two ways: temporarily or forever.
For example, the enemy leg sweep that the player needs costs 500XP, just needs to spend 500XP to be used immediately.
However, this move will disappear when you end your life – that is, at 75 years old.
To keep this move, we have to buy it forever, but the price to do this is 5 times more expensive than the original price.
Therefore, to possess the necessary skills for the next “runs”, sometimes we have to actively “train” the old screens, which is quite time-consuming.
In the end, it’s the game’s practice function that isn’t too useful. Sifu has many types of enemies with different fighting styles, unfortunately, in practice mode, we only have access to a “mobile sandbag”.
It would be better if we could get used to the different types of enemies in practice mode (after meeting them for the first time) so that we can perform better in the next levels.
That said, I will not deduct these factors too much, because the negative impact they bring is not great.