🥋🥷 SIFU PS5 Review 9/10 "On paper Sifu is simple." 🥋🥷 @SifuGame @sloclap #IndieGames #GameDev

On paper Sifu is simple. It's a third person brawler that has you fight your way through five levels, kill five bosses and avenge your slain family. 

Countless games have hung themselves on that barebones premise but in a crowded genre Sifu's punishing but deeply rewarding combat, creative health system and beautiful art style add up to something unique, infuriating and incredibly addictive. 

First off the game is gorgeous. Sloclap's art department deserve a huge amount of recognition for their work, delivering a game that cherry picks all the best iconography of classic Kung Fu movie tropes while adding a beautiful, relatively minimalist, art style.

Sifu is dripping with style and visual flair with each level boasting rich, dense environments and locations. From the pulsing neon of a nightclub to a dream-like sequence in a museum that has you silhouetted against stark vibrant reds and pitch blacks, a large part of Sifu's charm is discovering each locations’ art and design. (Sloclap are clearly, and rightly, proud of it. 

The Vengeance Edition of the game includes a lovely art book showing off locations and character designs). 

So it looks tasty, but if you've seen any footage of the game in action you'll have gathered that Sifu's trump card is its combat. 

The easiest (and probably laziest) comparison would be Rocksteady's Arkham games. Like that series, combat relies on precisely timing blocks, parries and dodges, but whereas that game generously provided big flashing lights above Gotham's criminal underbelly* Sifu is far less generous, denying you the signposts and forcing you watch for more subtle visual clues. 

It's initially difficult and frustrating, but stick with it and it's among the most satisfying combat I've played. There's nothing quite as thrilling as spotting an incoming strike and dishing out a perfect parry to one enemy while in the middle of a combo on another. 

The animation is fluid and the controls are responsive and intuitive, with the extensive motion capture flowing together beautifully, particularly when incorporating parries and the 'avoid' mechanic. 

You can block, parry and dodge but 'avoid' sees you plant both feet on the ground and dodge attacks from the waist, the timing is tricky but once you've got the rhythm down for all four defensive options the effect is astonishing. 

It all adds up to an incredibly cinematic experience and serves as a love letter to asian action cinema. In one sequence, in fact - a hallway fight switches to a side scroller, very obviously aping "Oldboy". The campaign for a 'Hammer DLC' starts here. 

As well as your mits, the levels are littered with bats, bricks, bottles, knives and all manner of things to ruin someone's day. XP gained allows you to unlock new combos, powerful "Focus" attacks and more moves to better utilise the items lying around. 

I will never get tired of catching a bottle and immediately launching it back at someone's bonce. Or kicking a chair across a room. Or kicking someone over a balcony. Or just kicking someone. 

The bosses that cap each level are visually distinct but mechanically they are (sadly) the most by the numbers part of the game. Each of the fights have two stages and each boss follows a rigid series of patterns, it takes a few goes but once you spot the patterns the fights are straightforward and lack the challenge of the brawls in the levels. This isn't so much of a problem the first few goes but can feel more and more anticlimactic the more you replay. 

 

You'll be replaying a lot.

 

Sifu's gimmick beyond its kicking and punching is its nameless protagonist's talisman. In the story it protects you from death, in practice, it will revive you but each revive ages your character. 

As you age your strength increases while your health decreases and when you reach age 75 it's lights out. So you may scrape through The Club but you'll start The Museum as a seventy year old man. 

Yes you'll look like an absolute badass but you'll get immediately flattened. This is where this relatively short game gets it replayability. Your goal is to finish each level as young as possible to give you the best possible chance in the next, requiring you to repeat levels to remain as spry as you can. 

This would be tedious if the levels weren't so enjoyable and brilliantly designed. They are linear, but with enough deviations to allow exploration. In fact, key cards and pass codes found in later levels open doors in previous levels allowing you to progress through them quicker in replays. 

The levels and their inhabitants have their own character and feel. Dialogue options let you engage with the NPCs. It's very limited (this isn't Mass Effect) but there is enough to let you inject your own bit of character into your playthrough. You can offer a group of ne'er do wells a chance to back down or you can just yell "Fight Me!" at everyone who looks at you.

I can't stop playing this game and despite its brevity it boasts tons of hidden surprises it doesn't tell you. I thought I had had my fill until I read that you can taunt enemies before engaging them, this adds a 5x multiplier to your combo score, but I couldn't care less about that, I just like getting them all riled up before I kick them out of their shoes. 

Sifu is a beautifully polished action game that demands but rewards investing your time and patience. That one couple with the sticks will have you turning the air blue... until you perfectly dodge his strike, parry hers, and show them who's in charge.

 

Now if you'll excuse I haven't played Sifu in about two hours and fancy a fix. 

 

*Arkham's new game plus removes the indicators. If you haven't already, give it a go, it completely changes the game.

Guest Review By Mike (Britt's Mate)