The goal: Fill up an enemy’s gauge, and prevent yours from filling. In the game, both the hero and enemies have a “structure gauge” above them. The Sifu demonstration we got was an eyes-on, recorded playthrough only, but it was adequate enough to show the flow of combat and the system of unlockable combat skills supporting it. While Sifu can be completed any number of ways, one imagines the replayability comes in finishing it all as a young woman or man, or perhaps deliberately tackling it as a wizened old master with no room for error. He assured us that levels would be appropriately checkpointed, and that by starting over, players could either repeat the level at where they aged out, or go back to a prior level if that one had taken too many years off their life. “The object is getting to your vengeance before you’re too old and have to start over,” Garczynski said. But I found it a unique way to limit the player and increase the difficulty beyond simply giving them a finite number of tries. This aging is not infinite - age enough, and the character will die, forcing a restart. This reflects the character’s progressive knowledge of kung fu - “sifu,” after all, means master (as in a skilled person). You’ll see this in the character’s appearance.Īs they age, the player becomes more vulnerable to enemy damage, but more precise and effective in their own strikes, Garczynski said.
Should the protagonist fall to his enemies, they’ll be reincarnated on the spot - continuing the fight, not doing it over, even - but it will take a few years off their life.
KUNG FU WORLD ONLINE GAME WINDOWS
Sifu, on deck for a February launch on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC, presents these questions in a novel way: by aging the player. “How much are you willing to give up, of your life, for your vengeance?” “Is one life enough to know kung fu?” Sloclap’s Felix Garczynski asked during a press demonstration a week ago.
Sifu, as a piece of martial arts pop culture, could be something a lot deeper than the classics that inspired the game’s developers. They’re the kind of big, philosophical questions that martial arts movies aspire to sincerely present, but rarely answer. What is most intriguing to me about Sifu, from Absolver developer Sloclap, is the questions it will ask of the player and of the character they inhabit. If the hero knocks out a foe partway through her (or his) combo, they’ll simply continue the next two or three motions on the next stooge nearby, before backflipping over a table or scrambling up a wall to higher ground. The blocks, strikes, parries, and throws all look choreographed, with no wasted motion, no spammed punches winging at the air.
The action in Sifu is a glorious homage to the best of kung fu filmmaking.
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