Who hasn’t watched a martial arts movie at some point and wished you could steal some of their most impressive moves? While trying to replicate Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the backyard is a great way to get a broken rib, video games offer a path to kung fu perfection that might be a little less satisfying, but won’t require a 911 call. With 2022’s Sifu now on Xbox Game Pass, it’s easier than ever to live out your martial arts dreams from the safety of your couch.
The first thing you need to know about Sifu is that it’s hard. Really hard. While some games are content to boil down hand-to-hand combat to just a few simple button presses, Sifu takes a more simulationist approach, demanding technical perfection from players who want to show off their skills.
Sifu takes a mostly grounded approach, taking place in a fictional but believable city and sticking to good old punches and punches (plus a variety of throws and weapon attacks) rather than any magical abilities. That’s not the case for its minimalist story, though. You play as the student of a martial arts school whose students were slaughtered by a rival when you were a child. Fortunately, you happen to be in possession of a mystical amulet that brings you back to life every time, which is honestly a great thing to have on hand if you ever want to exact revenge against an evil martial arts master.
The catch is that the amulet isn’t actually taking your character back in time, but reviving them after their defeat. That means time is still passing, and each time they fall over the course of the game, they’ll age a few years before they’re able to bounce back for another attempt. In mechanical terms, getting older increases the character’s attack power, but reduces their maximum health, turning them into a deadlier but more fragile fighter as time goes on.
It’s a cool concept, but one that can make the game a bit frustrating in practice. Did I mention that Sifu is hard? That’s because it uses an incredibly complex combat system that takes some real work to master, or even get decent at. The control scheme itself won’t tie your fingers into knots, consisting mainly of light and heavy attack buttons plus a button to dodge and block. What makes it so difficult is that your enemies have no mercy.
Walking into a fight in Sifu often means being surrounded by opponents with different weapons, and they’re not particularly interested in fighting fair. It doesn’t take too many hits to put you on your back in the first place, and your foes absolutely take advantage of their numbers. If you’re surrounded, there’s almost no chance of getting out of the encounter alive, so keeping on the move, staggering enemies, and mastering your evasive skills are a necessity if you want to make any progress.
Losing a fight doesn’t just mean starting the level over. It means coming back as an older version yourself, a little closer to a final game over once you hit age 70. That means that if you beat a level but get knocked out too many times in the process, it often makes sense to just start over and try to ace it in fewer tries.
That all makes Sifu definitively not a game for everyone. But if it’s for you, there’s basically nothing else out there like it. The pain of defeat is real in Sifu, but the thrill of victory can’t be overstated. After banging your head against a wall (or more likely, having enemies bang your head against a wall) over and over to finish a level, actually getting the win feels incredible.
With Sifu now available for free to Xbox Game Pass subscribers, you have nothing to lose from trying it but your pride. Climbing the learning curve of Sifu is a monumental challenge, but if you make it to the top, you’ll feel like the martial arts master you’re probably never going to be in real life (sorry).
