Back in 2022, Sifu made waves for having the grit and style of a confident kung-fu revenge film. Starring a pupil who sees his master get killed by a vengeful former student called Yang, the story picks back up years after the inciting incident, as the former fights his way through the criminal underworld of their city to get revenge. Along the way, they challenge Yang’s personal vanguard, all assailants who were there the fateful night of the raid, master the art of kung fu, and engage in fights ripped right out of some of the most impactful action movies ever. Now, you can get in on that action by picking up Sifu on Game Pass.
Xbox’s leading subscription service nets you access to hundreds of rotating titles, even if it is now confusingly tiered as of a recent change. For the most part though, the service gets you games both big and small, like the Xbox exclusive Halo: The Master Chief Collection or cool third-party titles like Neon White and Sifu.
Sifu is non-stop action, both to its detriment and benefit. It rarely eases up on the gas as you pummel your way through levels, mixing up light and heavy attacks, stringing together satisfying combos, and taking down opponents with tightly executed finishers. It means there is little else to the game that’s of any real consequence or import, but Sifu at the very least hones in on a thing and does a pretty great job of it. However, Sifu’s big twist is that it expects you to go down fighting, no matter how many techniques you unlock. When you inevitably die in combat, a magical relic that the player character has held onto for years brings you back to life, except it also progresses your life by a number of years equal to your defeats.
Beginning at 20, this means that after your first death, you will age up to 21. There’s no significant difference in the two ages, but failing to beat the person who felled you with a takedown—a specific prompt must be hit to trigger these flashy finishers—will cause the death counter to stick around and double. The next death will push you to 23, and then 26, and then 30 and so on. The years start adding up if you aren’t careful, and eventually they start catching up with you. Growing older makes your character physically stronger, but it also causes their HP to diminish greatly, which can lead to exceptionally stressful situations near the end of a run.
That is Sifu’s other twist, actually. What appears at first blush to be a linear beat ‘em up starts to resemble a run-based roguelite as you progress. In order to beat the game, you must fight your way through Yang’s most elite foot soldiers, who each display some sort of mastery over one of the primordial elements (fire, water, earth, air) and push the player in increasingly arduous gauntlets. To have an easier time, you must spend XP purchasing various skills and stats, and then invest in them further to retain them across runs. As you progress through the levels, you will also pick up clues and key items that’ll streamline missions, such as finding keys in one stage that unlock a shortcut elsewhere and vice versa. You will try most of these fights again and again as Sifu whips you into shape—by the time you actually beat the final boss of the game, you will be able to move through its levels like a leaf dancing on the wind, and cut down enemies with the precision and finesse of a surgeon.
Since Sifu’s initial release a few years ago, developer Sloclap has added free content to the game. Some of it is in the form of cosmetics, finally giving the player character a sense of fashion, but other parts of it add whole new ways to play, like a new Arenas mode. In Arenas, you can take on optional challenges that escalate in difficulty. For example, the very first one asks you to survive four waves of enemies while dying as little as possible. When I played (once again beginning at age 20), I managed to eke out a win while only getting up to 23, awarding me full stars for my completion of the challenge, and the demands of this gauntlet ramp up as you might expect. The mode, by and large, is designed for the hardcore player who really wants more out of Sifu than the otherwise tight-and-sparse story, and it sure does seem to add quite a bit of replayability to the mix.
Altogether, Sifu’s a pretty decent grab if you have Game Pass. Lots of games stretch on forever, but this one doesn’t. It might take you a while to fully gel with its mechanics, but soon enough it becomes second nature, and you’ll send enemies flying. Sifu lifts from a lot of great films for its set pieces, such as John Wick and Oldboy, and it is fun to fit yourself into those specific fantasies, as well as just kick ass left and right. It’s razor-sharp in its presentation and boasts one of the most fully featured melee combat systems I’ve ever seen. If you’ve got Game Pass and want one of the best action games of the last few years, it’s hard to go wrong picking this up.
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