MARTIAL ART
Game Sifu
Developer/publisher Sloclap
Format PC, PS4, PS5
Release February 22
On our many studio visits over the years, we’ve put difficult questions to a wide range of people, including some of the industry’s most notoriously challenging interviewees. But this, surely, is a first: a query that prompts the recipient to get up from their seat and grab a sword. Then again, how many studios can boast their own in-house master of kung fu? The fact that Sloclap can – well, it explains a lot about why Sifu so violently grabbed our attention in its State Of Play debut back in February. But let’s deal with the armed martial artist first.
The man wielding the sword – a wooden training one, thankfully – is Benjamin Colussi. As well as running a kung fu school here in Paris, he acts as fight choreographer for Sifu, providing the basic moves for its combat and consulting on everything from costuming to feng shui. When Colussi grabs the weapon from a corner of the conference room where we’re sitting, it’s not in anger. He’s demonstrating one of his contributions to the game, with the sword acting as a stand-in for a baseball bat. “They said to me, ‘OK, today we will design movement for the bat’,” he recalls. “So they gave me the bat, expecting me to take it like this.” He holds it in the traditional batting-cage pose. “And I said, ‘Well, all the NPCs will take the bat like this, but the main character? He is a kung fu master.’”
Colussi shifts his grip to show how a master does it, holding the weapon tight against the back of his arm, its tip pressed to his shoulder so we can practically feel the coiled kinetic energy. It’s a pose we already know well, having adopted it many times during our demo of Sifu. This all gives us the strange impression that if we pushed Triangle, we know exactly what Colussi would do next. It wouldn’t be pretty.
’s combat is every bit as stylish and hands, not yet – a couple of hours with the game isn’t nearly enough to grasp the full depth of its systems, which are abyssal. But eventually we pass the controller to a master – combat designer – and watch the game as it is meant to be played. Devastating flurries of blows are chained together seamlessly, incoming blows ducked and deflected as Caselli elegantly juggles a crowd of opponents. Bottles are grabbed and smashed into faces. Skulls are slammed hard against surfaces, with a sense of impact that makes us wince. There’s even the occasional gouging of an eye.
