A little over a year ago, Sifu saw the light of day – beat ’em up with a third-person view. During all this time, many have sung the praises of the game, and now there is a reason to remember it. First, Sifu became available on Steam – the game was previously exclusive to the Epic Games Store. Secondly, a lot of cool content has been added to it, for which fans of the project should definitely re-download scuffle.
Everyone will get
The main innovation of the patch (yes, this is not DLC) is the Arena mode. It exists separately from the main story and starts after the tutorial – you don’t need to get to the end of the story. There are 45 tests in total, divided into nine chapters. Each chapter contains five tasks performed on one map.
The authors of Sifu did not just send the player to locations and bombard them with enemies. There are five types of tests with different conditions. In Survival, for example, you need to stay as young as possible – if you forgot, in case of death, the character grows old and resurrects in the same place. There is an “Efficiency” challenge familiar to those who have played the story – you need to score as many points as possible without allowing enemies to reset your combo.
The map does not change structurally in the course of the chapter, but it changes externally – this dance floor, for example, is not always so decorated.
But the most interesting mode, as it seemed to me, was “Capture”. First you have to run to the first highlighted area. There you capture territory, but as soon as at least one enemy sets foot on it, the process will slow down. And if he also hits you, then the capture will stop for a while. In this challenge, it is important not only to quickly deal with opponents, but also to save precious seconds while running from one zone to another – I think over time players will find the perfect routes.
Regardless of what task is at the next level, you need to use the entire arsenal. Grab your weapons, including bottles and sticks, before someone else picks them up. Dodge blows and parry attacks – if the plot is impossible to complete without this, then Arenas even more so. Take a look at the menu or training mode and remember which buttons do what and which combinations are most effective. I went through the original for “platinum”, but here it is much more difficult to achieve good results – I have already forgotten everything, and the levels here are tighter.
There were no scenes like this in the original!
Three medals can be earned on each level. If this is a capture mission, then you need to do everything as soon as possible. If you want to age less often, then the older you are, the worse the result. Almost no concessions are given even at the first levels – it is advisable not to die almost, to miss a minimum of blows and not to waste time.
Some conditions seemed too harsh to me – there are tests in which I have not yet earned a single medal. Fortunately, in order to open the next pack of tests, it is enough to earn only five medals, and there are a maximum of 15 in each chapter. But even this is difficult if you do not remember the combinations of blows well and do not immediately enter the same rhythm.
Fights with the rules
In five modes, the variety of “Arenas” does not end there – there are also modifiers at each level. Somewhere you are not allowed to take weapons, but in the hands of opponents it becomes twice as strong. Somewhere health is not restored after eliminating enemies. Somewhere you are handed an unbreakable mop or pipe from the very beginning. One of the modifiers gives enemies infinite health – they cannot be defeated with simple blows, they must be stunned and finished off. It happens the other way around – you can’t stun opponents, so you just have to bludgeon.
With such rules, tests often force you to change your usual tactics, and at the same time re-memorize enemy combos. Already at the third level, opponents completely ignore your block – you can either reflect attacks or dodge. Frail fighters who fall from a couple of blows are easy to defeat even with this condition, but strong and hardy ones … But if you remember their series of blows, it will be very useful in the following arenas. Or take a modifier with which enemies are invulnerable until they take damage from the environment – thanks to him you understand how useful it is to push enemies to the wall.
Before the start of the test, they write for what results they give medals.
The main advantage of the “Arena” is that it is an opportunity to spend several minutes in Sifu when you want to quickly fight with someone and go on business. If earlier you had to launch a story campaign in which you won’t even have time to reach the end of the level, then here the tests last from five to ten minutes. They are not easy, and those who want to win all the medals will spend many hours here. The only thing missing is a mode with random generation of tasks and modifiers, although it would certainly not be as good as manually created challenges. And the content updates will not end there – during the year, the authors will add six more chapters.
I wonder if there will be new movie references in the upcoming chapters. Almost at the very beginning of the campaign, there is a scene similar to the fragment from the movie “Oldboy”, where the character fights in the hallway. In the new mode, the developers decided to add more of these homages – here is a costume in the spirit of “Kill Bill”, and the arena inspired by the “Matrix” with the same enemies in glasses and ties (and with time dilation, of course), and in the first test the character wears the same jacket, that the hero of “Drive”, only instead of a scorpion he has a panther on his back.
May he not die at the end of Sifu!
With the patch, the authors also rebalanced some techniques, and this change also applies to the story mode. The most important change is that from now on, all weapon attacks that are activated when the concentration bar is filled consume only one cell of it. The high cost of these attacks confused me even during the first playthrough – it seemed pointless to spend almost all of my concentration on them when a regular trip was cheaper and just as effective.
Techniques that few people used became stronger. Chase attacks are no longer blocked, and the enemy’s stun lasts longer. During the reverse throw, the hero is now invulnerable until the animation ends, and intercepting the hook takes away more stamina from the enemy. Bladed weapons have also been improved – not only does it deal more damage when parried, but it also slightly injures the enemy that placed the block.
With every update, Sifu gets better and better. First, difficulty levels were added to it – both easy, making the game accessible to a larger audience, and hardcore. Then there were in-game “achievements” that opened access to cheat codes. And now, for those who have studied the original inside and out, they have brought even more entertainment – and even for free. The “arenas” turned out to be excellent – due to the fact that they differ greatly in conditions and modifiers, I want to become a virtual master of kung fu again and earn medals by setting records.
