Sifu

2022-02-08

Sifu seems like it’d be an incredible game, and it is, but it suffers from some very frustrating bugs - or maybe they’re features.

Before buying the game, I read along with Polygon’s review, and didn’t really care. The writer seemed to not understand how these kinds of games are played, the systems of unlocks or ages seemed like the sort of thing that’s unusual, but not so insurmountable to be called "opaque". Worse, he seemed to not realize he could in fact skip cutscenes. Resolving myself that this was just another games journalist who spent 70% of his review either describing the game in a way that repeats what everyone already knew, or focusing on details that he struggled with that nobody else will find difficult.

Bad Telegraphs

The game’s frustration lies not with the UI or progression, that’s pretty straightforward stuff. The frustration lies in its telegraphs and lack of feedback that informs you what will happen when/if you make different moves.

For instance, there’s no feedback that you can vault an obstacle. Several times I’d be at the "wrong" corner of a table or bench and frantically mash the vault button while an enemy slowly spun up a killing blow. A few inches to the left and my dude would gracefully roll over the corner, a few inches to the right and he’d sit there helplessly.

Another example is that there’s no cue when your "structure" is nearing breaking point. Normally you’d expect to hear audio cues on-hit that tell you, perhaps with increasing pitch, how far away from breaking you are. This doesn’t have that. You have to take your eyes off the action and look at the bar, which does try to color code itself. But i never found myself trying to scan a UI, because there really aren’t any other UI elements to care about. On the topic of structure, the game implies that when it breaks you’ll be staggered - but in my experience you’re usually instantly killed instead. Enemies often do damage right through the last bar of structure.

But the biggest killer i had was not being clear on when something was going to work. Dodging (R2) tends to be a ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ activity (especially if you try it on sumos or the first boss). You can repeat the same dodge at the same time with the same visual cues and not know if it’ll work. The same is sadly true of parrying - i gave up trying to time parries, because timing them perfectly (hitting the button somewhere like 50ms before the strike) doesn’t work at all. It seems to want you to be in the range of like 150ms early, but if you do it too early, it won’t help you. That’s just not worth the gamble. The same goes for avoids - you can use the same avoid direction with the same attack and sometimes it’ll flash, indicating it worked, but often the hit just "misses". Sometimes it doesn’t miss and it turns into a block - damaging your structure. Sometimes an enemy attack breaks your block without having the telltale yellow tiger flames on their limb when they do it - you just never know if something will work or not.

Though, even if the game hasn’t tricked you out of your defensive options yet, the offensive flow isn’t great either. Don’t get me wrong, you can often cancel into takedowns or throws, which is excellent. But anything requiring fighting-game combo inputs (the foot sweep, push, or front kick) seems to only work if you use it from a completely idle position. Good luck chaining a front kick into a foot sweep, or a light attack into a push. It’ll work sometimes!

This is of course, to say nothing of how it’s unclear when an enemy is stagger-immune. You effectively can’t whiff-punish any enemy, because they soak the attack and seemingly take no damage. If they wind up an attack that takes a full second, and you get two heavy hits in that stagger even blocking enemies, sometimes that isn’t enough. Sometimes! But other times it works. Or if an enemy whiffs and starts to retract, you’d think that’s a clear telegraph to go in and deal damage. But nope, oftentimes they’ll just immediately start blocking.

You can understand how this feels to play. You’re not clear on if something worked, how close you are to getting pulverized, or how you should proceed. I know it’s not actually random, but when you’re doing the same thing each time, and it sometimes works with no clear commonality, it sure feels random. Often I’d get killed and throw up my hands going "what does it want me to do?" I’d tried every defensive and offensive option. An enemy might kill you through a block when you’re full health, or he might kill you through a dodge despite his back being towards you.

Fights

Ironically, I found the bosses to be easier than the minibosses. Bosses have phase structures and clear telegraphs for the most part - even if the game doesn’t always work, you can at least see something coming and get used to the rote memorization of what attacks it will let you try (even if they don’t count) without being punished.

Minibosses, on the other hand, tend to be extremely meaty and obey none of the memorization rules. For example, the muay thai boxer ("flame") on level 2 appears to have 100% block rate. It doesn’t matter if you punish what looks like a whiff, if you knock him down, if you dodge, avoid, parry (hah good luck), or whatever - he never lets you deal damage directly. This might be a cool mechanic, but his gigantic health pool means you’re going to spend 15 minutes (the length of the entire first level) doing chip damage until he lets you kill him. Great.

The same is usually true of larger enemies, like sumos. Sometimes a single hit lets you combo into a takedown, which is a pleasant surprise. But other times they ignore all attacks and do an inescapable overhead grab. You might scoff, of course it’s escapable, haven’t you tried X? Well, sure, and it sometimes works. Avoids sometimes work (it’s what the game tries to tell you to do) - but again, only sometimes. Same with dodges. You can be completely to the side of the attack and it’ll still hit you and oneshot you.

Learn to play

Every game, of course, has an internal logic. If you play it long enough, you’ll probably develop a flowchart of what is least likely to get you killed. A common apology for bad games is "just get good at it, it’s supposed to be hard." Sure, hard games are fine. But there’s a clear design line that I draw - when I use the right input at the right time, the game should not produce the wrong result. Don’t punish the player when they anticipated something and did the correct action. Sifu violates this constantly, and is what makes it frustrating.

There are arguments that say "well, if it didnt work, it was the wrong action!" But this is precisely the problem - if you do a perfect block and the game doesnt acknowledge it, you’re not to blame. If you had no reason to believe an enemy could oneshot you through your block with no telegraph, you’re not to blame.

It’s possible to learn every glitch of a game, but that doesn’t make the design good.

Fixes

There’s a fine balance here, where too much telegraphing leads to a "console game" sort of feel, where bright colors and audio cues hold your hand through the exact sequence you should do. The blinking button prompt over enemy heads from Arkham comes to mind, telling you that you need only hit that button to save yourself. That’s not what I want, i prefer to look in the game world for prompts.

What I’d like to see is gradual and consistent animation telegraphs. Introduce animations that defeat a certain defense you have, over time. Don’t rush to throw in a mixture of different enemies that seem to follow different rules. You’ve got like five levels, space it out. Along with introducing audio cues for things like structure damage, and hopefully cleaning up the frame times for things like parries and avoids. If not that, then at least show a visual cue for the times in which you can avoid or parry successfully for different enemies (it seems to vary per enemy per attack?).

It’s not insurmountable.