Finally, a proper Kung fu game! | SIFU: Short Review
SIFU (Nintendo Switch) - Short Review
If you’re looking for a martial arts game that will remind you of the classic kung-fu movies you loved as a kid (maybe until now), SIFU has got it for you. Finally, It is now released for the Nintendo Switch.
Imagine if beat’ em up and Rogue-like had a baby named Bruce Lee. This is basically SIFU in a nutshell. It has a rather simple but effective revenge story: you play as a young man trying to take down the people that wronged you, maybe growing old along the way.
The gameplay setup is pretty straightforward, just beat up the bad guys to progress in a level. As for the combat, SIFU is intensely kinetic; every successful punch, kick, parry, dodge, or takedown, either to you or to the enemy can be felt and has heavy weight to it. The combat system is fun to play and will continuously engage you throughout your time with it.
The pacing of the levels so far are well designed and respects your time. You almost never run out of enemies to beat up. Aside from the usual cannon fodder there are also “brutes” that can pose an additional challenge, culminating in unique 1v1 boss fights in the end.
Performance wise, It ran a stable 30fps on Switch’s hardware, both in handheld and docked modes. With minor dips to low 20s during some intensive scenes. With SIFU’s simplistic art style, one might expect it will run a little bit better, perhaps even run at 60fps, but the way the game is built just seems to require a lot of horsepower. Still, it is even more impressive that they managed a port of this caliber.
I have to say, SIFU is perfect for the Switch’s use case: handheld, portable. It doesn’t have much need for the right analog stick. It only needs the face and shoulder buttons to effectively function, much like other non-shooter games. The bite-sized and rogue-lite nature of SIFU makes it an ideal game to be played on the go.
Full in-depth review will be posted soon here on Taptap! Stay tuned!
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