Sifu

It strives to replicate the feeling of mastering an actual martial art, and that means doing it repeatedly

Stop. Breathe. Try again. For all the gorgeously choreographed punches and kicks and offered by Sifu, its most defining action might be this: putting the controller down for the duration of one long exhale and repeating a mantra. It’s a ritual of acceptance and preparation that takes a while to settle into. The initial urge is to mash the attack buttons, which rewards you with fight animations as carefully crafted as lines of poetry. Until, inevitably, a sweeping leg or a length of pipe to the skull puts a hard caesura in your flow. Your warrior drops, and what seemed moments before like an appreciative audience takes the opportunity to put the boot in. And just like that – you’re dead.

At this point, you’re given the chance to rise from the grave with a single input, the only cost a small chunk of your fighter’s lifespan: a little grey up top, a few more lines on the skin. But in truth, you’re best taking that moment of quiet, considering your options. How many combatants were there? Which way should you strike first? Are you best off packing it all in and starting over?

The latter question requires an understanding of Sifu’s peculiar configuration. Your character is allotted the traditional threescore and ten years, effectively an old-school lives system with two notable twists. Your age gets saved whenever you complete a stage, a checkpoint from which to begin the next. Also frozen in time at this point is the death counter, which ticks up when you’re knocked down: the first time you lose one year, the next two, then three, until you defeat an elite combatant, which reduces the counter by one.