Among these moves is the ability to snatch throwing knives out of the air, which proves helpful indeed in the second phase of the artist fight. You can push on regardless, trying for a perfect run, but the safer approach is to replay previous levels with fewer KOs, stealing back a fistful of hourglass sand from the reaper, while amassing the XP for new moves - the game's domineering but enjoyable core loop. Take a fall in your seventies and you'll have to start the level over. Sifu's pendant won't revive you forever: as you age, its component discs shatter, till all you're left with is scarlet thread. I am probably too old to survive her hospitality. Somewhere in this building lurks my next target, an equally venerable executive who wields a glowing flail. Ahead lies the Tower, its dusky golden lobbies and eerie foundations roamed by bodyguards who generally parry your second punch and tackle you for good measure. I am more vicious for my rapidly advancing age, but also frailer, my health bar shortening even as the years have somehow polished and strengthened my attacks.

Watch on YouTube A look at the process of death and aging in Sifu. Sifu would be a much easier game if the protagonist would just sit on downed foes and clobber them indefinitely, but then again, this is a story about mastering your brutal urges, with every loss of self-control measured in decades. before helping her gallantly to her feet.

But eventually, I learned to dodge and parry well enough to fit in a few combos of my own - a steadying palm to the solar plexus, then a cathartic shoulder barge and a running ankle-sweep, flooring my willowy adversary and allowing me to land a couple more punches. I couldn't just block her blades with my forearms, and struggled to time her whirling, leisurely strikes.

Availability: Out 8th February on PS4, PS5, and PC.

In this case, the culprit was the Museum's artist-in-residence - one of five assassins who murder your character's father and destroy his Pak Mei Kung Fu school in the prologue, sparking a quest for payback that may last a single day or a lifetime, depending on your dexterity. This is Sifu, a China-set martial arts revenge fable from French developer Sloclap, in which every 'death' shaves another few years off your life, care of an enchanted pendant. I was a hearty 40-year-old when I walked into the Museum a spry 68 when I walked out. An elegant martial arts meditation on temporality and self-possession, set in a loving but touristy idea of China.

Sifu steam