A kick in time saves nine.
I was a hearty 40-year-old when I walked into the Museum; a spry 68 when I walked out.
No, I am not Dorian Gray.
Somewhere in this building lurks my next target, an equally venerable executive who wields a glowing flail.
I am probably too old to survive her hospitality.
Take a fall in your seventies and you’ll have to start the level over.
After repeating the first three levels, I walk out of the Museum a trifling 39.
Now to bring justice to the occupant of that Tower.
You begin each chapter at the age you finished the previous one.
This presented a problem for me at first, because I am a gigantic coward with middling reaction speeds.
You will usually be outnumbered, and most of your named targets have the edge on you at range.
Boss number four, especially, can beat you like a carpet while practically standing in a different room.
Just watch out for the enemies who can catch.
The game’s guard or Structure mechanic recallsSekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Adversaries near death can be polished off with a two-button cinematic finisher.
In the moment, the consequences are few.
But you do have to worry about your diminishing capacity to form synaptic connections.
Martial applications aside, the spectacle of your hair turning white gives rise to some predictable dread.
Making it all the way through without crossing that boundary is my own personal Platinum.
Sifu offers the promise of reconciliation, albeit at the end of a tunnel full of pipe-waving goons.
You will always have to fight, but you don’t necessarily have to kill.
Action games like this can be defined as an exercise in vicariously regaining that lost time through manual skill.
As in many action games, some ripostes literally alter the passage of time within the simulation.
To waddle in unscientifically throwing elbows is to collapse the present moment to a juddering circle of panic.
Mastering Pak Mei in Sifu is as much about resynchronising these disordered spaces as it is reorganising faces.
These misgivings about its representational politics notwithstanding, Sifu is a brilliant, eccentric fighting game.
It expects close attention and patience, and rewards you with scuffles of incredible intensity.
It could take itself a bit less seriously.
