Gave it a bit of a go last night. I did enjoy it but I think this is very laser focused on a small subset of fighting game aliens. I think it’s absolutely going to fuel the accessibility debate, and tbh I’m genuinely torn where I stand on that.
Even as someone who’s ability to play these games is fading fast ( I can’t even really hold a pen for more than a few minutes these days ) I can see that the game is purely about the challenge and I don’t think we should remove challenge from the world just because I, for example, have limiting factors.
I struggle with this subject a lot. I see both sides and can’t really see a clear and fair solution for games where the challenge itself is 99% of the game.
But then I think of racing games with tweakable AI as well. Although even there the sim forums are filled with people humblebragging about how high their difficulty is set and I wonder if we fetishise difficulty too much.
The previous game, Absolver, got around this by having some interesting online mechanics where the difficulty debate is perhaps moot. And maybe that’s where the biggest challenge should move to in gaming for those that really want it. Although even that, I think, is a bit problematic.
OTOH though, there were choices made here that could easily mitigate a lot of frustration, had they been a little less uncompromising. Unblockable moves aren’t telegraphed at all for example, and I’d be willing to wager that the timing and reflexes required to dodge them is not anywhere close to a mean average reflex time for most gamers.
The ageing mechanic is brilliant but at the same time they’ve chosen to use it to force you to replay levels again and again. You need to enter the next level you unlock at as young an age as possible and there’s no real way to reset your age.
You can lower your death clock by beating certain enemies. It would be nice if they made a concession to frustration and rewarded beating a boss with a reduction in your age. But no. It does nothing but unlock the next bit.
I think the best “difficult “ games have a sense that you know what to do next time, if you die or fail or whatever. Souls does that. Returnal, which was ferociously tough imo, did it too (though I did come to agree that they should have added the ability to save a checkpoint much earlier than they did). I finished it after an outrageous number of hours, because I always knew that if I kept trying, I could get it right. The frustration was at me, not the game. With Sifu, I’m not so sure.
This is a game for a select group of people imo. I think five to ten years ago, I’d have been in that group for sure.
This feels like the last Queens of The Stone Age gig (the last gig full stop actually) I ever went to. Where suddenly I felt too old, I didn’t want to dive into the crowd, or push to the front. I just stayed at the back by the bar and appreciated it from afar. And then decided to never go to another gig again. They were really tight by the way. Amazing.
This is the gaming version of that experience for me.
I’ll maybe persevere, but not right now. With OlliOlli tomorrow and Dying Light 2 (which I’m really enjoying) and then Elden Ring soon, I don’t think my frustration tanks have enough space in them for this as well.