Sifu is as close as it gets to the perfect conversion of a kung-fu movie into a video game. The quintessential amalgamation of classic martial arts cinema themes, callbacks, and fresh game mechanics. An excellent beat ‘em up with unparalleled polish, every aspect of the game is so finely composed. You can feel the intention, focus and passion that went into its development. The artistic direction is beautiful, with an excellent aesthetic making every set piece look like a painting. It’s a great example of stylized graphics providing a timeless look, and lessening the burden on hardware by not striving for needless realism.

Deciding against realism in favor of style does not mean the game’s environments lack detail. Every level is packed with well-thought environments, and a very enjoyable amount of clutter for the area. Better yet, Sifu takes its beautiful style and creates some amazing set-pieces. The levels are such a treat to fight through. Without spoiling much, each level is a boss’s hideout, and you’re on a path of revenge, punching and kicking your way through waves of their goons. The hideouts very much reflect the personality of the boss and are relevant to their occupation. There’s a lot of subtle environmental storytelling in Sifu (as well as easter eggs hidden throughout the levels that expose more). This would be enough to impress, but every level has a distinct soundtrack that fits the theme and feeling, creating some very powerful atmospheres. The environments paired with this banger soundtrack really elevate the experience and make it feel truly cinematic.

The animation is so fluid that I find it jarring going back to most games, even AAA titles. A lot of games feel very stiff in comparison. This fluid and dynamic animation seamlessly transitions your attacks. This is an impressive feat, as though Sifu doesn’t have an unbearable amount of possible attacks, there is a wide variety of basic moves creating a lot of potential combos, and the animation system blends every single one perfectly into the next. It even accounts for the same moves done in different environments, which can determine how the finishing blow is dealt. This isn’t unique to Sifu, but it’s rare, and Sifu does it well.

Sifu has a unique resurrection mechanic that is built into its story. Upon death, you can resurrect at the cost of a few years of your life. You age every time you fail until you reach any age above 70, at which point you’ll be on your last life. If you die for good, you start over. This is a key part of Sifu’s difficulty, forcing the player to learn and improve, coming out of levels younger and younger, perfecting the art of each level and obstacles to be overcome. Thankfully, the youngest age you complete a level at will always be saved for convenience. If you manage not to die for two levels for example, you can always just start from the latter level for your next attempt. Though the story is nothing revolutionary, it serves as an excellent canvas for your classic tale of revenge often told in kung-fu classics, helping bring those themes to life. It's an elegantly told story. Everything feels intentional and you can tell the developers communicated greatly, ensuring every aspect of the game is cohesive. The outcome of your journey can change in a way that is very heartfelt, depending on some of your choices. These choices aren’t made obvious to the player, and I won’t delve into them, but you can technically get a different ending and we’ll leave it at that.

There’s a lot of incentive to replay the game’s main story, whether it be to flex your skill and come out unscathed, never aging, as you flawlessly master every encounter, or to discover the secrets in each level that sometimes unlock items used to access areas in previous levels. The game is designed with the intention of you replaying it a lot, but not through irritating grindy mechanics, rather the natural incentive to improve and uncover more of the story for those curious. Additionally, there’s an entire separate mode in the game called Arenas, with a massive amount of new levels and challenges to overcome, providing even more replay value and a lot of extra quality content. I could easily see some players not even bothering with the main story, and just having fun playing through one-off scenarios in Arenas, though I’d highly recommend not even touching Arenas until you’ve beaten the main game.

So, you’ve got this $40 indie game with a level of polish and presentation unparalleled by most games, with fun beat-em up action, excellent enemy AI, a lot of replayability, and genuine challenge that you overcome as you ‘git gud’. This is one of the easiest recommendations I can ever make, as I really think anyone can enjoy this game if they have a little bit of patience for learning how to not suck at it. Nothing feels tedious either, a big part of whether I personally can stomach a game's difficulty and stay interested. No question in my mind if you’re a fan of martial arts cinema, it's essential you give this game a shot. Buy it. Sifu has soul, this is a game made with care, with intention, and we need more games like this.

Deriving most of it's inspiration from 90's shooters, ULTRAKILL is an exhilarating FPS with an excellent array of movement. Dashing, sliding, ground-pounding and wall jumping are all at your disposal in any given moment, allowing for much freedom in how you approach hoards of enemies, while you scale stages and obstacles. Combining the ample move-set with the classic variety of weapons that you unlock throughout the campaign, (which as of writing this review, is still in development) provides many interesting play styles and pure, fast action. Like in DOOM, you gain health from the blood of your enemies, however unlike DOOM, this is the only way you regain health in ULTRAKILL. Ensuring that an adept player is one that does not hesitate, ULTRAKILL is always keeping you in the action.

Building off it's solid gameplay, ULTRAKILL delivers excellent presentation with it's ost, ULTRAKILL: INFINITE HYPERDEATH. The ost is very complimentary to the action and tone. During the campaign, each new location has a theme and feeling it captures through stage design and soundtrack, helping immerse the player in every scenario. Music also appears to be responsive to the level of action, increasing with intensity to reflect the insanity you're faced with. ULTRAKILL also features an additional mode called The Cyber Grind, a classic score based mode where you slaughter hoards of enemies, seeing just how many rounds you can manage to surpass. The Cyber Grind is pure ADHD heaven, and if you enjoy it, you will waste a lot of time trying to beat your high score, or your friend's high scores. Though the graphics are simple, they are excellent, and their simplicity aids in allowing the game-play to be very smooth. Great care was brought to the textures, of which each new environment has it's own.

When it comes to difficulty, there are currently four degrees available, with Violent being the most challenging. For experienced FPS players who enjoy a good fight, I would recommend Violent. I can't elaborate too much on what varies from difficulty to difficulty, as I personally only played on Violent, and tried the standard difficulty mode briefly. The only major difference I could determine was that special/big enemies would become enraged more frequently. While enraged, big enemies have certain boosted attributes or reduced cool-downs, making them more lethal to the player. They also each have unique requirements to become enraged, that become evident after some game time.

The campaign has great level variety, never feeling stale. Though still in development, the campaign features unique stages, music, bosses, and events, that all make for a compelling mode that's granted replayability through it's rather in-depth scoring system. The player is scored on time, kills, and style. The first two are rather basic in concept, complete a stage quickly to score better in time, kill more or all enemies to score well in kills. It's the style rating that gets interesting. There's a variety of trick-shots and weapon combos that build up style score. There are eight degrees of style, ULTRAKILL being the highest. Maintaining this rating frequently during a level will grant you an S rank in style for that stage. This isn't a guide by any means, but learning to do the ricochet move reliably is a sure fire way to S rank most any level.

All in all, ULTRAKILL is a surprisingly cohesive, varied, and outright awesome single-player FPS game. Action packed destruction, that utilizes what it's borrowed from other FPS games in unique and engaging ways. Never overlook a game because it appears simple. ULTRAKILL is a well thought-out experience, with a lot of care given into it. This translates into a quality game that I think you should give a go at. The campaign may not be finished, but the game-play does not feel like it's missing something, and with endless the Cyber Grind mode, you'll have time to waste.