Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Now and again, I listen to Sam Harris’s podcasts. There are some observations to be made here. He has a relaxing voice made for advertising kitchens, garden furniture and your standard four door family hatchbacks. Often it strays into a show of intellectual vanity, especially with the geopolitical and psychoanalytical topics failing to accord with the pressing interests of most – to generalise, cost of living and paying your mortgage. Harris, to his credit, is always stoic and logical (even when acknowledging his visceral hatred of Trump), mix this with some odder episode topics and or interesting guests and true nuggets of wisdom can occur.

Recently the topic covered was the fantasy versus reality of self-defence that prevails in the culture, specifically the disparity between what learning a martial art is truly good for and how we imagine it should be utilised. While there’s an inherent appeal to being viewed as tough or feared (it’s a dog-eat-dog world after all), most of us never get into any sort of physical confrontation as an adult. Folk simply don’t want the hassle and normally fisticuffs are poorly choreographed, unglamourous affairs (see Irish gypsy fights). No matter how skilled you are, most swings miss. Fights are often fuelled by intoxication accompanied by some insurmountable complex or unfulfilled sexual impulse. For instance, Sigmond Freud believed all hooligans to be latent homosexuals. He likely said that in jest, but you get the point, unless cornered, no matter if you know you can “really handle yourself”, embracing risk to sort out some uppity, gobby wanker just isn’t worth it, no matter how much you feel they have it coming to them.

Because we’re no longer hunter gathers, evolution has forced most of us to fight against automation by being gathers of excel data, we’re liable to feel inadequate when faced with rare displays of physical prominence and dominance. Here I’ll paraphrase Helen Joyce from her excellent book Trans, who gets to the crux of this social insecurity succinctly:

Someone who rarely engages with nature or exerts themselves physically will be predisposed towards body denialism. And if you spend a lot of time gaming or watching movies you will have become accustomed to identifying with avatars.

So, how do we square that circle, when we’re bombarded with aspirational imagery of badass violent characters, yeah, even Steven Seagal, karate chopping their way through criminal underworlds, but have no opportunities in the real world to realise anything remotely like it. Aggression is mostly sublimated along mundane constraints, say sizing up your neighbours or random passers-by and thinking “I could take them”.

Which brings us to the awesome brawler game Sifu, which was released on PC in late March. It puts you in control of an expert Kung-Fu kid hell bent on revenge. Just as the Wu-Tang said they trained under the coolest martial arts figure ever, Bruce Lee, because the idea is as satisfying as the lyric, execute a successful leg sweep move in Sifu for the first time, replete with a close up fight porn cinematic, of a relentless rapid series of punches on your prone opponent, and even your soy-milk drinking Kumbaya chanting pacifist will get a euphoric tingle from it.

Sifu’s developers understand the appeal, because they’ve lifted from the coolest influences in gaming and popular culture; Bruce Lee, John Wick and in the case of gaming, Sekiro.

Applying the delicacy of Sekiro’s sword combat mechanics to hand-to-hand combat, where each movement is satisfyingly tactile, is an especially inspired choice. Just as any martial art is about patience and skill learned through failure and repetition, learning to time your parries, blocks, attacks and evasive manoeuvres, and unlocking skill moves, in perfect concert, is a necessity for success and makes it all the sweeter on achievement. And, as with Sekiro, defeating your opponent by breaking their posture bar before their health bar is a faithful barometer of your improvement.

The resurrection idea also comes from Sekiro, but the age counter on death is a delicious twist. Each death increases the death counter by one so each subsequent death ages you faster. Reach the end of level two as an old fogey (though I enjoyed my avatar having a luxurious waist length pleat and fuck-off Gandalf length beard), and you have less chance of succeeding in the next level as your age carries over to the start of the next level. Once you die beyond seventy, your death is permanent. This dynamic forces you to replay levels, in what is a short campaign, to seek refinement, even perfectionism. I didn’t move on to level three until I got through level two aged twenty-two (you start the game at twenty). Who wouldn’t want to beat any game without dying and or looking young and shredded as Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon?

There are other influences in the combat that increase its allure and addictiveness. The generic thugs crowd you to recreate Yakuza 0’s morish gang fights and the use of weapons and pacing, which switches from lulls to freneticism, is all very vintage Streets Of Rage, and better for it.

Boss fights are a steep learning curve. However, between the three difficulty levels (let it be said that hardest setting, appropriately named “Master”, is fucking hard) and level shortcuts, Sifu is more forgiving than a FromSoftware offering. The third level boss was a proper piss-boiler. It took me multiple tries to beat her, and this process would have been extremely aggravating if I had to complete the whole level (which takes roughly twenty minutes each time) for each opportunity as there are no save points. The level shortcuts (or passageways) which you unlock upon completion of defeating a mini-boss meant I could have seven or eight attempts an hour at the pretentious Tracey Emin knockoff blade wielding wench instead of two.

Thankfully there isn’t an online mode, yet. Losing to an algorithm I can take, but the thought of losing a virtual fight to some morbidly obese fascist potential spree killing teenager in an Alabama trailer-park, demolishing me one handed while he masturbates to anime porn, would be too much of an ego blow. I acknowledge that said neurosis says plenty about my insecurity as a non Fight-Club member, and none of it good.

But I know that’s a consequence of the world we’re living in today. Pride seems far more elusive with phony battles being fought in virtual spaces between strangers (mostly) with bodies that are disgusting or unskilled. So many are happy to settle for training their fingers to control a character rather than their limbs to achieve a level of physical self-assurance. Credit to Sifu, its combat was engrossing enough to appeal to the slobs and in the moment make me forget how physically feeble modernity has made us.