In Sifu, the latest game from Sloclap, you must become the kung-fu master and exact revenge on the assassins who killed your family. It’s an action brawler with a fascinating aging mechanic that causes your character to get older with each death. Although it doesn’t have many missions, they will likely take you longer to beat than you might expect, especially given how difficult the game is. Here’s how long it takes to beat Sifu, along with details about its mission structure, and post-game content.

How long to beat Sifu

Sifu is a highly skill-dependent game. Fighting and action game experts will likely be able to get through it much faster, while inexperienced players will probably spend double (if not more) time getting through.

In general, it should take you around 10 hours to beat the five main missions, while earning the coveted 100% completion status could take you upwards of 15 hours. However, a player who knows the game inside and out could conceivably speedrun the entire game in only a couple of hours, so be prepared to learn as you make your way through the story.

Sifu mission list – All missions and bosses

Consider this your boss battle spoiler warning. The five Sifu missions, and their related bosses, are as follows:

The Squats – Fajar (The Botanist)The Club – Sean (The Fighter)The Museum – Kuroki (The Artist)The Tower – Jinfeng (The CEO)The Sanctuary – Yang (The Leader)

On paper, Sifu might seem like a short experience given that it only has five levels. However, these stages are fairly long, and when you consider you’ll be getting pummeled for the first half of the game as you learn the ropes, you can expect to spend much longer with it.

On top of that, you’re encouraged to replay missions to try and complete them with fewer deaths. Each level starts you off at the lowest age you were when you finished the previous one. As you unlock more skills and simply figure out the mechanics, you’ll want to revisit stages so you can beat them at a younger age.

Five levels may seem lacking, until you realize how much each will test you.

For example, when you first beat the starting mission, it might take you until age 30. This means you’ll start the second level at age 30, which isn’t terrible, but you’d be better off if you were younger.

The older you get, the less health you’ll have, and certain abilities are restricted to specific age ranges. Eventually, you can get so old that you’ll die for good, meaning you’ll need to restart the level you’re on currently. So, for best results, try and go back to earlier levels to finish them at a younger age to help you with the subsequent stage.

Another neat feature is the ability to unlock keys that grant access to shortcuts in prior levels. For instance, the third stage, The Museum, has a key that opens a door in The Club. Revisit The Club, use the key, and unlock a shortcut to get through the level faster, increasing your odds of beating it at a younger age.

Sifu post-game content

Sifu has a slew of collectibles littered throughout each stage, along with missable dialogue segments. If you collect them all, you’ll unlock the True Ending of the game, which is deeply tied to the overall message of Sifu. We won’t spoil it here, but suffice to say that the true ending goes beyond a revenge story, with a greater emphasis on redemption, rather than killing.

You can replay missions as much as you’d like, so be sure to go back and grab all the collectibles if you want to see the True Ending in Sifu.

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The hype train is gaining a dangerous amount of speed as Destiny 2 barrels toward The Witch Queen. This week, Bungie detailed a bunch of changes coming to the weapon sandbox, while showing off some new Exotic weapons coming with the expansion. One of those guns is a grenade launcher, only the grenades are the worm larvae from which the Hive derive their dark powers. I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this.

But first, let’s check out some of the changes to guns coming in The Witch Queen.

Brand loyalty

The details on weapons are pretty extensive in the latest TWAB, and I have to say, they all sound like solid changes. The best-sounding aspect of the whole deal is the addition of Origin Traits, which are apparently intrinsic to guns based on elements like where you get them, or who manufactured them. For instance, guns from the Trials of Osiris will have Origin Traits similar to the Celerity and Bottomless Grief perks, where they gain boosts when the rest of your teammates fall in battle. Nightfall weapons get traits that boost them against Champions. Crucible guns are better at reloading out of fights, to help you prep for your next engagement.

The more customization options Bungie brings to Destiny 2 loadouts, the more interesting that whole side of the game becomes. I really like the idea of having guns that you get for doing certain things and that reward your specific playstyle. If you’re into PvE activities, hitting up Nightfalls gets you better tools for PvE–that’s a cool idea that helps make repetitive activities more rewarding.

We’ve been hearing about who makes certain guns since Destiny 1, but now we’ll see how those manufacturers leave their marks on their work.

Origin Traits also sound like added benefits, rather than necessary components, which helps with one big aspect of this discussion: gunsetting. In the immediate aftermath of the TWAB, I saw a few complaints from people who were worried that adding Origin Traits to guns starting with Witch Queen would immediately deprecate the guns you already have stockpiled, which won’t receive Origin Traits–you’ll need to find new copies of those guns to get access to the new system. They worried that, effectively, Bungie was finding a way to make everything they already had obsolete, but that doesn’t sound like it’s the case.

The additional perks that Origin Traits offer sound like they’re nice to have, but not essential to Destiny’s meta. You’re going to be picking up a lot of new guns anyway, so you can slowly replace your old gear with the slightly better, newer versions. But having the “slightly faster reloading outside of combat in the Crucible” Origin Trait isn’t going to render your current Dire Promise into obsolete junk.

One last thing that I think is cool about Origin Traits is the fact that they extend to gun manufacturers. This is an aspect of Destiny that has felt like something Bungie wanted to do more with in the past, but it never quite worked out. We have a bunch of brand names in Destiny 2 who make weapons, but those names have only ever dictated aesthetics. It was, more or less, a neat lore thing that some guns came from some specific foundries. Now, guns from Omolon or VEIST have Origin Traits intrinsic to the brand. It’s not a massive change, but I love the idea that these names actually mean something in terms of what their weapons can do and how they operate. I’ve been seeing guns that say “HAKKE” for years and that’ll finally actually mean something to me.

Okay, time to talk about the worm gun.

Somebody hates these worms.

Someone explain to me the worm gun

A recent weapons trailer for Destiny 2 showed off several of its upcoming Exotics, including a machine gun that fires missiles like those of a Cabal Colossus, a submachine gun that sounds a lot like Halo’s Needler, and Parasite, a grenade launcher that hucks live Hive worms at enemies, which explode.

From a story standpoint, this sounds fascinatingly nonsensical.

Sure, sometimes guns are just fun or funny or weird. One of Eris Morn’s friends is a bug who lives inside Xenophage. It doesn’t have to be that serious. But even the weird guns have story and lore tied to them. So what’s the story behind the worm gun?

I mean, think about it for a second. Someone in the Destiny 2 universe made a gun. Rather than make that gun shoot standard projectiles, they configured it to launch Hive worms. So first, this is someone who would think, “Hive worms are great for blowing things up,” I guess. And they would either have to hate Hive worms such that they would think those worms should be used to kill things rather than let them just live their lives, or they would have to be indifferent to Hive worms, neither interested or disinterested in whether those worms lived.

Also, this is a person who would have to have enough Hive worms around to load into a cannon–they would have to have a reason to even think to build a cannon into which they could load Hive worms.

If we look at Parasite, we can see what look like Hive runes on it, so maybe this is a Hive weapon. My thinking is that Savathun built or commissioned this gun. Her goal in the Season of the Lost is to get rid of her worm, and in The Witch Queen, she has the power of the Light, which suggests the removal of the worm was successful. Savathun doesn’t seem to be a fan of the worm gods, the pact the Hive made with them, or the Darkness in general. The other Hive in her Lucent Brood also don’t seem to have worms–or at least, the ones with Ghosts probably don’t. So if Savathun got rid of her worm, and isn’t a fan of worms, and doesn’t need a bunch of worms hanging around…maybe she built a worm-launcher. Maybe she even gives it to us, since, despite the fact that we’re fighting in her Throne World in The Witch Queen, there still seems to be a weird relationship between Guardians and Savathun in the story.

It might even be a thumb in the eye of Xivu Arath, who is likely still on the prowl to kill Savathun in The Witch Queen.

That’s my story theory on Parasite. Savathun’s mad at the worms, and rather than just stomping on them or devising a way to kill them, she makes a gun that shoots them at people–preferably other Hive. It’s some deliciously petty payback for eons of a parasitic relationship requiring the Hive to constantly conquer other species in order to gain power and resist being consumed by the worms inside them.

I also want to know who at Bungie thought of this thing, because it’s excellent and ridiculous.

We’re working on a lot more Destiny 2 coverage ahead of The Witch Queen in the coming weeks, including some catch-up guides to get you ready. To start with, you might want to check out our story catch-up article that runs down everything that happened between Beyond Light and The Witch Queen. It’s expansive and detailed, and if you missed anything this year, you’ll find it there.

And as always, leave any Destiny 2 stuff you want to discuss in the comments below.

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Apex Legends Season 12: Defiance is right around the corner and kicks off Year 4 for developer Respawn’s battle royale. Year 3 proved a transformative year for Apex Legends–alongside the usual new weapons and characters, it saw the introduction of Arenas and a tighter narrative focus on the legacy of Titanfall 2. Respawn doesn’t seem to be letting up for Year 4, with Season 12 introducing a whole bunch of new content. Below, we go over everything Season 12 is changing about Apex Legends or adding to the game, including legend and weapon rebalancing, map changes, new modes, and events.

Start date

Apex Legends Season 12 is set to start February 8. If Respawn keeps to the same start time as Season 11: Escape, Season 12 will kick off at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. However, Respawn has not announced a start time yet.

Patch notes

Respawn has not yet released the full patch notes for Apex Legends Season 12. Patch notes for the major seasonal updates traditionally get revealed the day before a new season starts. So the Season 12 patch notes will likely be posted on February 7.

New character: Mad Maggie

Season 12 sees the addition of Mad Maggie to Apex Legends’ playable roster. Mad Maggie is an “aggressive playmaker”–her abilities are geared towards pushing enemy squads and engaging them in close-range combat, similar to Octane and Revenant. Maggie is the second playable character in Apex Legends with an ability that makes her especially adept when she’s using specific weapons (the first being Rampart, who gets an extended clip and faster reload speed on LMGs). Maggie excels with shotguns, gaining increased running speed when holding one.

Changes to Crypto and Caustic

Season 12 makes several balancing adjustments to Apex Legends’ existing cast of playable characters. Most notably, Crypto is getting a good buff–starting in Season 12, the recon legend will be able to toss his drone in a straight line, allowing him to quickly scan in front of him or attach the drone to a wall as a stationary webcam. Caustic will also be getting an update in Season 12. The toxic trapper is getting a nerf–his traps will now be destructible, preventing the legend from using them as reliable cover.

Weapon & hop-up changes

In Season 12, the Alternator SMG is rotating out of Care Packages and the Volt SMG is rotating in. On top of this, the VK-47 Flatline and Longbow DMR are both being rotated into Replicators, with no way to loot these firearms save for finding them in an enemy’s deathbox. You’ll otherwise have to craft them with Materials in order to nab them.

In terms of hop-up attachments, Hammerpoint Rounds are returning. The hop-up will still go on the P2020 and Mozambique, but Season 12 changes the attachment so that it can be put onto the RE-45 Auto as well. Additionally, Shatter Caps are changing so that it’s no longer a toggle–when attached, the 30-30 Repeater and Bocek Compound Bow will automatically switch to a shotgun-like bullet spread when firing from the hip. And finally, a new hop-up will be added in Season 12. Called Kinetic Feeder, the attachment can go on the Triple Take and Peacekeeper. It automatically reloads and starts focusing either weapon when you slide.

Map changes

Though it received smaller changes in both Season 7: Ascension and Season 9: Legacy, Olympus gets its first major adjustment in Season 12. The new season adds two major points of interest to Olympus, as well as several adjustments throughout the map. Now called “Sabotaged Olympus,” the new map features plenty of new ways to loot and navigate on the south side of the city with Phase Driver and Terminal.

Phase Driver is a huge, circular POI that will be wedged in between Hydroponics and Bonsai Hillside, causing Solar Array, Icarus, Bonsai Hillside, and Bonsai Plaza to all shift away from the center of Olympus in order to make room. Those POIs are still there though, don’t worry–the shape of the city has just shifted. Phase Driver can be interacted with–squads can use it up to three times to teleport in blue-, purple-, and gold-tier loot rollers (like the ones found in Pathfinder’s Fight Night).

Terminal is a large internal POI with five entrances, connecting Phase Driver, Bonsai Hillside, Bonsai Plaza, and Solar Array to Hammond Labs. So, what was once a simple hallway beneath the Phase Runner is now an interconnected series of passages that should make it a bit easier to travel and fight in between these locations without getting third-partied.

The northern half of the map has gotten some love too. Most notably, Supply Track (the hallway that connects Turbine to Rift) has been expanded with a new entryway, which should keep that location from becoming a choke point as regularly as it did in Seasons 7-9.

New mode: Control

At the start of Season 12, a new limited-time mode called Control will be added to Apex Legends. Control is chaotic fun, streamlining the Apex Legends’ experience to be more approachable for newcomers. The mode sees two teams of nine face off in a tug-of-war over controlling objectives across the map. Capturing and defending objectives nets your team points, and the first side to reach 1500 points takes the win.

Limited-time events

Respawn has released its Apex Legends Season 12 roadmap. In it, two limited-time events are teased: Warriors and Unshackled. Warriors is a Collection Event, so it will likely feature a new legend heirloom–though it may also add a new mythic-tier legend cosmetic, like the Bloodhound skin seen in the Season 12 gameplay trailer that evolves over time. Unshackled is listed as a normal event, which means (if Respawn holds to pattern) it’s likely geared towards adding a new limited-time battle royale mode or Arenas map. Respawn has not confirmed either to be the case though, so we could just as easily get something totally brand-new.

Ranked splits

Like previous seasons, Apex Legends Season 12 will feature a ranked split, allowing players to climb up the in-game rankings on two different maps. The Ranked playlist will start on Olympus. Midway through the season, your ranking will reset and Ranked will switch over to Kings Canyon.

For those who aren’t interested in Ranked, standard Trios and Duos will feature a regular map rotation between Olympus, Storm Point, and Kings Canyon. That means World’s Edge is out of the map rotation entirely in Season 12.

Arenas

With the Alternator returning to ground loot and the Volt being placed in Care Packages, you’ll be able to once again buy the Alternator in Arenas. Conversely, you will not be able to buy the Volt. Additionally, the RE-45 will now be able to be upgraded to have the Hammerpoint Rounds hop-up attachment.

Quest storyline

In Season 12, Apex Legends’ Quest will dive into Mad Maggie, finally giving players her point of view. Octane’s dad, Duardo Silva, is setting Maggie up as a villain who’s putting the people’s beloved legends in danger (in the world of Apex Legends, the legends are basically just famous athletes, and the battle royale bloodsport they engage in is just good TV).

This plan is all in hopes of attracting more sympathy to his stance that the Syndicate (the group that runs the Apex Games and most of the populated worlds in the Titanfall/Apex Legends universe’s Outlands) is incompetent and in need of some new leadership: Duardo, himself. Octane and Lifeline (whose rich parents are also pretty evil and side with Duardo) are wise to his villainous nature, and have already set their own plans in motion to try and stop him.

Battle pass

Season 12 introduces a new battle pass to Apex Legends. Respawn has not yet revealed what all of the rewards will be, though you can see some of the new cosmetics in the Season 12 gameplay trailer–legendary skins for Seer and Loba and reactive legendary skins for the Hemlok Burst AR.

Year 3 anniversary

In celebration of Apex Legends’ three-year anniversary, Season 12 will kick off a three-week giveaway. Log into Apex Legends during each of the first three weeks of Season 12, and you’ll be able to unlock Octane, Wattson, and Valkyrie for free. Each character comes with themed Apex Packs that will drop random items or cosmetics.

To unlock Octane, log into Apex Legends between February 8-15. To unlock Wattson, jump into the game February 15-22. And finally, Valkyrie can be unlocked by logging into Apex Legends February 22-March 1.

On top of that, Apex Legends Year 3 is ending with an Anniversary Collection event. During the first three weeks of Season 12, you can buy 24 collection-exclusive epic and legendary cosmetics from Apex Legends’ in-game store.

PS5 + Xbox Series X|S versions

Season 12 won’t see Apex Legends getting native PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions, but current-gen versions are on the way. During a preview event, Apex Legends game director Steven Ferreira said, “We got a bunch of details [on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Apex Legends] coming soon, so I don’t want to spoil those.”

Cross-progression support

Though Apex Legends supports cross-play, it still does not support cross-progression, meaning players have to use separate accounts when they want to play on a different system. Cross-progression support is coming to Apex Legends in 2022, but it doesn’t seem to be scheduled for Season 12.

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Yoko Taro plays by his own rules. That meant serving as creative director on a card-based role-playing game called Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars in 2021, despite everyone assuming his next project would be Nier-related. It apparently also means releasing another one of those games just a few weeks after announcing it, as Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is coming out in just two weeks.

Announced with little warning today, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is a completely separate game from The Isle Dragon Roars, and it’s not a direct sequel. Both games are designed as standalone titles, though you’ll have some idea of what to expect gameplay-wise if you’ve played The Isle Dragon Roars.

Square Enix calls the game a “standalone experience for both old and new fans of the series,” and by “old fans,” the company means people who played the first one like three months ago. The world moves quickly these days.

As an unnamed hero, you must save a group of islands facing destruction, joining a failed maiden venturing into the seas. Because it’s a Yoko Taro project, expect some depressing and unexpected turns, along with music director Keiichi Okabe’s signature melancholy tunes.

Much like in the first game, Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden uses cards for everything–and we mean everything. From the menu to dialogue and the environment, it’s all represented by cards. Should its design be similar to the first game, there will actually be a pretty traditional turn-based RPG behind that structure. Some of the cards look to be returning, as well, including items and townspeople. Those who played the first game should also spot a certain organization making another appearance in the trailer, too.

Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is out February 17 for Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PC. Nier DLC will be available, just like with the first one.

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Apex Legends Season 12, titled Defiance, introduces playable character Mad Maggie, a great Crypto buff, and a whole lot more. The season also begins with the debut of a brand-new limited-time mode called Control, which is composed of 9v9 objective-based matches. I got a chance to play Control at a preview event, and came away enjoying it. The new mode is far more chaotic than Apex Legends’ standard battle royale or Arenas modes but still brings the fun, and it deserves to be more than an LTM.

After three years, Apex Legends has evolved into a complicated beast that can be a bit off-putting to jump into if you’re new. Control feels like it addresses that shortcoming, creating a space to see why Apex Legends is so fun without the do-or-die pressure of a battle royale or challenging CS:GO-like rounds of Arenas. I walked away from Control thinking about what a shame it is that it’s only a limited-time mode–similar to battle royale and Arenas, there’s a potentially high skill ceiling to Control, but the initial learning curve is far more approachable.

“One of the goals [for Control] is to really streamline the experience so players can focus on combat and playing the objectives,” game designer David Swieczko said at a press event. “So we have things like infinite ammo, shield regen, and fast healing. We’ve done away with the bleed-out state too. So similar to [limited-time mode] Winter Express.”

Control reminds me of Titanfall 2’s Amped Hardpoint or Halo Infinite’s Strongholds. Two teams of nine spawn on opposite sides of a map, with three objective points located in between. Standing near an objective captures it for your team–the more objectives your side owns, the faster your team accumulates points. The first side to reach 1500 points wins. The matches I played were like hard-fought rounds of tug-of-war as each side scrambled for majority control of the map.

In Control, all you really have to worry about it capturing and holding zones–no need to loot or worry about lives.

And that’s all you really need to know. There are additional considerations, but they’re more so there for variety than complexity. “It’s a really light looting system,” Swieczko said. “The way you can gain new weapons is through our timed events, which occur every few minutes throughout the match. One of those is airdrops, which can have a rare chance of containing a better helmet or armor but are mostly focused on bringing in more ordinance and weapons. And the other timed event is the capture bonus event–that paints a target on one of the zones. If a team can control that zone until the timer runs out, they get a nice boost to their score.”

Ultimately, most of the complexity tied to Apex Legends’ battle royale and Arenas isn’t here. In Control, you have infinite respawns, there’s no need to loot (instead, there are predetermined loadouts that all players choose from), and body shields automatically recharge when outside of combat. Plus, you’re not limited to playing as a single character for an entire match–you can switch your legend every time you spawn in.

And yet, Control teaches you the fundamentals of Apex Legends. It feels incredible to pull off a stylish play with your character’s ultimate ability or upgrade your gear and feel your weapons firing with a bit more of a kick than they did before. And Control doesn’t make you work all that hard for these sensations, allowing you to enjoy them and see how using the right ability or finding the right attachment can lead to rewarding play. So when you go to battle royale or Arenas, you’ll understand how important legend abilities and gear upgrades are to Apex Legends’ gameplay.

You’ll have a healthy assortment of loadouts that you can switch between with every spawn.

“[A player’s personal] ratings are the way players can earn their ultimate [ability] and also upgrade their weapons,” Swieczko said. “So when you perform actions that benefit your team–like neutralizing or capturing objectives, or taking out enemies–you gain ratings for those actions. And when you reach a ratings tier threshold, your weapons evolve on the spot–if you have a starting blue-tier weapon, it’ll go to purple and you’ll get all the attachments that come along with that.”

Stripping Apex Legends of most of the mechanics and features you normally have to consider does decrease the level of necessary strategy that has brought me back to Apex Legends for 1,234 hours and counting (I love this game, okay?)–in a timeline where Control is a permanent mode, it’s not replacing battle royale for me. But removing all of that complexity means that the entire focus of Control is Apex Legends’ superb movement and gunplay mechanics. And stopping to just enjoy that, without having to scour for loot, is a relaxing (in relative terms–this is still a fast-paced first-person shooter) and welcome change of pace. For as long as the mode is live, I foresee Control acting as my go-to means of starting the evening and warming up before diving into Apex Legends’ battle royale.

“We’ve always tried to use our LTMs to give players unique gameplay experiences while also preserving the competitive nature of our core modes,” Apex Legends game designer Mark Yampolsky said. “We view them as an opportunity to try new ideas, whether that’s introducing players to new items or mechanics or even testing changes to our game meta. We knew from the get-go that we wanted Control to carve out space for casual play with Apex. We heard a lot of feedback from our players that even our non-Ranked cues can feel pretty sweaty at times.”

Like she is with Arenas, Rampart is far better suited to Control than battle royale.

I hope Control returns as a permanent mode following its conclusion (like Duos) or at least becomes a regularly occurring limited-time mode (like Shadow Royale or Winter Express). Respawn has no plans to make it permanent right now, but it sounds like the team is open to it depending on the playerbase’s reaction.

“It’s something we can explore in the future,” Swieczko said. “The decision is to keep it an LTM for now. It’s a very different way of playing Apex. We love it. And we’ve had a ton of fun with it internally. We really wanna see what the feedback is from players and how they engage with it.”

If Control were to ever return, the one aspect about it I’d hope to see changed is its maps. Control doesn’t have mode-exclusive maps; instead, it partitions off points-of-interests from existing maps (Olympus’ Hammond Labs and Storm Point’s Barometer). It’s serviceable for a limited-time mode, but it keeps Control from having its own identity. Right now, it feels like a temporary spin-off of the battle royale (which, admittedly, is exactly what it is). For Control to endure as a compelling mode that stands apart from the battle royale, it needs to follow Arenas’ lead and have its own maps that are specifically geared towards an objective-based team deathmatch as opposed to just a battle royale hot-drop location.

Between the two maps, I enjoyed playing Control far more on Barometer than Hammond Labs.

The problem, of course, is that doing so would take development time and resources away from battle royale and Arenas support. “As of right now, we are just putting Control maps inside of the [battle royale] maps,” Yampolsky said. “We think there’s an awesome amount of experiences there we can deliver within that constraint. That’s what we really want to explore first. And, you know, at the end of the day, when we’re not building Control-exclusive maps, that’s resources that we can put towards making bigger and better map updates.”

So Control’s future is a little bit up in the air right now. Better to be safe than sorry and just play it when it goes live–there have been incredible limited-time modes that Respawn has never brought back (like Déjà Loot and Ring Fury), so don’t automatically count on Control’s return. It’s a fantastic on-ramp for folks looking to understand why Apex Legends is such a superb experience or simply wanting to take a break from the far more intense battle royale and Arenas modes. Control will go live in Apex Legends at the start of Season 12 on February 8 and remain in the game for three weeks.

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