At the 2021 Sony PlayStation “State of Play” LIVE event, the official announced a new action game “Master” developed by the France Sloclap team with Chinese kung fu culture as the theme. The game has attracted attention from domestic and foreign players since its announcement. After experiencing several bounced cheques, the game will finally be released this month. Let’s take a look at this game created around the white eyebrow fist together!
The plot of the game began on a rainy night eight years ago. The villain Yang led his team to attack the martial arts school where the protagonist and his father were located and killed them. Unexpectedly, the protagonist came back to life with a string of copper coins. The story goes back to the present. After eight years of cultivation, the protagonist began a journey of revenge. According to the collected leads, the protagonist encountered many difficulties and finally met his first enemy, “Medicine Master”. However, during the battle, “Medicine Master” was not surprised by the protagonist’s ability to “come back to life”. So why did the villain team kill their master? Do they know anything about copper coins?
Overall, the story of “Master” is like a kung fu movie from the last century. The young protagonist watches his father being killed and embarks on a path of revenge. The appearance of the five villains in the prologue also provides some “spoilers” for players. However, unlike traditional kung fu movies, “Master” adds a touch of fantasy by adding a plot where the protagonist can “come back to life” with copper coins.
Compared to the “ordinary” Drama Game, the teaching can be said to be very outstanding. In the prologue of the game, when the player controls Yang to deal with their own master, the game does not provide teaching. Players can only rely on their own exploration of the keyboard or gamepad keys to deal with the people in the martial arts hall. As for Yang’s final defeat and killing of the master, the author’s evaluation can only be “a newborn calf is not afraid of tigers, and he kills the master with random fists.” With the appearance of the opening credits, the game begins the teaching section. Players need to make basic operations such as turning and partnering with the five enemies according to the prompts given on the screen. With the end of the practice (teaching), the player’s revenge road also officially begins.
I don’t know if you have any impression of the corridor battle in the first promotional video. We will experience this scene in the first level of the game. On the way to meet the pharmacist in the first level, we have to pass through an old residential building. When the protagonist opens the door, the scene will directly switch from a third-person action game to a 2D clean version game. At that moment, it seems that the game has become “Jackie Chan Kicks the Hall”. Similar transitions are not unique in the game.
When the first promotional video of the game was released, the protagonist’s ability to resurrect by increasing his age was highly anticipated. Now, let me share with you the unique death growth mechanism of this game.
” Master ‘s death age growth mechanism is incremental, for example, the protagonist’s first death is 20 years old, and after resurrection, he will become 21 years old, and the second death is 21 years old. The second resurrection is 23 years old, and so on… Whenever the protagonist grows 10 years old, a copper coin around his waist will break. When all five copper coins are broken, the protagonist will enter the real death next time he falls, that is to say, the protagonist’s final age will be controlled between 71 and 79 . Between .
The protagonist’s youth and old age
The most obvious impact of the protagonist’s age increase in the game, in addition to changes in appearance, is that as the age increases, the vitality will decrease and the attack power will increase. The production team uses this to simulate a real kung fu practice. In addition, the skills in the game are also affected by age. For example, specific skills such as sudden rain hitting can only be learned when the protagonist is young. After the age of 29, such quick punching moves can no longer be learned (which is reasonable).
The True Skill Tree
In addition to these skills that need to be released through rubbing, there is also a “focus skill” in the game. When the player presses the LT key on the controller, it will enter “bullet time”. Then the player can attack the opponent by selecting various parts, achieving a one-move victory over the opponent. These moves all reveal the strong and unpredictable characteristics of the White Eyebrow Fist.
As a game based on Chinese kung fu culture, realistic martial arts movements are naturally indispensable. In order to better showcase the action scenes in the game and depict Chinese kung fu realistically enough, the production team specially hired a kung fu master named Benjamin Colussi as the action guide. This kung fu master once went to Foshan to learn the White Eyebrow Fist technique from Liu Weixin. All the protagonist’s movements in the game come from his motion capture, which is also the biggest reason why the movements in the game “Master” can be so smooth. Since we are talking about the White Eyebrow Fist, we have to mention the most famous disciple, which is Chinese kung fu superstar Jackie Chan. The game executive of this game also revealed that the concept of the game “Master” was inspired by Jackie Chan’s movie.
Since there is such a hardcore production team, hardcore operations are naturally indispensable. In order for the protagonist to better respond to enemy attacks, the game has set up four defensive moves: blocking, parrying, dodging, and evading. Compared with other action games, the four defensive moves in “Master” provide players with more choices. Players who are used to bouncing back can use parrying to make the enemy stiff before attacking, while dodging in place requires players to speculate whether it is an upper or lower attack based on the enemy’s shooting habits in order to respond. With so many defensive moves, it can also be seen that “Master” is a game that advocates defensive counterattacks. Players who are used to being frontal will have to suffer.
Finally, let’s talk about the difficulty of this game. In order to highlight the fierceness and unpredictability of the White Eyebrow Fist, all characters in the game have almost no forward moves. Players can only anticipate their opponents’ actions through familiarity. In addition, opponents also use the defensive methods mentioned above, which forms the first major difficulty of this game. When I first passed the first chapter, the protagonist’s age reached 70 +. I thought that this difficulty would provide players with options for age reset or copper coin repair in the second chapter. However, when I entered the second chapter, my age was still locked at 73. After experiencing a siege, the protagonist I controlled could only fall to the ground and not get up. It turned out that copper coins could not be repaired, and time could not be turned back. Reasonable age control naturally became another major difficulty of this game. This difficulty made me think of Shinji Mikami’s masterpiece “Hand of God”. The difficulty of the two is comparable.
If you were asked to name a game with Chinese kung fu elements in front of the screen, I believe most people would think of the work from 10 years ago – “Hot-blooded Rogue”. The appearance of “Master” undoubtedly breaks the answer to this question. So far, the most realistic game kung fu performance and the different combat ideas generated at different ages all reveal the dedication of the production team. As one of the few pure action games nowadays, it is worth experiencing for every player who loves action games and Chinese kung fu-themed games. However, the difficulty level requires players to go through a period of training.
