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Either Sifu is incredibly challenging or I’m just incredibly bad at it. There are moments when everything clicks and the martial arts movie-inspired action feels like a dream. The player will float through enemies, parrying them and countering with a precision that only a true martial arts master is capable of. There’s a scene very early in the game where the player enters into an enclosed hallway with a series of enemies, and it is set up perfectly to seamlessly fight through them in one continuous combo. It feels amazing and is one of the high points of the early game.

That’s when Sifu feels at its best. When this isn’t happening, the player is instead being overwhelmed by common enemies, getting obliterated by bosses, and watching their age increase upon every death. This all feels by design. The game wants you to fail. It wants you to take these challenges head-on and get better. Learn the combos. Get the parries. Die. A lot. Anyone who sticks it out is going to eventually have that moment where it clicks and the entire game feels like the hallway sequence. The question every player is going to ask themselves is if they’re willing to put up with so much failure to reach that point.

What is Sifu?

The main gimmick of Sifu is that every time the player dies, they get older. They’re able to spring back to life immediately upon death, sometimes with a few upgrades, and get right back to combat. This seamless transition is good and keeps death from feeling like it will slow down combat, which is necessary in a game where the core mechanic is built on death. Every 10 years, the player will get a damage upgrade to make combos hurt more, but they lose a little bit of health as the frailty of age begins to take hold. The ebb and flow here is that the more the player dies, the faster they age, but if they defeat enemies, then the aging process will be slower. The game rewards the player for playing well.

As for why the player is going through buildings in a fictional China and battling powerful bosses, it’s a story of revenge. The player watched as a former martial arts student and his gang of followers killed the player’s father before his very eyes. You are then killed, only to revive one year older and completely unharmed. At 20 years old, the player will embark on a journey to defeat everyone who was responsible for his father’s death.

Why You Should Play Sifu

• Seamless combat
• It looks and feels like a martial arts movie
• A good challenge

Sifu is going to challenge anyone that tries to take it on. Some of the highest thrills in this game come after overcoming a challenging boss or sequence without dying. That gradual sense of improvement creates a sense of accomplishment in every play-through, and when the combat clicks, it feels exactly the way the game has been advertised. It has managed to make death, something that is considered a failure in every other game, feel like just another step towards improvement. Of course, the ultimate goal every player will eventually have is to get through the entire game with no deaths at all. It’s possible, but only those who have truly mastered the game will reach that point. Thankfully, the journey to mastering it is fun.

Why You Should Not Play Sifu

• The grind
• The story is only okay
• Failure isn’t always fun

Some players want a game to punch them back. They want a game that will make it so every inch forward must be earned. Sifu is not the most challenging game ever made, but it’s going to require a level of commitment to mastering the controls that not everyone is going to enjoy. Sifu does not ease the player in. There’s one tutorial level and from that point on it’s sink or swim. Players who sink may stop playing before they even beat the first or second boss of the game. Without a difficulty level, there’s no way for this game to get easier other than mastering it. It would be one thing if the revenge plot had more to it, but it’s a very basic martial arts movie plot. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not going to be a reason for players to push through.

Our Take

Sifu wants you to fail, but it does so because it wants to see you improve. If you’re okay with banging your head into a wall until everything clicks, then the combat is going to be worth it. This game is fun and, at its best, it has some of the most exhilarating combat we’ve seen in an action game, but the path there isn’t going to be for everyone.

A code for the PlayStation 5 version of Sifu was provided to us for review purposes.

Erick Dampier spent 16 seasons in the NBA, mostly with the Warriors and Mavericks, averaging 7.4 points and 7.1 rebounds per game across his lengthy career. The 7-footer was a steady presence in the paint for his teams for well over a decade, and it appears he might not be the only Erick Dampier to make a name for himself in the world of basketball.

His son, Erick Dampier Jr., is in sixth grade and is already 6’5, which provides some rather hysterical visuals when he’s playing with peers of the same age. The younger Dampier apparently plays up during the travel seasons in the spring/summer but plays with his age group in the winter and the result is, well, this.

I really enjoy the kid who runs to do a jumping shoulder bump with Dampier, who never leaves the ground for it. This genuinely looks like those videos of when an NBA player hosts a kids camp and ends up playing a few games with the campers and goes all out, swatting shots and dunking all over the kids to their delight, except this is a kid the same age as them and it cannot be nearly as enjoyable for the other team. Eventually they’ll have a hell of a story to tell about the time they had to play against Dampier when he was a full 18 inches taller than them and he ran up a halftime stat line of 24 points and 21 rebounds.

Have Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett got the band back together? For three decades, Mark Hamill took a good long break from playing Luke Skywalker. He wasn’t entirely out of the Star Wars-verse: He voiced Darth Bane on the teens show Clone Wars. (Hamill has enjoyed a prolific and acclaimed second life as a voice actor. His Joker, starting with Batman: The Animated Series, is up there with the best.) But it wasn’t until 2015’s The Force Awakens that he returned as the character that made his name, though it would take till The Last Jedi that he actually uttered a line. Now Hamill’s Luke Skywalker regularly returns to the franchise, even popping up on an episode of The Mandalorian, the show about a Boba Fett-like bounty hunter.

But does Hamill bring Luke Skywalker back for The Book of Boba Fett, the hot new Disney+ show about one of the series’ most beloved side characters?

The answer is: Yep, in the show’s sixth episode. And it’s not the older, grizzled, bitter yet still heroic version of Luke you saw in The Last Jedi. The Book of Boba Fett takes place shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, so you get younger, virile, and still optimistic Luke Skywalker. Thanks to the kind of CGI that produced younger Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, we get 70-year-old Hamill as a young man, training Grogu, aka Baby Yoda. He even gets to chat a bit with Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka.

De-aging CGI has become commonplace in movies and shows, but if his voice sounds weird, that’s because it is. As reported by /Film, Hamill’s voice is never actually heard. Instead, audio wizards used cutting edge tech to create his dialogue whole cloth using archival recordings and algorithms — which is definitely not the kind of tech that could lead to real-world trouble.

The Los Angeles Lakers rallied from a 15-point halftime deficit to force overtime and knock off the New York Knicks on Saturday night, 122-115. The trio of Anthony Davis, LeBron James, and Malik Monk came up huge for L.A., while Russell Westbrook struggled mightily. The former league MVP scored five points on 1-for-10 shooting with six assists, four rebounds, and four turnovers in 29 minutes of action. At one point, he missed a jumper and got showered with boos by fans.

While Westbrook continued to play during regulation, Lakers coach Frank Vogel decided the best plan for overtime was to leave him on the bench. It ended up working out for the team, as L.A. outscored New York during the extra frame, 11-4.

After the game, Vogel was asked about his decision and expressed his hope that Westbrook takes this as a form of motivation.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with any player, if someone’s not playing well enough where they don’t get to close the game out, there’s nothing wrong with giving somebody else that you feel is going to give you a better chance, giving them that opportunity,” Vogel said, per Sanjesh Singh of LeBron Wire. “And hopefully the response is that player plays better. That’s the hope.”

As for Westbrook, while he watched the end of the game from the sideline, he’s happy with how the game turned out.

“The best part of this game is that you win,” Westbrook said, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “Guys competed. We won the game and that’s all that matters.”

Lil Uzi Vert will avoid jail time in his felony assault case that occurred last summer. The bizarre incident also involved rapper Saint Jhn and Lil Uzi’s ex-girlfriend Brittany Byrd. According to TMZ, at the time of the incident, Saint Jhn, Brittany, and others were having a meeting about a business project at Dialog Cafe in West Hollywood. Lil Uzi soon arrived and confronted everyone at the meeting. He tried to punch Saint Jhn, but missed and fell to the ground, which led to Lil Uzi’s gun falling out of his pocket. After Brittany approached him, Lil Uzi allegedly hit her and pushed the gun into her stomach.

The assault left Lil Uzi with three felony charges: assault with a firearm, criminal threats, and domestic violence. He was also hit with a misdemeanor for carrying a loaded firearm, but due to a new plea deal, Lil Uzi will skip out on jail time. According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, he pled no contest to felony assault with a firearm and misdemeanor injury to a girlfriend. As a result, he was sentenced to three years of formal probation, one year of treatment for mental health and substance abuse, 52 weeks of domestic violence counseling, restitution, and a ten-year criminal protective order.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Last week it was reported that when the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 finally got their hands on an avalanche of Trump-era White House documents — which Trump had tried and failed to block — a good number of them had been torn up and taped back together by poor staffers. Some weren’t even taped back together. Turns out the former president had a habit of ripping up documents — illegally, as it turns out. But now we’re learning that that habit was even worse than previously thought.

As per The Washington Post, over the course of his four-year one-term presidency, Trump did this all the time, tearing up “hundreds” of official documentation: briefings, schedules, articles, letters, memos, some of them sensitive. He’d rip them up and either throw them in the waste bin or toss them on the floor. Sometimes he’d leave the detritus on his desk.

He wasn’t just being a snob; he was breaking a law. Specifically he was breaking the Presidential Records Act, which dictates that any official White House documentation must be preserved in the National Archive. Trump was repeatedly admonished for this practice, but — Trump being Trump — he always ignored them, evidently figuring he was above the law.

That, of course, left it to others to clean up his mess:

The ripping was so relentless that Trump’s team implemented protocols to try to ensure that he was abiding by the Presidential Records Act. Typically, aides from either the Office of the Staff Secretary or the Oval Office Operations team would come in behind Trump to retrieve the piles of torn paper he left in his wake, according to one person familiar with the routine. Then, staffers from the White House Office of Records Management were generally responsible for jigsawing the documents back together, using clear tape.

Will trump face any penalties for this? Will he face any penalties for anything law he’s broken? Probably not. James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, says whoever wrote the law neglected to add a note about how exactly to punish someone who breaks it.

“It is against the law, but the problem is that the Presidential Records Act, as written, does not have any real enforcement mechanism,” Grossman told the Post. “It’s that sort of thing where there’s a law, but who has the authority to enforce the law, and the existing law is toothless.”

And so Teflon Don will probably get off scot-free, as he probably will for inciting a violent mob. Or maybe this will be the one that gets him, much like Al Capone getting busted for tax evasion. Then again, Trump wasn’t reprimanded for that one either.

(Via WaPo)

Since the release of her debut solo single, “Have Mercy,” the world has been falling in love with Chloe Bailey. Well, that’s not entirely true, she was already beloved as one half of Chloe x Halle, and her “Buss It” challenge turned quite a few heads as well. But now that she’s clearly gaining confidence in her own sexuality, and finding her voice, it’s been a joy to watch Chloe come into her own. Everyone from random internet commentators to Cardi B herself is repeatedly floored when the elder Bailey sister drops a new photo series, and even rising rapper Gunna seems intent on getting to know her better.

So look, can we really blame a man on the internet for pretending that he was once sought after by the young diva? It’s pretty understandable that someone would want to claim that they’d known her in the past, and even embellish a little bit by claiming she was interested. That’s likely what was motivating a guy who decided to share his own version of events — that Chloe tried to talk to him in high school, but that he saw her star power, and he encouraged her to work on her career instead of focusing on a humble man such as himself. Except, our girl had to crush his dreams hard by quote tweeting his fantasy and setting the record straight: She was homeschooled in high school. When you’re learning at home, there’s very little room for flirting. Like zero. As Keke Palmer would say, sorry to this man! Chloe had to ether him. Nas would be proud.

For his part, the man in question seems to be doing just fine with his fantasy world.

Saweetie has been teasing her full-length debut Pretty B*tch Music for quite a while now, but we haven’t yet, and there haven’t been many updates since she announced a delay from the original release date of June 2021. Instead, she’s been daydreaming about opening a wellness resort for celebrities (FYI they do have those), and regaling fans with stories about her kleptomaniac tendencies. She also announced a new project, Icy Season, slated for release in early January that hasn’t been released yet either.

So, needless to say fans are hungry for new music from Saweetie, and you know, not another makeup collab with Cher. (A musical collab from those two would be very welcome, however!) Anyway, all the hungry fans got fed today when Saweetie shared a cute snippet of a new collaboration on social media. Playing a preview of her new song with H.E.R. in the background, Saweetie walks around her apartment, getting ready and brushing her hair, before putting on her coat and getting ready to walk out the door. She blows a kiss to the camera on the way out, and has slated this single’s release for 2/11.

Still, the preview doesn’t include any of Saweetie rapping, we’ll just have to wait for the song to drop to get that verse.

Things haven’t been going so well for Roddy Ricch over the last few months. After the Compton rapper followed his 2019 project Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial with last year’s Live Life Fast, some fans didn’t like the direction he was going in. Undeterred, Roddy let listeners know that he would be dropping Feed Tha Streets 3 in 2022, potentially helping alleviate worries from the fans who were underwhelmed by his 2021 album.

But when he shared a song snippet on social media today, things didn’t go so well with for the young hip-hop artist. His new track, which looks like it’s called “Out My Mind” wasn’t a hit with fans, who were quick to criticize the music. This didn’t sit well with Roddy, who was clearly excited about his new work, and disappointed when fans reacted so negatively. “Guess I’m a flop now,” Roddy wrote on an Instagram story. “Sh*t crazy,” before eventually deleting both his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

For fans who missed the snippet, here’s a screen grab of ROddy posting it and his currently deactivate Twitter account, as well as the snippet itself below.

Hopefully this is just a moment of frustration for the rapper and he makes his way back to a healthy place with social media sometime soon.

After missing the Los Angeles Lakers‘ last five games, LeBron James will return to the lineup for their nationally televised game on Saturday night. The Lakers will invite the New York Knicks to Crypto.com Arena in a matchup between two teams looking for a spark as we get into the second half of the season, and Los Angeles will get one in the form of their former NBA Finals MVP.

The team announced prior to tip that James will not just suit up, he’ll be in the team’s starting lineup.

James last took the floor on Jan. 25 against the Brooklyn Nets. Since then, he’s been on the sideline due to lingering issues with his knee — James underwent an MRI and it was determined that there was some swelling that needed to be tended to. He has missed the team’s last five games, and in that time, Los Angeles has gone 1-4.

Despite playing in 36 of the team’s 53 games this season due to injuries, James has been nothing short of magnificent for the Lakers. James is averaging 29.1 points per game — his best mark since 2009-10 — with 7.7 rebounds, 6.3 assists, 1.6 steals, and 1.1 blocks in 36.6 minutes a night.

The game between the Lakers and Knicks tips off at 8:30 a.m. EST on ABC.