Street Fighter 6

Crouching in the corner of the Amazon River Basin, Blanka furiously swiped at the oncoming threat. Whatever humanoid this was–be it Guile, Ken, or Ryu–would not break his resolve, regardless of the elegant combos inputted his way. This basic attack was crude, sloppy, and showed none of the finesse a proper Street Fighter should have. If he was lucky, Blanka would occasionally erupt in lightning after the person controlling him fumbled the correct stream of button presses.

Over 25 years ago I spent the night at a friend’s house and fought him in Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo. Could have been Turbo, I have no idea. It was his copy of the game because fighters never spoke to me and I simply didn’t have many people I could play them with in the first place. Like any 90s kid I dabbled in Mortal Kombat and Tekken cabinets at the local theater or pizza place, unwittingly mashing buttons and thumbing a fight stick hoping that my determined flurry would beat out the AI or another human doing the same. But I never shared cheat codes and combos at the playground to better trounce others with digital dominance. My friend did, however.

That night he proudly Street Fought the shit out of me with ease in multiple rounds. Until that fateful time I used Blanka and then cowered like an idiot. I can’t remember what character my friend used but I would block projectiles. If he came close for a throw I would jump away. When he tried jumping attacks to close the distance, I chopped at just the right time to bat him away. Somehow, by the skin of my teeth, I eventually won two rounds. A complete n00b. My friend was pissed, like many people would get when they couldn’t cinch every single victory.

He pulled out the cartridge in frustration and we moved on to a new game. Oh well. I felt satisfied. We fell asleep listening to the Space Jam soundtrack because why not and, unfortunately, he threw up in the middle of the night. He couldn’t enjoy Space Jam the same ever again. I teased him about it for years. What a time to be alive.

Street Fighter 6 is an entry made for both me and that friend. The cool kids who dazzle in fighting games and the nerds who aren’t good and want to have a semblance of hope at getting better.

There is a world in which I’m moderately amazing at every genre of game. But really, who has the time? Fighting games outside of Smash Bros. have always alluded me. And it seems ridiculous considering attack combos are easily learned and memorized, much like enemy NPC and boss patterns. Yet I think it’s that mental dance of feinting attacks, knowing when to use specials, how to counter, when to block, those special ingredients that make fighting games not only enjoyable but rewarding. Really, how fun can it be mashing buttons and not see an absurdly flashy move decimate an opponent when their guard is down?

Please keep in mind that for me, Street Fighter 6 could have completely gone over my head and been unyielding in its complexity and desire to drop me down into the crucible of fighting masters. Instead, I found solace in the lack of barriers Capcom used for this pivotal entry.

Street Fighter 6 allowed me, a complete no one, to live a power fantasy. The game does this by creating a bespoke campaign, separate from traditional Arcade modes that follow a brief story of each fighter in the roster. The recipe starts with one of the most robust character creators I’ve ever tackled in a video game. Players have the capability of replicating nearly any monstrous or angelic body-type they wish. Want your fighter to be an Adonis with glistening skin that has a blue, metallic sheen? Go for it. Need a lady with a multi-colored beard and arms longer than her torso with a pinhead? This is your chance.

At first I went into the character creator with a level amount of skepticism that I wouldn’t get too experimental. Then I started adjusting arm and leg length, wondering how it would actually effect the reach of my character. I got lost in sliders and presets while chuckling at the few times I randomized everything. Eventually, my laughably awkward rail-thin lady with her beer belly, trashcan lid hands, glistening skin, and terrible hair was dumped into an unexpected story mode that charms with its sincerity, absurdity, and dedication to teaching players about Street Fighter 6.

I can think of no kinder, more heartwarming way to deliver an education on a fighting game’s ins and outs than what is presented here in the “World Tour” mode, one of Street Fighter 6‘s three pillars.

Taking place primarily in Metro City, an open world-esque locale riddled with Capcom and Street Fighter references, players take their custom character on a journey to discover “the true meaning of strength” or something along those lines with nary a modicum of tongue-in-cheek. In World Tour, players meet Luke and fellow trainee Bosch and are soon tossed out into the streets where the act of street fighting is deemed as a fairly noble thing.

Expressing the joy at being able to walk up to nearly any NPC and engage them in a fight is truly bizarre but also frighteningly satisfying. Try and find a character with your name. Early on I found a Ben that looked like he needed an ass-kicking with his ripped jeans and frosted tips. Players can speak with these characters to see what they have to say and inspect them to see what rewards they will drop for accomplishing specific tasks in the fight.

World Tour features very light RPG mechanics where players can level up their character to increase stats and open up new attack slots. Consumables can be used to recover health mid-fight, when wandering Metro City, or to permanently boost a stat. Being an open world, Metro City has a few surprises tucked away, particularly if players use a special move like an uppercut or a spinning bird kick to literally float through the air and traverse large gaps–it’s the best kind if weird.

However, the bread and butter of the campaign isn’t the story, it’s learning the ropes of the Street Fighter 6 roster and the intricacies of the moveset. Each of the 18 characters is considered a “Master” in World Tour, one that the player can interact with and learn from. Once a character becomes a Master, players can equip that style to literally move and attack like the Master. Early in the game players will be able to switch from Luke to Chun-Li at will, opting for Luke’s more powerful hits over Chun-Li’s careful, flowing strikes. But just because your character is equipped with one Master’s style doesn’t lock them into a solitary moveset. Players have the ability to assign special moves from any Master to their character, creating a Frankenstein-monster of a fighting style. The only catch is that these special moves can’t take up the same button combo, meaning there are some limitations.

Over the course of World Tour, players level up these Master styles to unlock new skills and conversations with the Masters, along with the ability to summon them into a fight. Considering the breadth of the Street Fighter 6 roster, players will need some dedication to maxing out these Master levels, whether that is constant random battles with NPCs or completing sidequests. Thankfully, the quests are rewarding for newer players like me who don’t know about cancelling out attacks or which attacks a low crouch can block. Sure, Luke’s quest to pick up souvenirs from different countries just because he likes traveling is kind of dumb but it means that players will get to travel and meet a new Master and fight in one of the game’s main stages.

World Tour is meant to be embraced as an engaging, free-form tutorial that gives new players an admirable power-climb while understanding the basics and veterans a way to blitz through fights, tearing up low-level NPCs with massive combos. There are classic mini-games to play, outfits to collect, and Street Roombas to fight and it always put a smile on my face. Even when I was confused on where to get to and kept getting jumped by groups of enemies with cardboard boxes on their head, the dramatic flair of initiating combat made even the most basic actions enthralling.

This time around, Street Fighter 6 uses the Drive System as its biggest addition to combat mechanics, differentiating it from previous entries.

Players start out with a full Drive Gauge represented by six bars underneath the health bar. Using up the entire Drive Gauge, players will enter Burnout, preventing them from using any Drive moves. But because the bar replenishes over time, there’s no reason to be too shy.

The Drive System is meant to dictate the flow of a fight, as players keep an eye on their opponents’ Gauge, choosing when it’s best to perform certain moves. The joy of the Drive System is that it can be used to create powerful defenses and counters, or immediately put on the pressure.

Drive Impacts only cost one bar of the Drive Gauge and deliver an attack that can take the opposition by surprise because it is capable of absorbing incoming attacks. Hit someone with Drive Impact while they aren’t blocking and the character can be knocked down, opening them up for further combo attacks. Execute a Drive Impact while a character is up against a corner and they will fly into the wall. Plus, Drive Impacts with their flashy splashes of color just look amazing to execute.

A Drive Parry acts like you would imagine, repelling an incoming attack and restoring a bar of Drive when done successfully. A Drive Rush allows players to close the distance with a quick burst forward from either a Drive Parry or when using after a normal attack that can be canceled. Drive Reversals act as a counterattack that deal little damage but can take the pressure off when your back is against the wall. Lastly, Overdrives supplement special attacks by pressing two similar attack buttons when performing a combo to deal more damage.

For me, the Drive System was another layer on top of an already complicated cake of learning individual characters and their combos. But Street Fighter 6 won me over again in the Fighting Ground, the literal meat and potatoes of the game where players fight each other in casual or ranked matches, in custom rooms, Arcade mode, and a wealth of training and combo trials.

Capcom does not want players to be intimidated by Street Fighter 6 and the legacy it leads. And I cannot express how daunting it felt to try and feel competent without beating my head against a wall. The training modes are exceptional, going so far as to showing players specific move sets and opting for modes that show specific frames for when a character should attack or one will land.

Better yet, there are three control types that improve accessibility for all players. A Dynamic control scheme allows players to hit one of three buttons to let the AI execute combos based on character position. Sure, it can only be used in a few modes but it provides an instant access point for seeing the potential. For a large portion of my early time, I opted for the Modern control scheme that reduced special moves to one button but still felt like I had control. Eventually I moved to Classic controls with confidence, feeling like I needed those six buttons to fully realize my terrible but ambitious skills.

Finally, the Battle Hub acts as the linchpin that holds the other two modes together. Because Street Fighter would be nothing without its community, the Battle Hub acts as a way to bring that community together in an attractive, exciting way.

Players can take their custom character from the World Tour mode and parade them around the Battle Hub’s social space, much like The Tower in Destiny. Here players will be able to regale in the creations of others while they queue in ranked and unranked online fights. The Fighting Ground features are available through the Battle Hub as a way to entice players to have some distractions while the wait for a new match. It was here I truly experienced the high quality netcode that Capcom is using. Playing across multiple regions with a small pool of players, there was virtually no lag to be experienced, even at my house with its questionable internet. There can be framerate stutters in World Tour and questionable visuals but thankfully these sacrifices aren’t there during intense, online play.

Using emotes, chats, and showing off crazy ways to customize your avatar are par for the course in online gaming communities these days. And while that isn’t uniquely Street Fighter 6, it still has a charm to it because eventually, you might beat the snot out of one of these people you gawk at.

Yet my favorite part about the Battle Hub was being able to sit at a game cabinet and play an actual classic Capcom game with another person online or spectate others fighting. Maybe this time around I can go back into Street Fighter II with more confidence…

Street Fighter 6 is one of the most comprehensive fighting games on the market. It constantly entices players to master its intricacies by offering a wealth of options to hone their skills. As one of the greenest fighting game players imaginable, the World Tour gave me the perfect gateway to learning and understanding the 18-character roster of new and old characters. In-depth training modes helped me understand the new Drive System and how it can constantly change the flow of battles, turning online matches into mind games of manipulation and sheer force. Street Fighter 6 may not turn me into a pro overnight but no other game has ever made me want to pick up a fighting stick and truly become a Master at punches and kicks until now.