Street Fighter 6

Been playing since last night and been liking the physics so far, feels fresh and new. We still get to keep the same moves from street fighter 3 and 4 with a more realistic twist. I was getting beaten by these pro gamers who are cooking up a storm with their combo's and teleporting behind you, but this time around their is a player block feature which you get to choose straight after the match by picking player info and blocking them which is also satisfying after losing to them. This helps you stay clear of such players who have way too much time in their hands. I'm a casual gamer on the weekends kind of guy.

So in comparisson to past Street Fighter's, 2 is aging a bit too much now. 3 and Alphas were a bit ugly and again feeling a bit old. 4 and 5 were shockingly bad, so this didn't have too strong of a task to stand out as one of the best Street Fighter's.

Honestly, a SF 3rd Strike remake and update would have been better. My reason for the low score is it just feels slow to play and a bit boring. The drive slows down the action, the special animations interrupt the action. The game all feels way too counter based, throw push backs, parry, rush reversals etc it feels like too much attack and defend gameplay has switched to counter attacks.

A major gripe is the AV design. The sound is awful. Some short snippets sound more like generic quiz show jingles, poor dated sounding music, character designs are awful. Ken's homeless look is ridiculous. Voice acting annoying, stories from uninteresting to outright silly.

Pricing is ridiculous and greedy although this hasn't affected my score. The small roster has. I only really enjoy around 6 characters. 18 to choose from is a bit lame these days.

The artwork unlocks come fast though and that is a nice little bonus.

I feel it has lost too much Street Fighter vibe now. Even when the game is fast, it still feels slow. I have had some input issues (PS4) where the down button isn't registering and I get standing kicks instead of sweeps. Small gripe but annoying all the same.

With its very dated design and sound choices and slow feel, it doesn't hold my interest for long.

I have several games that take preference for me over this at the moment. Mostly I find them more fun.

King of Fighter's 15 Mortal Kombat 11 Injustice 2 Blazblue Centralfiction Guilty Gear Strive Killer Instinct Garou Mark of the Wolves (IMO best fighter ever) Dead or Alive 6

I seem to chose one of these over SF6 everytime. I do prefer it to Tekken 7 though.

On the plus side, the three counters of throw, parry and drive, as mentioned earlier really do add a new dimension to gameplay. I just personally don't like that new dimension. It bores me a bit. Many people love it.

Is it worth £50, or £80 including DLC? No. If it was £10-£20 absolutely worth it.

Impressed and disappointed all at once here.

4.5 out of 10.

If they ditched the cheese, sped up the flow, fixed the slightly buggy controls, drastically improve the sounds and songs and lower the price and my score would shoot up.

After years of waiting, Street Fighter is finally back and stepping onto the latest consoles with Street Fighter 6, and while it doesn't necessarily shout about its newness visually, there are some huge changes under the hood.

With a significantly beefed-up singleplayer section of the game providing better on-ramps than ever, and a new control scheme that could completely rip up established assumptions about skill levels, it feels a bit like a fresh start for the fighting game giant.

This is amazing for learners and newcomers, making the most intimidating part of any fighting game way more trivial until you know enough to kick off the training wheels and take more control.

Street Fighter 6 retains the same basic gameplay seen in Street Fighter V and Street Fighter IV. Characters have a noticeable weight to them compared to older 2D installments, which makes their attacks feel more visceral and impactful. I've been playing these games for three decades so it was easy for me to acclimate to the controls in seconds. Capcom didn't mess with what works, which is great.

The hip-hop-inspired soundtrack is very reminiscent of Street Fighter III. Though I'm more partial to the rock-inspired tracks from older Street Fighter games like Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter 6's music fits well with the visuals and gets you pumped during battles.

It takes a lot to reinvent a 30-plus-year-old franchise while keeping step with tradition, but Capcom has succeeded admirably. This is a rare game where losing is still fun, because it all feeds the drive to improve, to find your warrior's path and maybe rack up some sweet wins along the way.

I primarily played Street Fighter 6 on the new World Tour mode (essentially campaign/story mode). I was pleasantly surprised how much effort was put into this to update the game and yet tell a coherent story. I don't know if any fighting game will ever have a literary-quality story (my favourite is still Def Jam Vendetta 2: Fighter For NY) but Capcom also didn't phone it in. The protagonist searches for the meaning of strength while gradually interacting with the rest of the roster and picking up styles and moves from sparring with them. There's a larger focus on the disappearance of his friend Bosch as well and that got the job done for me. But as much as I enjoyed playing through the story, I'd be remiss if I didn't also explain how it could be so subsequently frustrating. World Tour isn't super challenging until it is. Forget about facing characters leveled past you, you don't have any shot whatsoever. Certain battles took multiple attempts, spamming certain attacks or oodles of consumables just to finish. Difficulty can also spike randomly to infuriating results. I didn't love the lack of checkpoint in tournament-style engagements as well. If you've got 4 scheduled matches and you lose on fight 4, you're transported back to the beginning. This just seemed unfair to me and I would have to go fight random npcs over and over again to level up to a point that I would finally do sufficient damage. World Tour is surprisingly well crafted but I considered giving up at a couple of times too. The game can be punishing and that affected my enjoymen at times. I also enjoyed the largely goofy tone but it also felt like it was cribbing of some of the strange vibe from games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Street Fighter 6 was funny for sure but not wholly original in the weird directions it decided to go.

Street Fighter 6 allows you to either use classical controls or an updated version called modern. When you're not an exceptionally talented player (such as myself), the concessions the game makes to help more people get comfortable can be a tricky balance. You have to prioritize engagement with the uninitiated without ticking off veteran players. I was mostly satisfied with how the game functioned, I thought the controls were slick but still carried the much needed punch. I enjoyed stringing together combos and countering while blocking and playing defense far less than I should have. The bouncy tone of the game overall flows into the sound design. The pops and crunches boom in a way that's not realistic but they amp up the stakes. But I didn't find anything too buggy or discover any notable performance issues and with the state of gaming today, that's a low bar that's cleared far fewer times than it should be.

While I think World Tour was mostly well done and the mechanics are impressively accessible, I think the biggest draw for this game will be the varied cast of characters. While the NPC fighters get repetitive (which was predictable) I never got tired of interacting with or fighting as our main roster. They all are distinct, funny and fun-loving. Street Fighter 6 is not a subtle game but I also doubt that's what the creative team had in mind. The characters all have different styles that can be mastered and it's a lot of fun experimenting with each of them. They updated the designs of the characters while retaining the flavour and I appreciated the effort.

I can't say I loved/enjoyed every moment I spent playing Street Fighter but colour me impressed overall. I'm not going to touch on the online/co-op play, I would never consider myself good enough to even attempt to beat other people who play this game regularly. I know some of the fans are exclusively picking up the title for that side of the game but it's just not my forte. World Tour mode is a genuinely fun and surprisingly fresh take on the campaign of a brawling/fighting game despite some migraine-inducing difficulty spikes and some checkpoint systems that tilt the game in favour of the house. While I think the game will please a lot of fans of the franchise, Street Fighter 6 is a great introduction to new players and I think that's where it succeeds the best. The controls are easy to pick up, the characters are a lot of fun and I think the enthusiasm the game is reveling in borders on infectious. I got this 1/2 price on sale and I more than got my money's worth out of it. Fighting games can be a little intimidating but if you're looking for something to even play casually, I'd have no reservations about recommending Street Fighter 6.