One of my favorite fighting games is Street Fighter 6. It has a lot of things to do right out of the gate. The studio has provided a diversity of game modes, fighting styles, and creative opportunities for personal expression. It works both to reflect and rebuff any fears that the studio would repeat its past mistake. Battle Hub, Fighting Ground, and the single-player focused World Tour mode are all fully-featured game modes in Street Fighter 6.
World Tour is unlike anything I’ve seen before in a fighting game, like something like a Yakuza-lite. The World Tour storyline doesn’t feature much, but there are some cute character developments. You do this by using their movesets in combat, defeating enemies who use their own fighting style, completing requests, and, humorously, by buying them gifts. The real beauty of World Tour lies in its variety, not its shallow storyline. Mixing special moves from the entire roster with a character’s fighting style is a lot of fun. World Tour lets you piece together intentionally broken characters and it’s undeniably enjoyable. Not only for discovering new combo paths, but also to better understand how every core fighter on the roster was created and balanced.
As entertaining as World Tour can be, it’s the Fighting Grounds mode where you’ll initially sink the majority of your time with Street Fighter 6. It’s here where you’ll sharpen your skills, test them against other players offline, and take part in more traditional activities. A classic Arcade mode, and new ‘extreme battle’ mode which allows you to fight with modifiers that spice encounters up. The training systems offered throughout are extremely robust. It doesn’t matter if you’re a total beginner or a seasoned pro. Street Fighter 6 offers you all the tools you need to gradually improve. Inputs and attacks are displayed here, as is frame data. This clearly shows who has a slight advantage for you and your opponent.
When you get tired of training, you can always have fun in Arcade mode, and fight with AI characters whose actions are fleshed out by artwork and voiceovers. The arcade mode ladder is where you’ll find the most real Street Fighter story elements. So if you’re wondering who the new final boss JP is, and how he fits in, you’d be better off firing through World Tour. After you’ve mastered the basics, your time will be largely spent on the Battle Hub. It’s a big online arcade filled with cabinets. You can play Street Fighter 6, ghosts n’ goblins, Strider, and other Capcom classics as your World Tour mode avatar.
Naturally, the most important component of any fighting game are the unique systems that give it its own particular flavor. Street Fighter 3 had its parries, Street Fighter 5 had the V-System, and Street Fighter 6 has the Drive System – and it might just be the most interesting developments in the series’ history. It is all governed by a single meter, the Drive Gauge. And by spending certain amounts of this you can perform several different actions. There’s the Drive Reversal, which acts almost identically to the V-Reversal in Street Fighter 5. Performed by hitting both heavy attack buttons whilst blocking, essentially acts as a ‘get off me’ move and knocks your opponent away, temporarily mitigating any pressure they may be putting up on you.
Whether you’re a hardcore fighting game player or a casual Street Fighter fan who hasn’t touched the series for a generation or so, Street Fighter 6 has something for you. It manages to offer enough reason for both sides to dip their toes into the other side’s water. It’s a strong package. Arguably the best overall fighting game package ever made. But it’d all be for naught if the fighting system that underpins it all wasn’t up to much. Street Fighter 6 is the most flexible, versatile and expressive Street Fighter game to date, a wonderful start or a wonderful continuation, a superb opportunity for those with 30 hours or 3000 hours to play.
