Ah, Street Fighter V…what a fucked up little creature you were. On one hand, I truly believe you matured into something vaguely charming by the end of your run-time, be it through fantastical idea-driven character kits or Dan funko pop music videos. On the other, you never really grew out of being stamped from head to toe with e-sports stickers, even on dead children’s skulls. My only wish was that the creatives who seemed to be genuinely passionate could pull out all the stops this time, pleading to the higher ups to let this one have a soul.
I’d describe my experience with Street Fighter 6 so far by quoting a friend; “I like the game more every time I play it”. My first impressions trying the game were marred with occasional looks of concern; the game is trying to do a LOT at once. And with the way the Drive system is designed, if any part of its tightly intertwined systems didn’t work for me, it’ll get tangled up and fall apart. So, let’s talk about Drive.
Read an interview with any major Fighting game developer, and you’ll see a lot of talk about wanting to get players to the juiciest part of a match as fast as possible. The gamers yearn for no neutral, get us to where we hit each other with the big buttons NOW! As a genre veteran, these changes are not for me, I like neutral! Yet, I think Street Fighter 6’s core systems play a perfect balancing act for both demographics - every round of the game starting with a full Drive gauge results in every match’s pacing left entirely in the player’s hands. When I was watching EVO, there were parts during the grand finals in which AngryBird (awesome tag, btw), as Ken, would literally Drive Rush to the opponent every single time they won an interaction. This naturally scared me that Drive Rush would be too centralizing, so I tried to glue myself to the opponent like that online, and, well…IT'S HARD. If you find the right opportunities, you can consistently dump and regain meter and have complete control over the match, but mess up once and you’ll get sent to burnout. It’s exhilarating! You can also tell that these mechanics are supposed to double as crutches as you learn how to control your character, so the way it enables a character’s strengths feels like it’ll only get less rigid as time goes on. Drive Impact’s been and still is pretty contentious; makes me think back to what Daigo said about it being too overwhelming for new players, but not that relevant at serious-level play. It has a lot of tiny nuances, though - spending gauge on it to get rid of your opponent’s gauge feels so frenetic. This comes up both in blockstrings and combos too, it ends up complimenting the system’s back and forth greatly. My gut tells me this mechanic will always feel a bit meatheaded, but it does meaningfully elevate the sense of scramble in every match I play. The input does feel a bit awkward on my big stupid fightstick, though…
Overall, Drive has injected the game with a certain je ne sais quoi in which what you get out of this set of system mechanics is genuinely diverse from player to player. I think that is neat :)
With this clean of a learning curve, I’ve gotten a hold of a few characters so far.
Ryu received a new move in his toolkit: Denjin Charge, allowing him to charge up his next special, although it’s a bit weak as an oki. However, where it becomes a necessity is in fireball wars, so that you can take reins of the match’s pacing at a far range. It’s also the first in a long line of recurring trends in the cast of distinct resource management bars. In characters like Ryu’s case, these tools often work in the character’s favour to force the opponent’s hand into spending Drive gauge in order to make a push, although others also can use their own Drive to build up their resources too. And on a more macro level, this also counterbalances how the meter works in this game, since Drive’s ever presence means you don’t really have goals to work towards other than raw damage via Supers. Interesting stuff!
Ken, on the other hand, is the pace breaker. He's got a command dash that gives him a Shoryuken that goes through projectiles, or a Tatsumaki that drags your opponent to the corner. Alongside a new special, Dragonlash Kick, which can anti-air people from across the stage to get in. Ken has all the tools in the world to make big callouts from mid-range to twist through the game’s spiraling offense. This alongside all of his weirdo kicks returning embodies the ethos of the returning cast of this game having matured, now operating at their fullest form.
On the contrast, all the newcomers are designed with naturally intuitive simple move-sets that teach new players how fighting games work through pointed strengths and weaknesses. My only gripe being sometimes these characters feel too simple for my taste - or maybe Manon’s moveset essentially just being 2 grapples, a DP, a low, and an overhead is just lame. Consistently wonderful art direction, though; Jamie, for example, comes off as the type of character with so many moving parts to his design, I don’t know if he even would’ve worked in the aesthetic plateau of Street Fighter III.
Even the soundtrack! Lots of friends who have similar tastes to me don’t like it, fuckin’…JPEGMAFIA said it sucks, so maybe I’m just wrong on this. Don’t get me wrong either, I don’t like every track or anything, Marisa and JP’s themes are kinda sleeper. But…my heart soars at playing playing scroungy high risk mid-range against Ryu, or making quick decisions every second against Jamie. Every track in the game shifts with every single round, even the stage themes!! And all I can say is that not just through being dynamic, but on a compositional level, this is the first Street Fighter game since III in which the songs match the flow of battles. Like, Rashid’s theme uses an uncommon time signature, these guys know what they’re doing. I also know some Brazilians who have vouched that Blanka’s theme has a studied understanding of Funk carioca, so being cultured is a plus too. And when I say we’ve returned to something similar to Street Fighter III, I must also emphasize that this is not a throwback soundtrack either. You’ll hear traces of trap, k-pop, cloud - this is the first entry to progress the series’ place in time in 25 years, but time didn’t stay still. So, will Street Fighter 6 embody our modern culture as well as Third Strike encapsulated the 90s? no but i can dream
If there’s anything I’m not completely on board regarding how people talk about this game, I’m not sure how much I personally value its capital C Content quantity. World Tour’s kinda got that stank over-budgeted PS2 game pussy, in a “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and you can tell why they stopped” sorta way. I unfortunately did not enjoy my short time with the mode much - balancing story mode through the means of RPG stats, rather than the actual expressive mechanics of a fighter, catches the appeal of neither for me. I am not a superfluous gamer girl and if the punching is good I don’t need this stuff!!!! But I get it, I do honestly get it! We’re fighting game fans, we know these games only matter if people play them, and we pray for those big money pitches on the back of the box to make an impact on people. And this time, they did!! It actually worked!!
STREET FIGHTER IS BACK, DUDE!!
I CAN ASK MY FRIENDS WHO AREN’T COMPLETE LOSERS TO PLAY IT WITH ME
THERE’S LUKE X JAMIE YAOI ON MY TWITTER TIMELINE
EVO JUST HIT A NEW ATTENDANCE WORLD RECORD
I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO MENTION THE GOOD NETCODE, MATCHMAKING, OR CROSS-PLAY, THAT’S HOW FAR WE’VE COME
I’m apparently easy enough to please that I genuinely enjoyed my time with Street Fighter V, after purchasing Champion Edition in 2021. So, the best way to describe what it means to me for Street Fighter to be ‘back’ is that I’m going to make memories of this series again. Seeing and helping friends learn it, fighting long-time rivals and feeling the rush of tension and joy, or just kinda mashing out and laughing… It’s a dream come true!! Let’s not let it end too quickly :)
(Written with only about 60 hours of playtime and I’m a platinum player, don’t take my thoughts too seriously compared to a pro ´･ᴗ･` )
I’d describe my experience with Street Fighter 6 so far by quoting a friend; “I like the game more every time I play it”. My first impressions trying the game were marred with occasional looks of concern; the game is trying to do a LOT at once. And with the way the Drive system is designed, if any part of its tightly intertwined systems didn’t work for me, it’ll get tangled up and fall apart. So, let’s talk about Drive.
Read an interview with any major Fighting game developer, and you’ll see a lot of talk about wanting to get players to the juiciest part of a match as fast as possible. The gamers yearn for no neutral, get us to where we hit each other with the big buttons NOW! As a genre veteran, these changes are not for me, I like neutral! Yet, I think Street Fighter 6’s core systems play a perfect balancing act for both demographics - every round of the game starting with a full Drive gauge results in every match’s pacing left entirely in the player’s hands. When I was watching EVO, there were parts during the grand finals in which AngryBird (awesome tag, btw), as Ken, would literally Drive Rush to the opponent every single time they won an interaction. This naturally scared me that Drive Rush would be too centralizing, so I tried to glue myself to the opponent like that online, and, well…IT'S HARD. If you find the right opportunities, you can consistently dump and regain meter and have complete control over the match, but mess up once and you’ll get sent to burnout. It’s exhilarating! You can also tell that these mechanics are supposed to double as crutches as you learn how to control your character, so the way it enables a character’s strengths feels like it’ll only get less rigid as time goes on. Drive Impact’s been and still is pretty contentious; makes me think back to what Daigo said about it being too overwhelming for new players, but not that relevant at serious-level play. It has a lot of tiny nuances, though - spending gauge on it to get rid of your opponent’s gauge feels so frenetic. This comes up both in blockstrings and combos too, it ends up complimenting the system’s back and forth greatly. My gut tells me this mechanic will always feel a bit meatheaded, but it does meaningfully elevate the sense of scramble in every match I play. The input does feel a bit awkward on my big stupid fightstick, though…
Overall, Drive has injected the game with a certain je ne sais quoi in which what you get out of this set of system mechanics is genuinely diverse from player to player. I think that is neat :)
With this clean of a learning curve, I’ve gotten a hold of a few characters so far.
Ryu received a new move in his toolkit: Denjin Charge, allowing him to charge up his next special, although it’s a bit weak as an oki. However, where it becomes a necessity is in fireball wars, so that you can take reins of the match’s pacing at a far range. It’s also the first in a long line of recurring trends in the cast of distinct resource management bars. In characters like Ryu’s case, these tools often work in the character’s favour to force the opponent’s hand into spending Drive gauge in order to make a push, although others also can use their own Drive to build up their resources too. And on a more macro level, this also counterbalances how the meter works in this game, since Drive’s ever presence means you don’t really have goals to work towards other than raw damage via Supers. Interesting stuff!
Ken, on the other hand, is the pace breaker. He's got a command dash that gives him a Shoryuken that goes through projectiles, or a Tatsumaki that drags your opponent to the corner. Alongside a new special, Dragonlash Kick, which can anti-air people from across the stage to get in. Ken has all the tools in the world to make big callouts from mid-range to twist through the game’s spiraling offense. This alongside all of his weirdo kicks returning embodies the ethos of the returning cast of this game having matured, now operating at their fullest form.
On the contrast, all the newcomers are designed with naturally intuitive simple move-sets that teach new players how fighting games work through pointed strengths and weaknesses. My only gripe being sometimes these characters feel too simple for my taste - or maybe Manon’s moveset essentially just being 2 grapples, a DP, a low, and an overhead is just lame. Consistently wonderful art direction, though; Jamie, for example, comes off as the type of character with so many moving parts to his design, I don’t know if he even would’ve worked in the aesthetic plateau of Street Fighter III.
Even the soundtrack! Lots of friends who have similar tastes to me don’t like it, fuckin’…JPEGMAFIA said it sucks, so maybe I’m just wrong on this. Don’t get me wrong either, I don’t like every track or anything, Marisa and JP’s themes are kinda sleeper. But…my heart soars at playing playing scroungy high risk mid-range against Ryu, or making quick decisions every second against Jamie. Every track in the game shifts with every single round, even the stage themes!! And all I can say is that not just through being dynamic, but on a compositional level, this is the first Street Fighter game since III in which the songs match the flow of battles. Like, Rashid’s theme uses an uncommon time signature, these guys know what they’re doing. I also know some Brazilians who have vouched that Blanka’s theme has a studied understanding of Funk carioca, so being cultured is a plus too. And when I say we’ve returned to something similar to Street Fighter III, I must also emphasize that this is not a throwback soundtrack either. You’ll hear traces of trap, k-pop, cloud - this is the first entry to progress the series’ place in time in 25 years, but time didn’t stay still. So, will Street Fighter 6 embody our modern culture as well as Third Strike encapsulated the 90s? no but i can dream
If there’s anything I’m not completely on board regarding how people talk about this game, I’m not sure how much I personally value its capital C Content quantity. World Tour’s kinda got that stank over-budgeted PS2 game pussy, in a “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore, and you can tell why they stopped” sorta way. I unfortunately did not enjoy my short time with the mode much - balancing story mode through the means of RPG stats, rather than the actual expressive mechanics of a fighter, catches the appeal of neither for me. I am not a superfluous gamer girl and if the punching is good I don’t need this stuff!!!! But I get it, I do honestly get it! We’re fighting game fans, we know these games only matter if people play them, and we pray for those big money pitches on the back of the box to make an impact on people. And this time, they did!! It actually worked!!
STREET FIGHTER IS BACK, DUDE!!
I CAN ASK MY FRIENDS WHO AREN’T COMPLETE LOSERS TO PLAY IT WITH ME
THERE’S LUKE X JAMIE YAOI ON MY TWITTER TIMELINE
EVO JUST HIT A NEW ATTENDANCE WORLD RECORD
I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO MENTION THE GOOD NETCODE, MATCHMAKING, OR CROSS-PLAY, THAT’S HOW FAR WE’VE COME
I’m apparently easy enough to please that I genuinely enjoyed my time with Street Fighter V, after purchasing Champion Edition in 2021. So, the best way to describe what it means to me for Street Fighter to be ‘back’ is that I’m going to make memories of this series again. Seeing and helping friends learn it, fighting long-time rivals and feeling the rush of tension and joy, or just kinda mashing out and laughing… It’s a dream come true!! Let’s not let it end too quickly :)
(Written with only about 60 hours of playtime and I’m a platinum player, don’t take my thoughts too seriously compared to a pro ´･ᴗ･` )