Impressions from playing Street Fighter 6

Thanks to the kindness of the publisher Capcom and the Czech distributor, Cenega, we had the opportunity to fly to Warsaw to try out one of the most anticipated fighting games of today: Street Fighter 6 with its own (er, theirs, borrowed) controller in the nineties on the Sega Mega Drive console, which I haven’t encountered in recent years. I was even more impressed by the modern processing of graphics and animation and, above all, the depth of the game mechanics. As strange as it may sound, the biggest surprise for me was the sound of the game.

Street Fighter 6 includes an AI commentary feature that is very similar to the commentators in classic sports games like football or hockey. However, it uses the voice of one of the real stars of the commentary scene, charged with the energy that you would usually hear at real live Evo championships. Smooth and quite enthusiastic commentary on everything you and your opponent do in the game during the fight adds a whole new dimension to the whole gameplay and really makes you feel like you are fighting in a professional tournament. Also, a side effect of this feature is a better understanding of the situations and twists of the fight itself. I must say, I really enjoyed this feature and it added even more spice to the matches.

Mechanically, the core of the game is the “Drive” mechanic, which is tied to a second “energy” bar located beneath your health bar. Drive gives you access to a whole constellation of additional attacks and counters that will allow you to close the distance between you and your opponent faster or, conversely, “counter” their attack, which will not only push you away, but also punish you. However, you must be careful not to use up all of your Drive energy, because then your character will slow down noticeably and, of course, lose access to the aforementioned abilities. On the contrary, it is in your best interest to force your opponent to waste this energy.

The game’s controls also offer a wealth of options: you have the option of playing with a full-blown “classic” setting, which requires complex and precise button combinations for all special moves, or a simplified “modern” setting, where the game does a lot of the special moves for you with a single button press – so you can, for example, immediately launch the famous Hadouken attack with a single button. On paper, the modern setting may seem like an unfair advantage, but the reality is that a seasoned veteran will have more precise control over what their character does every millisecond thanks to the classic setting. And having the modern settings will help newcomers use more advanced strokes.

Street Fighter 6 will be released on June 2 for PC (Steam), Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 4 and 5.