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Street Fighter 6 It is the sign that learning from mistakes can help something to be better. This new installment has so many new features, that it left me with the hype running through my veins. I had fun playing and saw improvements by the handful. Capcom finally listened to our complaints and made many changes that will surprise you.
After testing the Closed Beta for a whole weekend and testing my skills, I will tell you the reasons why I am looking forward to the arrival of Street Fighter 6.
Related Video: Street Fighter 6 – – “Kimberly & Juri” Character Trailer
All in one place
I will start with the new face of the rooms or lobbies, a common space for all online warriors. The Battle Hub is so practical and attractive that it can make the organization of events and tournaments more organic, since dozens of players can be in a huge lobby full of stations with many activities. In past titles we were limited to seeing menus and selecting options to enter a fight, but now things are different. This is a great advance since in previous games there was nothing similar, we just entered a boring menu and formed an imaginary line while watching the matches. Now you can organize tournaments and while you wait, practice at a station, watch a live broadcast, find an opponent to warm up or walk around the hub to calm your nerves. Also, in Street Fighter 6 you can give it a special touch by creating your own character. The options menu is quite robust, thanks to this you can make your avatar look like you, create the waifu of your dreams or a monstrous creature taken from hell itself.
Rollback Netcode, the icing on the cake
The next item on this list is one of the most requested and one of the biggest concerns of the community: Online gaming. Let’s remember how disastrous the supposed rollback netcode of Street Fighter V, the truth is that nobody wants to go through the same degree of frustration with frozen screens, wholesale disconnections and abrupt corrections that made us lose ourselves in a sea of lag. Things have changed and I can assure you that the online game, which also has crossplay, feels great. Another aspect that I liked is that there are dedicated servers separated by region to guarantee a good connection. Do you want to try your luck with players from Asia and Europe? Will you be able to do it. In my case, I had games of acceptable quality with players from other countries, a situation that was practically impossible before. Capcom’s adaptation to technologies such as rollback netcode seems to be on the right track and there is still time to improve the final experience.
Legends and new challengers
For this closed beta we were able to choose from 8 different characters, all with a more realistic look than before thanks to the benefits of the RE Engine. I was able to try out Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Guile, Juri and Luke, who was the last downloadable character from Street Fighter V. In this installment, new characters were also added, such as Jamie, a martial artist who dominates the drunken style. This character can modify his attacks after a few drinks, and if he drinks enough he will awaken his true power. Jamie is a more complex character than the rest, since he has many variants of combos to confuse the enemy, everything changes according to the amount of drink in his body, and that makes him unpredictable. As for Kimberly, this new fighter uses the bushido style with a mix of music and street art. Let’s say she’s similar to Guy from Super Street Fighter IV but with an extra factor, the paint cans. Kimberly will run at full speed making smoke screens, leaving cans as mines and launching herself at the opponent to confuse them with her attack patterns. This ninja with good rhythm is a character with a lot of potential thanks to her movements that are so unique to her.
Most of the characters maintain the gameplay you already know with some unique characteristics, without the need to have a V-skill or V-trigger. These characteristics will make the difference when choosing a character. For example, Ryu will be able to charge his Denji Hadouken to make his projectiles have new characteristics, Ken can run to make his attacks more powerful and engulf them in fire, Guile can launch more powerful Sonic Booms to improve his pressure, among other advantages. This maintains a formula that worked very well in Street Fighter V and it is used to introduce a cocktail of new mechanics that are not really that new.
Drive Impact – Offense is always the best defense
There are many new features and changes in the game system that I will explain to you below. Street Fighter 6 revolves around the Drive bar, this meter will be full from the beginning of the fight and will deplete as you use it. But don’t worry, it will also fill up automatically as you play. The Drive is very important, since using EX moves will take a bit of this bar, but it has more interesting uses.
It is clear that to win you have to have a good attack and defense, a good way to fulfill both parts is with the Drive impact, this movement is very similar to the focus attack of Street Fighter IV and is paramount in battle. Using it allows you to absorb up to three hits to impact with great force and leave the opponent vulnerable or push him if he put guard, the interesting thing is that your enemy can react with a grab or absorb your Drive impact with another and punish you terribly. This causes the game to have one more factor in the options that you must predict or be attentive to react.
To make matters worse, once they take you to the corner – the worst place you can be in a fighting game – if you take this hit you will bounce off the wall even while guarding and you will be left watching birds if your drive bar is depleted . Inevitably they will give you the punishment of your life. The Drive Impact is a recurring tool that we will see many times in each game. A defensive option that derives from this is the Drive Reversal that allows you to push an enemy when you do not support the pressure. Very similar to the V-Reversal of Street Fighter V.
Drive Parry – Defend effortlessly
The next new thing is the Drive Parry, a simplified version of the parry system that we saw in Street Fighter III. By activating it you can stop any hit effortlessly by pressing two buttons. Using it will run you out of resources but will reward you with every hit you block. You can hold it down and use it until your Drive bar runs out, but if you activate it at the right time you’ll gain a few squares of advantage. This move is the least used, but it can save your life at high level.
Drive Rush – The Most Versatile Tool
As was the case with the Focus Attack in Street Fighter IV, the Drive Rush allows you to cancel hits to continue your attacks and link hits that you couldn’t before. You can do it as many times as you want, as long as you have resources. I took the opportunity to test this system and I was very happy to see how easy it is to exploit this mechanic. You can even add this move to change your pressure or take the enemy by surprise.
In summary, Street Fighter 6 has done a great job of giving us tools to create new combo paths, solid neutral gameplay, and visual appeal. All the action is loaded with effects, stains of paint or ink, as well as camera changes at key moments such as counters and Critical Arts. We can even see how the petals on the ground move when throwing a Hadouken in this scenario or Ryu’s muscles stiffen in his Critical Art.
the road to victory
Once I understood what was new, I decided to try my luck and jump right into the action. Challenging unknown players was very simple, you just enter a server, look for a machine with an empty place and voila, you will enter the fight. In case there is no one to play with or if you just want to practice for a while, you can take over a station and enter training mode while you wait. There are also many new features in this mode, since you will find a system that will help you understand all the necessary data to become a professional. When playing competitively it is important to take into account the exact data to know when a hit is in positive or negative numbers and also which hits can be canceled to extend your combos. Normally, this data is calculated mentally and the community is in charge of making extensive guides with all the numbers and some illustrations for reference. Now you will have everything in one place and it will be enough to see a bar that shows all this precisely. Having this at hand makes the learning process shorter and you will see that you will improve quickly. Of course, this is a resource that only fighting game nerds will appreciate, but if you think it’s too much there is always the option to save yourself the effort and play with your heart.
A street-fighter easier?
It is true that the game is easy and this trend has become very common in contemporary fighting games, but in the case of Street Fighter 6 it continues to be demanding and precise. The invitation to new players with the modern control mode makes everything more friendly but it seems that there will be no advantage to using it. With this mode there are changes: we have simplified sequences, only four attack buttons and auto combo. As always, it’s a good way to approach beginners but in competition it probably won’t be used. For everything else, there is the classic control that works as usual, so you don’t have to worry.
Street Fighter 6 It is not revolutionary, but it is indisputable that Capcom has corrected its errors and has improved the game in all aspects. This first approach left a good taste in my mouth and we look forward to the final version with the World Tour mode and the rest of the characters. Let’s cross our fingers that Street Fighter 6 is not plagued by microtransactions and can usher in a new era of the fighting genre.
Street Fighter 6 It will arrive on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC, it is known that its premiere will take place in 2023 but the date has not yet been confirmed. Follow this link to see more news related to this fighting game.
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