Street Fighter VI - Here Comes a New Challenger! PS5, XSX, PC in 2023!

[Gambit]

This feels so good.

 

I bounced off V straight after lauch so this is my return to Street Fighter and I just love the way it plays. At least I did once I figured out how to change the controls from Modern back to Classic.

 

[moosegrinder]

 

Sharing this mainly because of how visually arresting the game is.

[joffocakes]

Managed to aquire a code close to midnight last night (an anonymous twitter friend felt sorry for me) then instead of playing the game I spent about an hour and a half making a Rufus.

 

 

[Benny]

I hope you realise just how traumatising that is for lots of us.

[Nick R]

1 hour ago, joffocakes said:

Managed to aquire a code close to midnight last night (an anonymous twitter friend felt sorry for me) then instead of playing the game I spent about an hour and a half making a Rufus.

 

 

 

But does his round belly shake when he divekicks you, like a bowl full of jelly?

[Qazimod]

I'm watching some gameplay from Maximilian and he pointed out some interesting things about stage selection. Apparently you can set preferences for stages that you want to have in a rotation/selection, and the stage you see during matches will be unique to you. This means that if you're sick of the Training Room, you can deselect it... and it won't affect your opponent's preferences.  

[Benny]

From what I've been watching of this so far it looks genuinely incredibly well put together. Capcom are really back to their A game.

[Lying Cat]

I’m getting increasingly excited about this one. I tend to pick up and play fighters a bit, and I always enjoy them, but the last one I really got into and bothered to properly truly learn was SFIII and that was pretty much a million years ago.

 

It feels completely unfounded, but I’m sort of getting those sorts of bursts of spontaneous excitement and enthusiasm here.

 

Eeek. 
 

For the record, and to be super clear, I have no idea if this is going to reach the heights of SFIII, I’m just talking about my human emotional reaction to it and watching people play. And I don’t get the same sense from other fighters for the most part.

[wretcherd]

50 minutes ago, Qazimod said:

This means that if you're sick of the Training Room, you can deselect it... and it won't affect your opponent's preferences.  

 

Yes, demonstrated here:

[mechamonkey]

I absolutely hate everything about this beta apart from the punching bits. It's gone from insta-buy to fuck no. 

To clarify I've bought a billionty SF games but absolutely fucking no way am I getting this, I cannot believe how much I hate it.

[Goemon]

Data mining of the PC version has started.

 

People have been using the recorded commentary to get an idea of what the new characters are about as move names and kinda what they do are mentioned. 
 

 

[Benny]

10 hours ago, mechamonkey said:

I absolutely hate everything about this beta apart from the punching bits. It's gone from insta-buy to fuck no. 

To clarify I've bought a billionty SF games but absolutely fucking no way am I getting this, I cannot believe how much I hate it.

 

What is it you hate about it?

[wretcherd]

"Everything apart from the punching" so I'm guessing the PlayStation Home stuff. 

[jonny_rat]

I genuinely quite enjoyed the lobby setup, walking my horrible monstrous avatar around it like a big arcade. The menu and interface design and aesthetics are nice and consistent too. It's all good stuff.

 

But there's plenty of stuff that needed work. The way that you set your control scheme is unbelievably complicated for one thing! 

 

And it was all a bit shonky, had constant connection errors, but that's to be expected. The matches I had were super solid though??

[joffocakes]

The important stuff is being discovered. 

 

 

[imp]

Didn’t manage to play till quite late friday but I was on and off it most of Saturday. Jesus I’m awful at Street Fighter these days! I’m enjoying it, but do have some niggles.

Firstly, the netcode seems great. The only rollbacks I’ve had were with a player in the US and even at over 150 ping it was surprisingly playable! The drive system seems very cool. It’s big and loud and fun to use and I really like how many mechanics are tied to it.

 

In particular I love how drive rush changes the properties of an attack - with Juri you can drive rush into her f.MK overhead and link off it with cr.MP, which is as delicious as you imagine considering you can also go low with cr.MK off the drive rush as well. The tug of war RPS with the very focus-attack like drive impact is also great fun, especially when the corner is involved as if you hit the cornered player you either get a fully stun or a guaranteed combo if they get knocked into the wall. This one I’m not so sure about in the long run but it’s great fun right now. 

 

Fighting feels fairly solid, but IDK, I think the mocap animation makes it feel a teensy bit less solid that SFIV when attacks connect. There’s tonnes of screen shake to sell the impact of a hit, but somehow it’s not quite fully doing it for me. The animation is nice for the most part and combos feel pretty good to land, but I think the newer characters are a bit rum because of the animation. Jamie and Luke in particular have pretty ambiguous animations which makes it unintuitive when they’re punishable on block. I suppose this is the case with most fighting games these days though, so it’s probably more an issue of experience. 
 

I’ve mostly been playing Juri, and she’s tonnes of fun. Ryu seems very strong, as he always does before the first balance patch. His crouching medium kick is insane at the moment! I really hate his game win animation though, where he does a sort of angry flex. Feels a bit off for the character if you ask me. TBH, all the characters come off a big smug and annoying in their win animations. Well, with the possible exception of Chun, I’ve never seen her win screen. 😎

 

Throw ranges seem downright ridiculous by the way. Hope they’re toned down a wee bit before the final game, I’m already sick of jump in button, throw upon landing!

 

Chalk me up as another one not in love with the battle hub. I love the jazz, but hate the clean space station aesthetic. Why does it look like this when everything else is so hip-hop inflected? Feels totally weird to me. I didn’t bother with the character creator as I was desperate to just get into some fights when I finally got my chance to play on Friday, but it looks pretty robust huh!

 

All in all I’m very excited for the final game. I fear I’ve rotted my SF brain away with Guilty Gear so it’s going to be a steep climb back, but I’m very much looking forward to playing y’all like times of old. 

 

 

 

[imp]

Oh, and the Critical Art animations are way, way too long. I’m sick of all of ‘em already!

[Nick R]

Excellent Adventures of Xian and Mike Ross:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gambit]

A wild Mike Ross appears! I've not seen him since he rocked up at Evo pre-covid looking like Donald Glover.

 

I absolutely love this game. It's instantly getting pre ordered along with a Hori stick because fuck me it's good.

[imp]

Been playing a good chunk of Kimberly this afternoon. I think she might be the kind of cheap I need to win at this game! Plus having no DP motions is excellent for my leverless lifestyle right now. 

[joffocakes]

I definitely agree on the disappointly sterile look of the battle hub. I want an old arcade. Every footstep on the gaudy, sticky carpet should sound like wet velcro.

[Hyper P]

From a casual/washed-up perspective, this is great fun! Feels about the right pace, some of basics are easy but there’s clearly a lot potential in the drive stuff. The corner is so much more dangerous now!

[Hyper P]

The hub should be a SEGA Game Center circa 2199AD

[imp]

Holy crap Xian had me in stitches episode 1. 
 

Spoiler

SFV throw loops into SFIV EX DP on the opponent’s wake-up!

 

[mechamonkey]

I've completely 180'd on this now like an absolute idiot.
Once switching to classic controls, playing on a ps4 instead of PS5 so my stick worked and doing the tutorials its proper grown on me. 
Loving the arcade machines in the lobby and seeing some truly bizarre characters walking round.
Must have had a right  grump on me last night sorry.

[imp]

9 hours ago, imp said:

Been playing a good chunk of Kimberly this afternoon. I think she might be the kind of cheap I need to win at this game! Plus having no DP motions is excellent for my leverless lifestyle right now. 

 

Holy heck, I think I found my main chicken. Kimberly is ridiculous fun!

 

 

[Escape]

I don't like the idea of metered mechanics being so powerful that you can only respond with your own or block. Is there any natural evasion or punishment? I'd much rather they reduced the complexity on that side and expanded movesets instead, with a lot more characters like IV's Dudley. (Be fun to see Abel's rolls in this!)

 

But then I've always been a 3D fan foremost, so just preference. I'd like to split the properties of EX moves, for example, where two buttons give armour but no extra damage, and the other two buttons vice versa. I recently said that Viper and 3S Akuma are my favourites because they're almost complete without meter; they've a freedom that makes 2D less oppressive.

 

It's that lockdown pressure that so many 2D fans love, but for as long as balancing favours ubiquity, the more of these mechanics they add the less interesting I find them. I'm down with tying almost anything to the uniqueness of a character, which is why I've soured on the more recent Tekkens for how rage has homogenised their gameplay.

[imp]

9 hours ago, Escape said:

I don't like the idea of metered mechanics being so powerful that you can only respond with your own or block. Is there any natural evasion or punishment? I'd much rather they reduced the complexity on that side and expanded movesets instead, with a lot more characters like IV's Dudley. (Be fun to see Abel's rolls in this!)

 

 

Are you talking about drive impact? You can beat it by either throwing, doing a super, or somehow landing 3 hits before the animation finishes (or is it 4, it has a finite amount of armour regardless). You can also neutral jump it and punish from behind. I'm quite curious how prominent it'll end up being once the game is figured out a bit because it does seem ludicrously strong day one if you mash it during an opponent's blockstring.

 

I'm probably on the other side of the fence from you on expanded character movesets, I think it's one of the things that's stopped me ever really gelling with 3D fighters (though I won't let that stop me trying out Tekken 8 I reckon), but to give an example I was already falling off SFV a when they introduced V-Trigger and V-Skill 2s to the game and that was basically the nail in the coffin for me because I couldn't be bothered to learn all the variance these news moves would add for a cast of 25+ characters!

 

Also, I think I have to count myself among the truly excited for this game now, I cannot wait to get stuck in!

[Kayin Amoh]

I have seen some people who were jonesing for this having concerns about certain things in the beta. I'm still very optimistic, it looks pretty ace. Guess I'm back to Ken and Cammy though, the cast's gotten rid of most of my more recent faves.

 

Truth is though, I don't really play fighters long term now. Thought I would with KoF XV and Strive and I enjoyed them for a little bit then put them aside. I'd be surprised if SF6 broke that trend, but I hope it does.

 

Edit: 

 

[Goemon]

Interesting information on frame data here.

 

It seems now that most normals are negative on block, which is a huge change from SFV. No more sitting in lockdown while the opponent sits there spamming their +3, now you’ve got limited options or you’ve got to spend drive meter to get your plus.