Street Fighter 6 hands-on preview – new tricks of the old challenger

metro.co.uk:

GameCentral gets to play Street Fighter 6 for the first time, with a look at eight different characters, including the newly revealed Ken.

It’s a fact stated at the start of almost every preview or review, but fighting games have always been the hardest genre to innovate in. At least in racing games you can change the setting and level of realism, to create notably different experiences, but fighting games always come down to just two people punching each other. The problem becomes more acute with every sequel but that never stops either the developers or the fans, and after playing Street Fighter 6 it’s easy to understand why.

Although there’s strangely been no sign of a next gen Mortal Kombat yet, Tekken 8 was unveiled just this week and MultiVersus has already proven itself a surprisingly successful clone of Super Smash Bros. Street Fighter 6 was always an inevitability but while it immediately suffered a leak of all its characters it was less clear what sort of direction it would take in terms of gameplay.

The answer to that question is not an exciting or surprising one, with accessibility, ease of play, and avoiding the mistakes of Street Fighter 5 being top of the list. This is not a sequel attempting radical change but regardless of whether that’s even necessary the most important fact we’ve been able to discern, from our hour or so playing Street Fighter 6, is that it’s the most fun we’ve had with the series in a very long time.

If you were unaware, or had forgotten, Street Fighter 5 suffered a terrible launch, with poor online performance and a serious lack of content, especially in terms of single-player modes. We can’t really speak to the latter yet, but Capcom has teased a substantial story campaign, with open