Street Fighter 6 Review

thesixthaxis.com:

It’s 1992, I’m nine years old on holiday in Cornwall, and upon entering the arcades for the first time, I see Street Fighter II. I had never played a fighting game before, but I was instantly hooked. My love affair with fighting has grown stronger over time, and thirty-one years later, having played every Street Fighter game going alongside many other fighters out there, I think Street Fighter 6 might be my favourite.

Improving a tried and tested formula is difficult. Many would argue that Third Strike was the series high and that, while Street Fighters IV and V were very good, Capcom never quite recaptured the magic. Street Fighter 6 is a different story.

From a technical standpoint alone, Street Fighter 6 has a very high skill ceiling with the flexibility of the Drive Gauge opening up so many avenues in gameplay for players to exploit. You can spend portions of your gauge to buff special moves like EX moves of old, or you can spend it on a Drive Parry – a parry made famous in Third Strike – while Drive Impact echoes Street Fighter IV’s Focus attacks, letting you absorb hits from your opponent and then delivering a blow that sends the enemy reeling. There’s also Drive Reversaling, an easy way to alleviate pressure from your opponents and to push them away.

The most exciting of the Drive Gauge applications is the Drive Rush. This lets you cancel out of animations early with a forward dash, adding frames to normal attacks in the process. For example, a crouching medium punch might be +2 frames on hit, but if done out of a Drive Rush, it will now be +6 frames, allowing for combos you couldn’t do before.

All uses of the Drive Gauge come with a risk/reward factor, where fully depleting your Gauge will leave you in a burnt out