I can’t believe how nice everyone is in Street Fighter 6

Street Fighter 6 is something a bit special, isn’t it? As Alex mentioned in his Street Fighter 6 review, you can tell from the moment you start playing Capcom’s latest fighter that it’s actually an all-time game. The incredible balance of the fighting system, the well thought out comeback options, the weight with which you can punish whiffs, the variable and meaningful options open to even the most resourceful characters… this is Street Fighter at its peak and a foundation strong for the next decade, if not decades, of the series’ life.

And we desperate fighting game dependents here at VG247 aren’t the only people who think this, either – take a casual look at the industry right now (beyond all the smoke and hellfire summoned by Diablo 4) and you’ll see that almost everyone is also learning their half circles, Dragon Punches, and Drive Parry. It’s the most played fighting game on Steam, and it’s only been out for a week. The numbers say a lot.

I am by no means a very good Street Fighter player. I can get past Bronze in the game’s ranking system and then start fighting players who really know what they’re doing (and know how to keep Cammy and her Hooligan combo at bay, despite their new lag-based properties). ) . So over the past weekend, I’ve started to lose more than I win, but I don’t care, I want to get better and losing is part of that battle.

In previous games, constant losses and a complete annihilation from the occasional perfect KO (don’t judge me) could have resulted in characters picking on me or glib messages in game chat telling me to go to bed since it’s beyond me. from my bedtime. Given the fact that I have personal information about my lifestyle represented by in-game cosmetics, some players have even insulted me in the past. However, in Street Fighter 6, everyone is charming.

“GGs”, a fighter, a particularly competent Guile, pinged me after I lost a set. “Keep it up, your cross game needs to improve.” This same player later requested a fight with his supporting character Juri where I managed to pull off some meaty combos, you guessed it, my upgraded crossovers. “NICE” came the ping next. He made me smile, that.

Later, in the Battle Hub, a lobby that’s been styled like a big old-fashioned arcade where you can line up in booths and play winner-take-all games, things were more balanced; trading profits and losses in equal measure. Virtually every fight ended with another player sending one of the standard responses the game allows you to use: “I had a great time today” or “that was fun” or “thank you!”. It’s a small thing, but these constant assertions make the whole game feel really friendly, even when the combat can get pretty heated.

Thanks to the public chat lobby, you can also see this pleasure everywhere: someone gets absolutely hit by a particularly airborne Honda and says “wow, I didn’t get a chance, I want to reverse it” in public chat. Someone loses two perfect rounds against a Ryu who has clearly been playing Street Fighter since the ’90s and says “let’s see if you can do that against my Zan, rematch?” It really gives everything a calm and pleasant atmosphere. It makes me want to spend more time in the game, and that’s always a good thing.

And all this goodwill is making me a better and kinder player too. Street Fighter 6’s version of ‘Button Ken’ is already showing off as ‘Modern Ken’: players who don’t really know what they’re doing, spam shoryukens and rely on automated combos to pressure you into submission. There are definitely a few of these guys hanging around the Battle Hub like aggy sharks, but when one pops up, I’m kinder and more understanding: they’re just trying to have a good time, too. They just want to play. Teaching them that doing the same old thing over and over again isn’t effective is an act of kindness. Thank goodness for Drives, Drive Rushes and Parries – a perfect complement to easier entry control schemes!

If it’s not clear from this gushing article, I really like Street Fighter 6: I like how it plays, I like how it looks, and most of all, I like what it’s doing for the fighting game community. I’m already excited to learn the intricacies of your system for years and years and years to come.