In short, the Street Fighter 6 closed beta was the best fighting game beta I’ve ever played.And I’m not talking about the quality of the game – although it is For real good. I’m talking about everything from the presentation, to the excellent netcode, to the gorgeous battle hub, to the ease of finding matches, to the sheer number of accessible options and modes. The most important is training mode. Betas of fighting games will be standard at this point. For Street Fighter 6’s closed beta, we checked all the boxes, then added new ones, and checked them too.
First, let’s talk about the actual game. I’ve been playing Street Fighter 6 at many gaming events over the past few months. After hours of beta play, strong first impressions still hold up. Street Fighter 6 feels great. It’s hard-hitting, fast-paced, and has a great drive system that opens up a whole world of new tools and options for every character.
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One of the big takeaways from using the beta was how much I loved the Drive Rush mechanic. Basically, you can sacrifice his one bar on the drive meter to quickly perform a glowing green dash and move from there. This was an especially important technique when facing off against Guile players who were eager to spend the entire match in full screen and bombarded me with sonic booms all day. Then land a slow or sneaky low attack to catch you off guard and put yourself in a more advantageous position.
And that’s just one way to use this technique. When the drive meter reaches 3, you can cancel certain attacks with Dry Rush and continue the combo. For example, if you hit an opponent at mid-range with a poke that doesn’t normally combo, you can use dry rush cancel to dash in and combo off from what you normally get a single hit. The whole system brings a lot of flexibility to Street Fighter 6’s combo system, and I can’t wait to experiment more once we have the full game.
Drive impact. This maneuver will be the difference between success and failure for people when it comes to how much they enjoy Street Fighter 6’s combat system compared to other entries. Drive Impact is a very powerful strike that can unleash up to 3 normal attacks, delivering a devastating blow that crumples enemies and allows for perfect combos. Additionally, it can also be used against enemies in corners, bouncing off walls even if blocked, giving you combo opportunities. I’ve gone back and forth on how I felt about Drive Impact throughout the beta, but I’ve finally gotten to a place where I appreciate what it brings to the table .
A very powerful technique indeed, but there are still countermeasures.Feels slow to boot However Once you’ve learned enough to react and respond to it, you can use your Drive Impact to absorb attacks and punish them with your own full combos. You can also punish by jumping over it, parrying it by parrying it, and if you can jab it three times quickly, you can punish it by breaking your armor. . It’s so powerful that people are more likely to try to break through that wall with it, and you’re even more prepared to try to react to it. Of course, if you focus too much on reacting to your drive impact, you will be susceptible to everything else. Basically, being in a corner is extremely dangerous in any fighting game, but drive impacts are especially detrimental.
There were eight playable characters in the beta: Ryu, Chun-Li, Jamie, Luke, Kimberly, Julie, Ken, and Guile. I was drawn to Ken and Julie. Ken is very different from his Street Fighter 5 incarnation, with two all-new moves, a new command that changes the properties of some of his special moves, his run, and a lot of Ken’s tend to be in the streets, so he’s completely There seems to be little reward for being reckless. Fighter 6. Most of his big combos now involve doing special moves from Command Run. This makes his combo his route a little more complicated compared to other characters, but it makes up for it by the fact that they look sick as hell to deal with. Tons of damage.
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As for Juli, there have also been quite a few changes in how she plays. She no longer needs to create charges to use certain special moves. Instead, create charges to power them up. Her low projectiles go even farther when charged, and can be canceled directly from move to move when the charge is loaded. She has a ridiculously good range with her throws too, and while she didn’t get much to mess with in the beta, her level 2 her Super gives her the flexibility and damage for crazy combos while active. There seems to be
The beta also gave us our first look at Street Fighter 6’s ambitious battle hub. Players can create their own avatar and walk around the virtual arcade, board the arcade his cabinet, challenge other players, create your own cabinet and wait for someone to challenge you. This alone is not a new idea. Arc System Works games have been doing avatar-driven online his lobbies for years, but they’ve never done it on a scale like this. For one thing, the creators of Avatar are absolutely ridiculous, giving players the power to be as wild as they want with their character’s proportions, simply roaming the hub and having fun laughing at the outright monsters people come up with. doing. .
Other than that, there are fun emotes that let you mimic the game’s special moves, a photo booth, a shop where you can buy new gear using the currency you earn as you play, and a section where you can play classic Capcom games like Final. I have. A separate section where you can play battles, and a special extreme mode. Best of all, if you don’t want to get involved with his arcade cabinet and want to automatically join the match, you can turn on Ranked Matches or Casual His Matchmaking.
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Based on this beta, we believe the full release of Street Fighter 6 will be a truly monumental moment for FGC. Not only that, but this beta sets the standard for future fighting game betas, literally everything a fighting game fan could reasonably hope for from the highly anticipated early appearances of the game. By including, good character selection, good netcode, both ranked and casual play, a tease of what progression to expect when the full game is released, and even A training mode to learn how to play for real. I can’t wait.
Mitchell Saltzman is IGN’s Editorial Producer.you can find him on twitter @jurassic rabbit
