Surprising spice and approachability with only four characters
With only a few hours of gameplay, I'm nowhere near ready to deliver a verdict on these four characters—especially since Street Fighter games always live and die by how matchups play out across a massive roster.
I liked playing as each character thus far, but this four-fighter selection is not a particularly diverse spread as far as Street Fighter classics are concerned. Each has a comparable arsenal of grapples, combos, anti-airs, and ranged blasts, though I'm sure that a few more hours with the game would help me determine exactly how SF3-like Chun-Li is in her latest revision.
Honestly, Jamie is the spiciest option at first blush. His drunken-boxing style lets players build and spend a unique "drinks" meter on various special moves—with a maxed drunken state essentially activating a "V-ism" flurry of higher attack speed. Yet the more time I spent with Luke, the more I appreciated how his "tackle" move, which is used to step into a follow-up attack of your choice, opened up feints and combo possibilities.
My big question for now: What happens when certain leaked characters, each with a wide range of battle-controlling abilities, emerge as part of SF6? How will their classic abilities and SFV-specific V-functions be spread between the new game's normal, super, and overdrive activations? Capcom has to juggle expectations and drive-powered wackiness with every character reveal going forward, and I don't expect every upcoming character to feel perfect upon its premiere.But there's a lot of fun to be mined from the four characters I've played so far. Luke in particular feels wholly reborn in SF6's new systems; drive impact and drive parries let him play a revitalized game of footsie against opponents who might otherwise expect him to be a slower, lumbering brawler. And I've already seen experienced Street Fighter players in the Summer Game Fest lines figuring out Ryu's and Chun-Li's entirely new combos, which reward clever counters and anti-airs to bounce foes off of walls and rack up significant damage.
Arguably my most lasting impression came when I'd accumulated roughly four hours of play and had an open slot next to me. I gestured to nearby onlookers, and one approached to play. He remarked about how bad he was at Street Fighter games, and I immediately felt comfortable sharing my limited insights about what I had figured out thus far. My foe offered an enthusiastic "yeah!" when he took some of my advice, and we had a great match talking out how we felt about the game. I enjoyed the dance of going back and forth with drive impacts and parries—moves that required very little Street Fighter know-how to understand and make good use of—and I savored moments in which someone got pushed to the brink of a drive meter running out. I consistently found myself cheering for either myself or my opponent, thanks to these standout tide-turning moments.
And the more I played, the more I was astounded by the little touches that emerged during frantic battles. My favorite came when both players activated drive impact attacks at around the same time, an action that painted the whole screen in even more dazzling spray paint effects before showing on a frame-by-frame basis who tapped their move later, thus giving them the edge in activating the move as a counter.
I'm sure some of that wide-eyed wonder will dissipate once the game emerges on home consoles next year; I'm in a privileged position to feel like I'm at a pizza parlor in late 1993, hashing out the likes of Cammy and T-Hawk for the first time. But the vibe is there. SF6 is the kind of fighting game in which counters and reversals feel immediately apparent and powerful—and worth chatting about and engaging with to see what you and your opponents do with them.
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