Street Fighter 6 (for PC) Preview

With Street Fighter 6, Capcom finally gives its groundbreaking fighting game series the truly urban feel it deserves. Sure, Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike dabbled in it with hip-hop flourishes, but Street Fighter 6 leans into the aesthetic wholesale with its graffiti-based logo, paint-splashed Drive Impact move, arcade-style Battle Hub, and Hub Goods Shop where you can drip out a custom character. Of course, Street Fighter 6 (price TBD) is more than just a vibe—it introduces several gameplay mechanics tied to the new Drive Gauge that lets you fight with more freedom than any Street Fighter in the series’ history, for creative combat that’s as fluid and beautiful as the hip-hop culture that permeates the game.

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Ryu, the longstanding Street Fighter protagonist, hadokens newcomer Jamie.
(Credit: PCMag)

Street Fighter 6’s Roster

Blanka, Cammy, Chun-Li, Dee Jay, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Guile, Juri, Ken, Luke, Ryu, and Zangief are the returning Street Fighter 6 characters, and they’ve finally aged due to Street Fighter 6 being the most recent game in the timeline (Street Fighter IV and V were set before Street Fighter III). The new faces are Jamie, JP, Kimberley, Lily, Manon, and Marisa. The 18-person base lineup has two more characters than Street Fighter V’s launch roster, but it significantly trails the team-based King of Fighters XV‘s 39-fighter core cast. The closed beta version we tested only features eight characters: Chun-Li, Guile, Jamie, Juri, Ken, Kimberley, Luke, and Ryu.

You’re prompted to create an avatar for the Battle Hub (more on that in a bit) as soon as the game boots. Powered by Capcom’s RE Engine, a tool used to create the outstanding visuals in the recent Resident Evil games, Street Fighter 6 has incredibly detailed character models that feature rippling clothing, skin wrinkles, toned musculature, and waving hair. It’s nice to see Capcom putting work into Street Fighter 6’s visual component, especially considering that some people were disappointed with Street Fighter V’s graphics and art direction.

By default, the game has 18 preset faces and bodies for people who don’t want to do much tweaking, but there are a ridiculous number of body, eye, hair, nose, and voice options for creating a goofy, imaginative, or realistic martial artist. For example, Body Type lets you select a more feminine or masculine build, while Identity selects your character’s gender (which impacts its behavior and how others refer to the character). Likewise, your character’s voice isn’t locked into either the male or female silos, so you have the freedom to create a fighter that truly matches your vision. Capcom even includes a body type recipe list to let you easily share your creations. The character creator has inspired the community to produce avatars that include the cool, the angelic, and the absolutely horrific.

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Ken unleashes his fiery, flashy Critical Art on Ryu.
(Credit: PCMag)

Classic vs. Modern Controls

Street Fighter 6 features two control schemes: Classic and Modern. Classic is the familiar, six-button control scheme that features motion inputs for fireball, sonic booms, and other special attacks and Critical Arts. Modern is a new control scheme that features a simplified button layout; there are dedicated buttons for Light Attack, Medium Attack, Heavy Attack, Special Move, Throw, Drive Impact, Drive Parry, and Assist (auto-combo). Surprisingly, Modern Controls is enabled by default; I thought my fight stick had gone bonkers until I realized that I was playing the game with the new control scheme.

Here’s an example highlighting how execution differs between the two control schemes: To perform Ryu’s dragon punch with the Classic layout, you press forward, down, down-forward, and then punch. That can be difficult for newcomers, so the Modern control scheme requires you to just simultaneously press right and the Special Move button. The trade-off is that you can’t access the full set of special moves; in this case, you can only bust out a dragon punch of a singular height (you have three different heights when using the Classic controls). So, to use the online gaming vernacular, you must “git gud” by moving on up to Classic controls. Otherwise, you won’t enjoy all the combat options that Street Fighter 6 offers.

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Drive Impact may look like a blurry mess in screenshots, but the powerful super move carries plenty of visual flourish.
(Credit: PCMag)

Introducing the Drive Gauge

Street Fighter 6’s combat is fueled by the Drive Gauge, a meter that’s available for use as soon as a round begins. Leveraging it, you can activate five techniques: Drive Impact, Drive Parry, Drive Revenge, Drive Rush, and Overdrive. Let’s break them down.

• Drive Impact – This is an armor-laced strong strike that absorbs an opponent’s incoming attack. Unleash it when a foe is in the corner to produce a wall splat (even if they block the attack). It costs one Drive Gauge bar.

• Drive Parry – This move lets you automatically repel an opponent’s attack, take no damage, and regain part of the Drive Gauge when successfully executed. If you perform a Perfect Parry (parrying just before an opponent’s attack hits you), a slow-motion effect occurs that lets you counter with a melee attack that wouldn’t otherwise connect. It costs half a Drive Gauge bar.

• Drive Reversal – This lets you bust out a counterattack from a blocking position. It’s a low-damage move that relieves the opponent’s offensive pressure. It costs two Drive Gauge bars.

• Drive Rush – This lets you perform a quick rush forward from a Drive Parry or a cancelable normal attack. Drive Rush from a Drive Parry costs one Drive Gauge bar, while Drive Rush from a normal attack costs three Drive Gauge bars.

• Overdrive – This lets you turn a special move into an Overdrive Art, Street Fighter 6’s name for EX Special Moves. It costs two Drive Gauge bars.

You’ll enter a burnout state if you drain the Drive Gauge, which makes meter management (and knowing when to play aggressive or conservative) an essential combat element. If your fighter enters burnout, you’ll be unable to leverage any Drive Gauge mechanic until you go on the offense to refill it. Worse still, your character experiences greater blockstun, becomes dizzy quickly when receiving damage, and can be KO’d with chip damage. You want to avoid entering burnout at all costs.

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This Kimberly mirror match is part of Ranked mode’s placement series that determines where the game drops you in the player pyramid.
(Credit: PCMag)

The Fighting Action

Street Fighter’s combat has never been this fluid and hard-hitting. Each move carries a weight that makes every blow feel significant, which is due in no small part to the stellar animation that sells blocked and landed attacks. However, it’s the Drive Impact and Drive Parry moves that truly separate Street Fighter 6 from its predecessors.

Drive Impact changes Street Fighter’s close and midrange meta, as everything from fireballs to footsies can potentially be countered by it. You see, Drive Impact has armor, soaking up to three hits while delivering the blow. As a result, tossing out a random poke can end up with you eating a nasty counter. And if two people simultaneously Drive Impact, both characters swing at each other with a cool, Tekken 7-like slow-motion effect.

You’ll be tempted to Drive Parry every attack that comes your way, as the defensive option is much easier to do here than in Street Fighter III (you simply hold down the medium punch and kick buttons instead of tapping forward at the last minute). However, you don’t want to do that. Holding the Drive Parry steadily drains your Drive Gauge, which is vital for your other Drive-related abilities. Drive Parry has a near-instantaneous startup, so you can counter almost anything save for throws. Ideally, you want to time your Drive Parry just as a strike is about to land, as this deflects the attack, gives you an opening, and refunds you the Drive Gauge you spent on the parry. However, if your opponent doesn’t attack while you’re in the parry stance, you’re left wide open for big damage.

Street Fighter 6 supports cross-platform play between PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, which makes it a breeze to find an opponent due to the large player pool. On PC, you can opt to not fight with console players, a demographic that has a reputation for playing over Wi-Fi instead of much faster ethernet. Thankfully, Street Fighter 6 has effective rollback netcode that lets you play against people from across the globe without major lag or hiccups. That said, there were a few matchmaking errors that popped up during my time with the closed beta.

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Commentators add tournament-like flair to the action. You can select a lead commentator and a color person.
(Credit: PCMag)

Capcom hopes to bring esports hype to your non-tournament battles via the new Real Time Commentary feature. Currently, there are two English (Steve “TastySteve” Scott, Jeremy “Vicious” Lopez) and Japanese (Aru, Kosuke Hiraiwa) play-by-play announcers, plus English (James Chen) and Japanese (His Excellency Demon Kakka) color commentators. 

These voices come from real-world members of the fighting game community (FGC) who call bouts during the Capcom Pro Tour tournament series, and the commentary adds excitement and surprising insight to the matches. The crew gets excited for big combos and tight contests, but they also express disappointment if, say, you enter a burnout state or get pressured into the wall. I heard some repetitive phrases in my time with the closed demo, but that may be due to my gameplay not being as mechanically diverse as other players.

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Battle Hub is Capcom’s metaverse-like setting for hanging out with other players, finding matches, dressing your avatar, and spectating matches.
(Credit: PCMag)

Street Fighter 6’s Game Modes

Street Fighter 6 has three traditional modes: Fighting Ground, World Tour, and the metaverse-like Battle Hub. Fighting Ground (not available in the closed beta) is the traditional combat mode where you train, enter single-player and multiplayer battles, and engage in casual or ranked online bouts. World Tour (also not available in the closed beta) is a single-player story mode that tasks you with creating a character for use in globetrotting adventures. Battle Hub is an online hangout spot where you can use your World Tour avatar to meet people, challenge others to Fighting Ground matches, play classic Capcom arcade machines (Final Fight, Magic Sword, Super Street Fighter II Turbo), and get dripped out in the Hub Goods Shop.

1990s and early 2000s arcade rats will dig Battle Hub’s vibe, as it deftly replicates that arcade experience. It goes beyond simply sitting at an arcade machine; you can text chat with other players (we saw players exchange battle tips), spectate fights, DJ, shop for gear, and even queue up in line to battle a particular person. In a nice touch, spectating matches lets you view each move’s damage date, frame data, and input data.

Unlike the typical ranked matches that limit bouts to best-of-three contests, you can rematch a person in casual Battle Mode bouts as much as you like (provided that the other player accepts the rematch requests, and other players aren’t already queued to fight you). Impressively, rematches take mere seconds to load, so you’re back in the fray moments after you accept. This is a great way to train with partners and explore combat mechanics. It has the potential to be the best lobby system ever created for a fighting game.

And then there’s Extreme Battles, a mode that wildly differs from standard Street Fighter contests. Instead of being tasked with depleting your opponent’s life bar, you must meet a certain number of in-game conditions to achieve victory. In one mode, you must score five knockdowns on your challenger as a rampaging bull crisscrosses the playfield. In another, the first person to complete a list of in-match actions takes the win. Extreme Battles aren’t revolutionary, but they provide a fine diversion from the usual Street Fighter fare.

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Extreme Battles is a new way to play Street Fighter. The focus isn’t on chipping away at a health bar. Instead, you perform in-match tasks, sometimes while avoiding hazards.
(Credit: PCMag)

Player-Friendly Ranked Matches

Ranked utilizes a four-tier pyramid scheme, and you’re placed in one of eight leagues determined by your accumulated League Points (LP). The base-level Rookie league is where newcomers and scrubs dwell. The next tier up houses people who fight well enough to be placed in the Iron, Bronze, Silver, or Gold categories. Above that are Platinum and Diamond. At the top of the pyramid? Master. Each league contains five ranks. A 10-match placement series gives the game the knowledge about where to drop you in the pyramid.

People in the Rookie league don’t suffer LP loss upon losing. After all, novice players grow frustrated upon seeing themselves get ranked down.

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Hub Goods Shop is where you buy gear for your created character using either Drive Tickets or Fight Coins.
(Credit: PCMag)

Drive Tickets and Fight Coins

Drive Ticket and Fight Coins are the currencies you use to purchase items in the Hub Goods Shop. You accumulate Drive Tickets by completing challenges, such as partaking in five Battle Hub bouts (worth 3,000 DT) or winning five ranked matches (worth 6,000 DT). Fight Coins, on the other, is currency that you purchase with real-world money. Capcom gifted players a few FC during the closed beta, but you’ll have to open your wallet when the full game drops. Why would you do that? It’s a faster way to purchase items. For example, a certain set of glasses may cost 600 DT, but only 30 FC.

I dislike microtransactions in full-price games, so I wish Fight Coins didn’t exist in Street Fighter 6. Worse, some items are only available for a limited time, which encourages impulse purchases. However, we haven’t seen anything in the store that requires them. If you have the time to grind out matches for a fresh hat, you won’t spend a dime.

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Street Fighter 6 has a ridiculous amount of options.
(Credit: PCMag)

Can Your PC Run Street Fighter 6?

Currently, Stream Fighter 6 lacks minimum PC specs (the game doesn’t come out until 2023, after all), but my gaming PC ran it with aplomb at high settings. The machine, which has a 3.2GHz Intel Core i5-4460 CPU, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU, and 16GB of RAM, pushed Street Fighter 6 at a crisp 60 frames per second (and between 30fps and 40fps in a 60-person Battle Hub).

There are numerous graphics options, including settings for bloom, crowd density, and motion blur. Additionally, you can lock the frame rate at 30fps, 60fps, 90fps, or 120fps, depending on your GPU’s output, and run the game at five pixel settings ranging from 1,280 by 720 to 3,840 by 2,160 (4K).

Initially, Street Fighter 6’s closed beta didn’t run on Steam Deck, but a Proton update let me enjoy the game in portable fashion. On Steam Deck, Street Fighter 6’s frame rate danced between 50fps and 60fps. This is a good sign that Street Fighter 6’s release build will be a Steam Deck-compatible game.

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Takin’ It to the Streets

Capcom has a lot riding on Street Fighter 6, especially after Street Fighter 5 stumbled onto the scene with misstep after misstep. Fortunately, the developer appears to have learned from its recent mistakes, as Street Fighter 6 has the robust content, gameplay, and graphical improvements that people want from a contemporary Street Fighter title. And this is based on a closed beta that lacks two of the game’s major modes. Street Fighter’s future is an extremely bright one, and we can’t wait for a potential open beta between now and the game’s 2023 launch.

For more on Street Fighter 6, check out our column on why Street Fighter 6 Hype Proves the Franchise Is Bigger Than Fighting Games. Want in-depth video game discussion? Visit PCMag’s Pop-Off YouTube Channel(Opens in a new window). Finally, point your browser toward PCMag’s Steam Curator group(Opens in a new window) for video game recommendations.