Street Fighter 6 Preview

Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 is one of the most enjoyable fighting games in recent memory. Anyone who has played the Street Fighter 6 demo already knows how silly-yet-fun walking around and fighting random strangers on the street in World Tour mode can be, but the small section available to everyone doesn’t really sell just how massive and full of hidden secrets SF6’s World Tour really is. Thankfully, Screen Rant recently attended a preview session of Street Fighter 6 at the Capcom offices in San Francisco, and got an extended look at June’s most anticipated fighting game.

Street Fighter 6‘s World Tour mode feels like a combination of Yakuza and the Konquest mode from Mortal Kombat: Deception, and it’s absolutely packed with people to fight and easter eggs to discover. From thugs straight out of Final Fight to irate business people and even more irate Roombas, there are no shortage of weird NPCs trying to take you down in Metro City, and players will need to team up with characters on Street Fighter 6’s roster to learn the skills necessary to survive.

The world Street Fighter takes place in has always been inherently silly; this is a universe where it’s possible to completely destroy cars with your bare hands and every single disagreement is solved by fist fights, after all. Street Fighter 6 leans into this silliness hard and it works perfectly. From the story of World Tour (which, while somewhat generic in concept, is still executed in a relatively entertaining manner) to the fights themselves, every game mode in Street Fighter 6 is dripping with style.

Related: Street Fighter 6: All Special Edition Differences & Pre-Order Bonuses

The fights themselves are a joy, with fluid character animations and bright blasts of color bursting onto the screen when certain moves are executed. There’s something delightful about a simple attack reversal causing this massive explosion of what appears to tangible paint, and while all of Street Fighter 6’s special moves are still the stars of the show, the extra detail given towards more common attack and defensive actions means each fight is as enjoyable to watch as it is to play.

Like the best Street Fighter titles, every character feels unique and must be approached differently, but thanks to the multiple new control schemes it is now much easier to pull off cool-looking attacks without spending ten days practicing how to half-circle rotate. This isn’t a requirement, and the older, more complicated input system is still available for people who prefer it, but these inclusions both make it more entertaining to try out new characters and opens the game up to players of different skill levels, which is always a good thing.

After trying out all of Street Fighter 6‘s eighteen playable characters (and an inordinate amount of time running around World Tour with my own avatar, who obviously looks exactly like Mortal Kombat: Deception’s Shujinko) all I wanted to do was have more time with the game. From the normal arcade mode, which once again moves Street Fighter’s timeline and the characters forward, to the more wacky experiences like World Tour and Extreme Battles (SF6’s version of Mortal Kombat’s Test Your Luck fights), Street Fighter 6 is absolutely packed with content. It looks and plays like the best entry in the series yet, and should absolutely be on the radar of any fan of fighting games.

Source: Street Fighter/YouTube

Street Fighter 6 releases on June 2, 2023, for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Screen Rant attended an in-person monitored PS5 gameplay session for this preview.