After years of waiting, Street Fighter is finally back and stepping onto the latest consoles with Street Fighter 6, and while it doesn’t necessarily shout about its newness visually, there are some huge changes under the hood.

With a significantly beefed-up singleplayer section of the game providing better on-ramps than ever, and a new control scheme that could completely rip up established assumptions about skill levels, it feels a bit like a fresh start for the fighting game giant.

A new scene

Street Fighter 6 makes some serious changes to how it feels to pick up a new game in the series – its main menu now presents you with a three-way split of modes.

In the middle is the Battle Hub, the online centre of the game, where you can enter bouts against online opponents and work your way up the ranks while getting better all the time.

On the right, Fighting Ground lets you set up fights on your own, with special rules and training packs available to peruse, along with a fairly brief tutorial.

Finally, the left-most option offers up World Tour, and it’s here that things have really evolved. This is a full single-player campaign that will see you control a customised character that you’ll level up by exploring locations, meeting members of the game’s roster and copying their moves, and completing quests.

It’s a really intriguing twist on how a fighting game can work and features open-world locations that are amusingly janky but full of funny touches and quest-givers. Each quest will generally help you master a mechanic, although some will prove more important to your skillset than others, and there are also a lot of cosmetics to unlock for your custom fighter.

It’s a nice way to introduce the different fighters on offer one by one, and to acclimatise you to their strengths and weaknesses over time instead of all at once, making the process of picking a fighter to concentrate on for online fights a lot less like guesswork if you’re new to the series.

There are still more traditional (less absurd) story vignettes to sample in Fighting Ground, for those who want a more typical fight-by-fight ladder to climb, but this is a really fun new option that will prove hugely useful to new players, massively stretching out the process of learning controls and moves.

Show me your moves

Those controls and moves, meanwhile, have also had some major surgery done to them. Firstly, there’s the new Drive system – which adds a new bar that you can use for power attacks at any time.

The game-changer is that rounds start with this bar full, so you can immediately kick off with high-risk damage options if you so choose. Doing so might well prove a mistake, but it makes for a bunch of tactical variety.

The increased aggression this encourages made for quick rounds in our experience, but that ties into the second innovation – an all-new control scheme.

Called “Modern” in the settings, it gives you the option of automatically launching special attacks with a single button instead of more complicated button presses.

This is amazing for learners and newcomers, making the most intimidating part of any fighting game way more trivial until you know enough to kick off the training wheels and take more control.

We’re frankly rubbish at the genre but we’ve been able to have way more fun as a result, and early clips are already showcasing some expert fighters using Modern controls in a way that might show they’ve got real legs compared to the Classic option.

Of course, for those who don’t want it, there are classic control options, and when spectating you can also see a list of live inputs to give you a better sense of what people are actually doing – a visual aid that can be a little overwhelming at first.

The end result of these tweaks and additions is a fighting system that feels immediately familiar to anyone who played Street Fighter V, with enough changes to make things feel both fresh and foundational.

So, you’ll still be playing a careful strategic game as you try to outwit an opponent with unpredictable choices and proper mechanical execution, all capped off by potentially explosive special moves and counters.

Once you’re done with playing solo, heading online in Battle Hub offers up a really cool way to lay out matchmaking in a fighting game, replicating some of the buzz of an actual arcade.

You control the same avatar from World Tour, that you can heavily (ridiculously) customise to your own desires, running around an arcade full of cosmetic shops centred around an array of game cabinets.

Approach one with an empty seat opposite an opponent to kick off a match, sit at one on your own to invite challengers, or simply spectate an ongoing match by approaching.

It feels great (although menus are there for those who want to cut to the chase), and replicates that social feeling that can sometimes be lost away from LAN tournaments.

Iteration not evolution

The fighting feels as fluid and welcoming as it ever has, then, despite the same complexities and strategic options as ever, but Street Fighter 6 is also a generational leap technically, so how does it look?

Well, playing on PlayStation 5 the answer is: pretty great. The visual presentation here is really crisp and clear, readable even in chaotic situations.

That’s key for a fighting game, of course, but it doesn’t mean that environments or characters aren’t really detailed. The fighters look great and the stages we played on were also vibrant and interesting.

We will say that environments in World Tour are a mixed bag, with some locations looking vibrant but bits of Metro City having a very last-gen look to them in terms of detail, but that’s forgivable given it’s a quirky extra mode.

The Battle Hub is a poppy, funky place to chill out, with bright lights and an array of crazy avatars running around you, but when the fights kick off, things get really good.

The paint-like effects that punctuate your power moves look excellent and are a clever levelling-up of the swishes that were so iconic back in Street Fighter 4.

The new additions to Street Fighter’s roster are fun to play and have some really nice character touches, including a welcome range of body shapes, and the tight roster overall feels impressively refined.

We will say that our one hesitation visually is that, in some lighting and on some stages, fighters can look a bit waxy and plastic – an aesthetic we don’t love, but one that’s easy to see past.

Verdict

Street Fighter 6 feels like a hand extremely well-played by Capcom – it doesn’t throw away the fundamentals that made the last game a competitive success but does a lot of building atop its systems.

The Modern control scheme feels pretty revolutionary from an amateur perspective, while its tutorials and training options are more extensive and engaging than ever before, making it a far more welcoming game than the series has ever really had. With smooth visual presentation and easy online matchmaking, it’s a fighting game high-point that current-gen consoles have been sorely missing thus far.