Street Fighter 6, – the latest addition to the renowned fighting game franchise, falls tragically short of expectations, ultimately resulting in a disappointing experience. In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably make it known that I have always been a bigger fan of the Mortal Kombat series than the Street Fighter games. For me, Street Fighter always lacked the edge of a Mortal Kombat game and also never felt as in-depth in terms of their respective storylines.
Street Fighter 6 does absolutely nothing to remedy this, ultimately coming off as a shallow, surface-level, arcadey, button-masher. In an era where video games continually strive for innovation, Street Fighter 6 feels like an experience from a bygone era. Regrettably, it is a lackluster experience that fails to move the fighting game needle.
Street Fighter 6 releases on June 2nd and will be available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles.
One of the most glaring issues with Street Fighter 6 is its underwhelming graphics. In a time when graphical fidelity has come on leaps and bounds, it is disappointing to see such dated visuals in this AAA 2023 release. The character models lack detail and polish, appearing blocky and flat. Even the hollow and unimpressive environments suffer from a lack of creativity and visual quality, making the game feel dull and lifeless as a result.
This lack of quality in the game’s presentation carries over to the cutscenes in the single-player campaign. Street Fighter 6 lacks any sort of a compelling narrative, especially when compared to the plots of games like Mortal Kombat, or Injustice. The storyline here feels paper-thin, only existing to carry the player into the next fight. This provides the audience with little reason to get invested in the narrative playing out.
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Only a handful of cutscenes are even voice-acted, with the others consisting of lazily added subtitles. The player character is also apparently mute, as they never speak during the campaign, despite being assigned a voice during the fighter creation component in the campaign’s opening moments. This means that character development is essentially non-existent and leaves the game feeling empty and devoid of any emotional connection. Overall, the single-player experience becomes monotonous and forgettable before very long.
With all of that being said, there are likely many people out there who are willing to give Street Fighter 6’s half-baked plot and poor visuals a pass. This is due to the fact that the majority of Street Fighter fans play the games for the gameplay over anything else. Unfortunately, even that aspect of the game fails to impress.
The fighting mechanics in Street Fighter 6 feel stagnant and uninspired, failing to introduce any significant changes or improvements beyond the core gameplay mechanics that fans have come to expect. Instead, it rehashes tired gameplay elements, making the experience feel repetitive and unexciting. The lack of innovation leads to monotonous button-mashing which gets old very quickly.
The online multiplayer component of the game is fine. Unfortunately, we were only given one code for the game, meaning that we couldn’t host any private matches between the FandomWire team. As I was playing the game prior to its release, the public lobbies were fairly empty.
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This led to a bit of waiting around when searching for a game, but once an opponent was eventually found, everything ran pretty smoothly. I never noticed any major connectivity issues or lag during my time playing online. It should also be noted that microtransactions are present in Street Fighter 6, although they are not a particularly prominent component of the game and only really affect cosmetics.
In conclusion, Street Fighter 6 is a rather disappointing addition to the iconic fighting franchise. With some pretty lackluster graphics, unremarkable gameplay, and a very weak single-player campaign, the game fails to live up to the hype that it set for itself. It feels like a step backward rather than a step forward, leaving players still longing for the innovation and shot of excitement that the Street Fighter series so desperately needs at this point.
Street Fighter 6 – 5/10
Street Fighter 6 was reviewed on PS5 with a code supplied to FandomWire by Capcom.
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