Street Fighter 6

My £15 fusion fight pad is not great.

I'm going to have to get a new PS controller. The D-pad is too good.

Nah. There's counters, I just need to spend some time actually practising with Jamie rather than playing ranked. He's the polar opposite of Guile so it's a nice change but hard work.

Though I've found he really struggles against Rashid and Gief.

My Xbox isn’t detecting my arcade stick anymore, so I think I’m gonna have to double dip on this game and buy the PS5 version, cause it’d be cheaper than getting a new stick (I have the same Hori stick on PS also).

She looks really fun. Unless they deliberately gimp her into the floor again, I'm going to at least give her a shot

Good lord, she's literally slithering and coiling around like a snake! Someone at Capcom must have seen the fan base going head over heels for Juri's brand of sadism and gone "Hold our sake, we can make her crazier"

Well good thing I just recently bought the character pass. Christ, there's just too many things going on and too many game to play.

I totally forgot about it. I was uhming and ahing about entering because I havent got any ranked characters and then did nothing. Classic.

Yeah, Ggs! I was actually going to play a bit of destiny but this is very moreish.

And, yes, I’m messing about with modern. 30 years of muscle memory keeps messing with the program, though.

Not tonight but I will be returning this Friday to get my arse handed to me.

Also, you know what dudes - this is a really good game.

We’re 3 months in and thus far nothing is broken. There aren’t any overpowered mechanics. While many people complain about JP and Ken, in reality top 8s are a mixed bag and there is no one dominant character (like Sagat in vanilla SF4). Set play is virtually non existent (so far) thanks to most normals being minus on block, so watching top level play is fun and varied. The netcode continues to be so good that literally no one talks about it. The odd weird bug gets patched quickly.

The Battlehub feels like a communal area, and the game has seemed to remain popular - when I go into ranked or casual matchmaking I tend to get matches within 10 seconds at the very worst.

When I play SF6, I feel far less grumpy than in previous games because I understand why I lost. Normally I can see a clear route to victory, even if I can’t always implement it. I don’t know if this is a personal change or not, but in SF5 and SF4 this was much more opaque to me. As such I am aware of areas I need to improve and work on them and it makes a genuine difference! Which is very satisfying.

There is some shit pricing around cosmetics, but that’s my only main complaint. And I suppose the DLC release schedule is a bit slow, but that’s only because I’m super hungry to see how they’re implementing Ed and (especially) AKUMER.

So yeah - this is a really good game. A brilliant game. Clearly much more effort and love has gone into it than I would ever have expected. It makes this old street fighter very happy.

(Yes yes, strong “3s is a good game!” energy)

I'm learning modern because Ive fucked my hand up. I stabbed myself between my thumb and forefinger a month or so ago and damaged a nerve. Lost a lot of feeling in my finger and my thumb always aches and I kept dropping combos on classic, so I figured I would give modern a try. Its actually really good. Im constantly fighting against 30 years of conditioning but its actually really well implemented, but it does feel like I'm learning from scratch. I'd guesstimate my Marisa and Blanka were diamond-ish and I'm absolutely nowhere near that with Kim.

But, other than that, yeah, I would agree with all of that, Onny. My big problem with it is that, while I completely recognise what I need to improve as you say, the game has layers on layers and Im too old to keep track of them. I need to parry more, I need to whiff punish more, I need to fish more in neutral... if I'm looking to parry, Im not looking to whiff punish. The stack is huge.

And, while the game is fairly well balanced, I have started ducking or one and done with Kens due to their sheer volume.

I'd recommend modern Ryu as a place to start. I messed around with a few characters before settling on Kim but Ryu is just solid.

Yeah, that was really good. You were catching a lot of the gimmicks. If you spend a few minutes getting a big, cash out combo down, you’d have taken a lot more games. A few times literally one more hit and I’d have been dead.

The struggle is real, then. I would think they need to do something with him in a patch because I think you got to max drinks like once or twice and that’s a hell of a mountain to climb every single round.

I suppose me being able to teleport up your arse every time you tried to take one didn’t help.