Street Fighter 6

Street Fighter 6 is the game that brought me back to fighting games after a decade away. That is no small thing.

The Drive System is inspired. A single six-segment resource that powers your offensive options — Drive Rush, Drive Parry, Drive Impact, Overdrive — creates a tactical layer that rewards understanding and punishes button-mashing without ever feeling inaccessible. It is a genuinely elegant addition to a genre that can often feel impenetrable.

The roster at launch is the strongest in Street Fighter history. Every character feels complete and purposeful. The new additions — Kimberly, Manon, Marisa, JP — slot into the lineup as though they have always been there. Balance is better than any Street Fighter launch I can remember.

World Tour mode is an unexpected delight. A full single-player RPG where you create a fighter, learn styles from the roster, and explore Metro City and beyond. It is not as deep as a dedicated RPG but for a fighting game it is extraordinary value and a genuinely engaging way to learn the mechanics.

Battle Hub is chaotic fun. Sitting your avatar at a cabinet and challenging a stranger to a set feels exactly right.

My criticisms are around the online infrastructure, which at peak times can suffer noticeable input lag even with rollback netcode, and the character designs which lean so heavily into exaggerated aesthetics that a few characters look more like parody than Street Fighter.