Street Fighter 6 Closed Beta Hands-On Preview: A Colorful Punish Combo

When it comes to fighting games, Street Fighter is considered royalty. There's a reason for that. While series like Tekken and Soul Calibur have their own high points, dedicated audiences and excellent rosters, Street Fighter is the undeniable champ in terms of overall cultural influence and hype levels whenever another entry is announced.

The latest entry, Street Fighter 6, is currently in development, and though it's still a ways off from its 2023 launch, Capcom allowed random players selected from the countless fans around the world to experience a slice of the game early with the Street Fighter 6 Closed Beta. Newsweek was lucky enough to go hands-on with the beta for a weekend, and what a weekend it was.

Street Fighter 6 is shaping up to be a stylish, smooth and impeccably cool fighter that borrows fantastic cues from its older releases and builds upon them with revitalized systems, improved controls and a slick new style that's absolutely gorgeous in motion.

The Closed Beta only offered a glimpse of what we can expect from the full package when it debuts, but there's clearly enough here to confirm that Street Fighter 6 will delight fighting fans of all stripes.

Bustling Battle Hubs

The Street Fighter 6 Closed Beta was only available for one weekend, and it included eight playable fighters to choose from: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Luke, Jamie, Juri and Kimberly. There were no player versus AI matches, story, arcade or training modes available to test out, but the character creator and online Battle Hub were available for extensive testing.

The character creator was a one-shot endeavor, as after you made a detailed avatar that was it, and there were no further chances to edit skin, hair, eyes or other bodily attributes. However, there were a glut of outfits and accessories available to purchase in exchange for battle tickets earned through completing objectives and winning matches.

The Battle Hub was bustling with truly interactive spaces, plenty of arcade cabinets to gather around and play matches and custom characters of all kinds. The cabinets in the hub were available for contenders to match up and play regular matches, get in some training while waiting for an opponent or try out retro matches from older games. There were plenty of machines available to play Extreme mode, which threw out multiplayer challenges with unique objectives, as well as an entire section to enjoy the classic arcade title Magic Sword.

There were plenty of opportunities to get in some fun outside of 1v1 matches, too. There was a special photo area decorated with Street Fighter regalia, a shop with plenty of customization items for players to kit out their avatar and extra space to test out the often ridiculous fighting moves in the communal space. It felt like a celebration of Street Fighter as a series, and everything in the Battle Hub, from Photo Mode to spectating other players' matches, was a blast.

Ready? Fight!

The extras were all well and good, and appreciated as a longtime Street Fighter fan. But where the game truly shined, of course, was in the actual matches. The PC version was smooth, without issues save for one period of time where I experienced connectivity errors and couldn't connect. After a brief period when these appeared, the rest of the beta was smooth sailing.

Of the available characters, Kimberly was an instant standout. Despite being a usual Chun-Li or Juri main, I found Kimberly bombastic and exciting, exactly what I'm looking for in a fighter. And with Street Fighter 6's accessible mechanics, it's easy to get acquainted and quickly proficient with the character of your choice, even if you haven't played a fighting game before. Splashes of color engulf matches thanks to the Drive Impact attack, which helps land blows to break combos and makes for dazzling, eye-popping matches should two players bring their attacks together.

It's not all about going on the offensive, of course. Street Fighter 6 feels more responsive and cohesive than ever thanks to its reworked throws, parries and blocks. Even though I was going up against some truly talented players, I never felt completely outclassed or hopeless, even as a fan who only casually plays Street Fighter 5 and strictly outside of tournaments. Fights feel so smooth, so frenetic and rapid-fire that it's hard not to have a surge of adrenaline as each draws to a close.

There was no real indication that this was a game still very much in progress. With customizable controls, it even offers options in the way of accessibility. There were options to choose between Classic or Modern controls, both of which aim to feel comfortable to different players. Classic controls felt more akin to the rest of the Street Fighter series, while Modern controls were fine-tuned and engineered for newer players and casual Street Fighter fans to do some serious combo damage.

Here Comes a New Challenger

Street Fighter 6 is shaping up to be one of the best modern entries the series has seen yet. From top to bottom, it feels polished, exciting and full of opportunities. When the game debuts, it will launch with 18 fighters as well as additional modes to compete in, so if multiplayer isn't your thing, you'll be able to play against AI opponents. There will, of course, be a slew of additional options with which you can outfit your avatar, and even more arcade games to play in the Battle Hub.

One thing's for sure, though. Fans will be pleased with what's on offer when the sixth core Street Fighter entry drops next year. Whether you're a tried-and-true Ryu fan or you can't wait to go hands-on with Dhalsim, there's a game mode, fighter and more waiting for you. Street Fighter 6 will be taking all comers.

Street Fighter 6 is scheduled for release in 2023 on Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC.