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FOAMGaP pt 9: Street Fighter 6 World Tour mode
2 years ago
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i can also be found at:
https://www.deviantart.com/bardicdragoon
So I wasn’t initially interested in Street Fighter 6 across SF4 and SF5 I tended to feel while the game had cool ideas the general pace and very link based combo stylings never quite jived with me (suppose cutting me teeth in fighting games being on the likes of Virtua Fighter 4:evolution, Dead or Alive Hardcore/DOA3, and Guilty Gear X/GGXX) and I had basically written that Street Fighter would not be my fighting game of choice on any meaningful way so no need to rush into buying the next game. But then they revealed the World Tour mode (also: Drive Gauge as a stamina gauge like system fueling a greatest hits collection of prior SF game’s unique mechanics (also also: something something Juri is back, something something they gave her back Kaisen Dankairaku) ).
Now I tend be rather fascinated by (the concept) of Single Player modes in Fighting games as a way of on-boarding new players. The thing is most fighting games don’t try to do this; the genre standard seems to be Arcade mode and/or Cinematic stories maybe even with some tutorials of varying quality. And while these are not bad things in their own right, fighting games tend to have a perception of being hard fueled more by their lack of onboarding (read teaching and acclimatizing players to mechanics and gameplay loops) than actual difficulty (at least in comparison to other multiplayer or complex single player games) and cutscenes interspersed with more or less randomly chosen (from a gameplay outlook at least) doesn’t do much for the onboarding process, at least without a lot more legwork and extra mechanics that you never really see.
So all that preamble out of the way what did I think of World Tour mode: I can’t say its bad but I almost feel like that’s as much due the low bar set by the industry as it is the a product of the game mode itself. In short terms the idea of an action RPG that uses the actual fighting game combat as its battle system is a solid idea that SF6 manages to deliver on in good enough shape despite what feel like some questionable design decisions; The biggest double edged swords are the levelling and equipment systems.
The leveling system is the bigger of the two as the equipment systems issues are kind of just powered up version of problems present in the leveling system; that is to say raw stat increases. Now the leveling idea in general is a really good one; starting with only normals/basic buttons with only one special move and having to level up to learn new special moves and unlock the ability to expand the number of special moves you can use in a fight helps with the onboarding process as you start with the basics and helping avoid using the more powerful special moves as a crutch while also keeping players from falling to the mindset of special moves being the only thing that matters (and thus not being able to perform them meaning you can’t play). That said the idea of raw stat buffs goes rather counter to fighting games; getting ‘stronger’ only happens from learning to use the tools available to you (either using your regularly used tools better/differently than before, or just using tools you had but didn’t use for whatever reason) and the idea of just grinding to the next level to get a power boost (or getting the right gear) doesn’t have a parallel in more standard fight game play.
The worst part is that even setting aside this specific lens I’ve been looking at the game through even as just a nifty single player side mode its mostly kind of meh: quests are very one note being either fetch quests or fighting, movement id very one note with master actions being more Zelda items used to solve navigation puzzles and reach hidden items more than movement mechanics, the non 1v1 fights in the game get old very quick as the enemies are too weak and numerous most of the time, and the story is kind of nothingburger that’s really about a nobody NPC (rather than you created character or any of the known street fighter cast) who has an interesting story but it all happens after they all but leave the story during act 1 but you are neither involved nor privy to any of it until said character barrels back into the story in time for the finale.
Looking over all this I might be coming off as overly negative. And while I’m not about to take back my grievances I’m also not about to say it its bad, I put 30+ hours into it and might put some more (after all that investment I might as well actually unlock everyone’s costume 2, though given I plan to main Juri with Manon as an I’m bored/lets mix things up for a bit secondary and prefer their costume 1 (and also now 3) not sure if that’s going to be worth doing). Not to mention I feel like this Stret Fighter might be more my vibe then I was thinking before playing this so guess it did something right.
Anyways all but guaranteed I’m not done with SF6 and will likely head online and maybe even try to git gud as the kids say (do they say that about fighting games?) so maybe I’ll see you in the battlehub (currently figuring Saturday evenings (UTC-7) will be my fighting game time going into next year if you want to play)
see you in the battlehub
https://www.deviantart.com/bardicdragoon
So I wasn’t initially interested in Street Fighter 6 across SF4 and SF5 I tended to feel while the game had cool ideas the general pace and very link based combo stylings never quite jived with me (suppose cutting me teeth in fighting games being on the likes of Virtua Fighter 4:evolution, Dead or Alive Hardcore/DOA3, and Guilty Gear X/GGXX) and I had basically written that Street Fighter would not be my fighting game of choice on any meaningful way so no need to rush into buying the next game. But then they revealed the World Tour mode (also: Drive Gauge as a stamina gauge like system fueling a greatest hits collection of prior SF game’s unique mechanics (also also: something something Juri is back, something something they gave her back Kaisen Dankairaku) ).
Now I tend be rather fascinated by (the concept) of Single Player modes in Fighting games as a way of on-boarding new players. The thing is most fighting games don’t try to do this; the genre standard seems to be Arcade mode and/or Cinematic stories maybe even with some tutorials of varying quality. And while these are not bad things in their own right, fighting games tend to have a perception of being hard fueled more by their lack of onboarding (read teaching and acclimatizing players to mechanics and gameplay loops) than actual difficulty (at least in comparison to other multiplayer or complex single player games) and cutscenes interspersed with more or less randomly chosen (from a gameplay outlook at least) doesn’t do much for the onboarding process, at least without a lot more legwork and extra mechanics that you never really see.
So all that preamble out of the way what did I think of World Tour mode: I can’t say its bad but I almost feel like that’s as much due the low bar set by the industry as it is the a product of the game mode itself. In short terms the idea of an action RPG that uses the actual fighting game combat as its battle system is a solid idea that SF6 manages to deliver on in good enough shape despite what feel like some questionable design decisions; The biggest double edged swords are the levelling and equipment systems.
The leveling system is the bigger of the two as the equipment systems issues are kind of just powered up version of problems present in the leveling system; that is to say raw stat increases. Now the leveling idea in general is a really good one; starting with only normals/basic buttons with only one special move and having to level up to learn new special moves and unlock the ability to expand the number of special moves you can use in a fight helps with the onboarding process as you start with the basics and helping avoid using the more powerful special moves as a crutch while also keeping players from falling to the mindset of special moves being the only thing that matters (and thus not being able to perform them meaning you can’t play). That said the idea of raw stat buffs goes rather counter to fighting games; getting ‘stronger’ only happens from learning to use the tools available to you (either using your regularly used tools better/differently than before, or just using tools you had but didn’t use for whatever reason) and the idea of just grinding to the next level to get a power boost (or getting the right gear) doesn’t have a parallel in more standard fight game play.
The worst part is that even setting aside this specific lens I’ve been looking at the game through even as just a nifty single player side mode its mostly kind of meh: quests are very one note being either fetch quests or fighting, movement id very one note with master actions being more Zelda items used to solve navigation puzzles and reach hidden items more than movement mechanics, the non 1v1 fights in the game get old very quick as the enemies are too weak and numerous most of the time, and the story is kind of nothingburger that’s really about a nobody NPC (rather than you created character or any of the known street fighter cast) who has an interesting story but it all happens after they all but leave the story during act 1 but you are neither involved nor privy to any of it until said character barrels back into the story in time for the finale.
Looking over all this I might be coming off as overly negative. And while I’m not about to take back my grievances I’m also not about to say it its bad, I put 30+ hours into it and might put some more (after all that investment I might as well actually unlock everyone’s costume 2, though given I plan to main Juri with Manon as an I’m bored/lets mix things up for a bit secondary and prefer their costume 1 (and also now 3) not sure if that’s going to be worth doing). Not to mention I feel like this Stret Fighter might be more my vibe then I was thinking before playing this so guess it did something right.
Anyways all but guaranteed I’m not done with SF6 and will likely head online and maybe even try to git gud as the kids say (do they say that about fighting games?) so maybe I’ll see you in the battlehub (currently figuring Saturday evenings (UTC-7) will be my fighting game time going into next year if you want to play)
see you in the battlehub
