Modern Controls in Street Fighter 6 are an accessibility triumph, and they’re so good they make me play better on Classic.
I am not very good at Street Fighter. 2D fighters have never been my jam, I’ve always been a 3D kid – so much so that I even took a trip to Japan when Tekken 7 was arcade-only and sat on one machine as a couple of locals threw themselves, hopelessly, at my King. But that doesn’t stop me playing games like BlazBlue, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear and more besides on release – I love fighting games. Can’t get enough of them. My limited skill ceiling shouldn’t affect that too much.
That means I am usually very loyal to my main character – I’ve been playing Cammy for as long as I can remember. The Killer Bee works very well for how I want to play; an aggressive rushdown superstar with some lovely mix-up potential, and (now, in Street Fighter 6) some tricky charge times that really force the opponent to be light on their toes and read everything you do at the very, very last minute. She’s wonderful, and hard to deal with, and her speed and aggression more than make up for my lack of ability to get those one-touch combos out.
Despite my limited skill, I play Classic controls. I have tinkered with Modern, and I do get a bit aggravated that Modern Cammy players that I meet in the ranked lobbies can execute combos that I am not consistent with. But I will not back down; instead, I look at the impressive chains that wombo-combo me into the wall and think ‘ah, so that’s the timing, is it?’ and redouble my efforts in pulling them off. Sometimes I succeed! Sometimes, I concede a match to someone I really should have beaten. The fighting game gods cast their choice, we rematch.
And this gave me an idea. I don’t really want to play with Modern Controls yet, because I want to get better with the core systems and understand the bread and butter of the mechanics better.
