Hiya!

You probably already know Street Fighter 6 is out on most of today’s current consoles. I guess it’s a way to make up for the debacle they instigated with Street Fighter 5 as they made it only for Sony’s then current-gen console, the PlayStation 4. As someone who has been playing Street Fighter 6 on my brother’s PC daily since its release, I’ve probably encountered players from all over the world playing on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC but I would never know it because it plays smoothly.

That’s not exactly the case with the PlayStation 4 version. I can definitely tell when I’m playing against someone on Sony’s still chugging along system. Online battles simply start just a little bit longer than they should. It’s not by much but you can feel it. The question becomes how does it feel to be someone with a PlayStation 4 and try to play Street Fighter 6? I’m not talking about some pro who can magically see when the framerate drops and the like. I’m talking about how a normal newbie like myself and what the experience is like. Well, as I did get myself a PlayStation 4 version to tide me over before I get a PlayStation 5, I do have my thoughts on the subject.

First, let’s talk about the general feel of Street Fighter 6 on the PlayStation 4. As this is essentially the actual fighting mechanics, this will cover the Fighting Ground portion of the game. As I mentioned earlier, I have been playing it on my brother’s souped up gaming PC so I’ve gotten incredibly accustomed to how Street Fighter 6 feels like on really good hardware. So, how does it feel on a last gen console? Well, when it comes to the actual fighting, it feels pretty good. I can perform the same combos I did on the PC on the PlayStation 4 without having to make any adjustments to when I press the buttons or anything. I couldn’t really see or feel any lag spikes which would cause my inputs to drop. So, if you only have a regular old PlayStation 4 and want to do some friendly battles against your friends at your home, it should work fine.

On the graphical side, unfortunately, you can see a drop in the quality here. Stages look much more muddy, especially when you compare it to the ones being pumped out by a high-end PC. This is probably due to the lighting as there’s very little contrast and much fewer shadows. What’s more is the stages are much less lively as Capcom reduced the number of background characters to ensure more processing power could go to the gameplay, which is a good idea, all things considered. However, it does make some areas very desolate. Zangief’s stage is a great example as, on the PlayStation 4, there’s only around half a dozen people watching the fight! I guess The Red Cyclone isn’t as popular in the wrestling world as he thought!

What’s even weirder is the same thing can be said when you enter the Battle Hub. As the Battle Hub is a place where you can run around and interact with other players as well as take your Avatar into Avatar Battles, it’s just really strange how characters would pop into frame all of a sudden! There were a bunch of times when I would enter this futuristic arcade and I would run up to a seemingly empty cabinet to play a few online games only for someone to magically appear in the chair I was going to sit in! Same thing happens when I go to the center and of the Battle Hub. From a distance, it looks like the area is devoid of people. When getting close, however, I might see a whole crowd magically pop into existence! Once again, I have to give props to Capcom for actually figuring out how to make each and every aspect of Street Fighter 6 to work on aging hardware like the PlayStation 4. It’s just funny to see this happen over and over again.

I also have to mention I didn’t play and Ranked matches on the PlayStation 4 as, well, I tried playing online matches via the Battle Hub arcade machines and the fights got laggy more often than I was comfortable with. I played Street Fighter 6 using WiFi on my brother’s PC and the PlayStation 4 and, for some strange reason, the PC would get better connections than the PlayStation 4. I guess there are a couple of factors which isn’t the fault of Sony’s old system. Getting a wired connection should work. It could be as simple as the placement of the gaming console in a bad spot. I’m not going to spend a ton of time rearranging my room to figure that out, though!

While both Battle Hub and Fighting Ground generally play fine despite the weird pop in, I will have to say the biggest problem I had with playing Street Fighter 6 on the PlayStation 4 has to deal with the World Tour mode. Now, World Tour mode is the game’s single player component and I actually expected to go through the campaign from scratch. After trying it out for an hour or so, I’m having second… and third… and fourth thoughts about that.

One thing I haven’t talked about yet are the game load times. I’m testing this on my old reliable PlayStation 4 with emphasis on “old.” It’s still the base version of the PlayStation 4, as in it hasn’t been repaired or modified in any way. This means I’m still using the same hard drive! I really should’ve upgraded the storage a couple of years ago but I just never got around to it. As most new fangled systems like the PlayStation 5 and my brother’s PC use much speedier solid state hard drives, Street Fighter 6 loads everything quickly. This doesn’t apply to my old PlayStation 4 and is especially evident in World Tour mode!

It just seems like you can “feel” the game loading in the background during World Tour mode on the PlayStation 4. Run quickly from one point of the map to another? You’ll see that slight jitter in the framerate or even see the screen go black to display a loading bar. Get into a fight with a bystander? The game will freeze just uncomfortably long enough for you to think the game might’ve crashed. Fly to a new area? Well, that’s definitely a loading screen for you! It’s not too terrible of an experience but, if you’re been weaned on playing Street Fighter 6 with almost instantaneous loading, the PlayStation 4 comes off as maddingly sluggish. Upgrading the hard drive to an SSD should fix the issue… but this is a review for the standard PlayStation 4 and, as it is, it’s just slow.

So, the questions becomes, should you even bother getting Street Fighter 6 on the PlayStation 4? It basically matters on your current situation. If you really want to play the game and all you have is a PlayStation 4, it does function okay. Just be ready for a lot of pop in when playing the Battle Hub. If you’ve upgraded the hard drive to an SSD, you probably won’t have the same issues I had with World Tour mode. Like I said, it does work. However, if you’ve tried Street Fighter 6 on higher end hardware, just be prepared to feel a twinge of disappointment with how the PlayStation 4 tries to chug along and keep up.

Byee!

Have you tried playing Street Fighter 6 on the PlayStation 4? What was your experience like? Let me know in the comments section below!