Hiya!

It’s hard to overstate how well Capcom did with making Street Fighter 6 incredibly accessible for both veteran and casual fans. Not only is the game pretty balanced, with even supposedly low tier characters like Zangief winning tournaments, but the folks over at Capcom realized what was keeping newbies from actually playing Street Fighter games in the first place. This is why they implemented the Modern Control scheme, a control setup which allows players to execute special moves with a simple press of a button.

This did initially cause some uproar in the fighting game community. While Capcom didn’t forsake longtime fans as we still had the “normal” control setup with the Classic controls scheme, the idea of simplifying Street Fighter 6’s usual motion controller movements to execute special attacks was considered blasphemy to a lot of hardcore fighting game fanatics. Things have died down quite a bit, with even some pro players, like Haitani, using Modern controls with some success in tournaments.

As someone who makes a lot of execution errors when playing Street Fighter, I do like the idea of being able to just press a button to perform something complex like Zangief’s Spinning Piledriver and not jumping by accident. So I spent an entire week of switching over from Classic controls to Modern controls, jumping into the Battle Hub to face off against actual real people online and see if using this “easier” control setup suits me. Well, after a week of testing, I can safely say, while Modern controls are good, I’m still going to be rocking the Classic controls from now on.

First, let me tell you about the pros and cons of Modern controls vs. Classic controls. The most obvious would be not needing to memorize and perform rather complex joystick motions to do a special move. For example, when doing the classic Dragon Punch motion with the Classic control scheme, you’d have to push, forward, down and then down-forward with a punch button. With Modern controls, all you’d need to do is push forward and the Special button to do the same attack. The latter is definitely less taxing to your brain and reflexes, especially when doing it in an actual match. This simplification also translates to performing Super Combos as, in order to execute them, all you’d need to do is push the proper direction on the joystick with the Special and Heavy attack button. No need to waggle your joystick to do a double quarter circle motion or anything!

There was also some concern about losing some of your normals. While this is somewhat true for some characters, most on the roster still can do all their normal attacks as long as you push the attack button in conjunction with the Auto button. The Auto button is kind of a multi-faceted button as, not only does it change what normal attack is done, it also modifies special attacks to make them EX/Overdrive moves and, if you jam an attack button repeatedly while holding down the Auto button, your character will perform an automatic combo. No timing needed! Based on the recent Annihilator Cup matches, which most of their participants weren’t Street Fighter competitors, they can be a powerful tool for newbies.

I do have to mention how using Modern controls will cut down your damage. This is to balance out how easy it is to react with special attacks. However, Modern control players can still get 100% damage output as long as they do the Classic control motion. Yes, even in Modern controls, you can still do special attacks with motions! So, if your Modern controls Zangief isn’t doing enough damage with his already powerful Spinning Piledriver, if you can swing the 360-degree motion, you can still pump up the hurt!

From my experience, the one of the biggest problems with Modern controls is it doesn’t really work well with some characters. Charge characters in particular don’t really see much benefit with Modern controls as you still have to hold back or down to do charge special attacks. This is especially true for Guile as his special gimmick, the Perfect attack, can’t be done with Modern controls. It feels kind of pointless to have a 1-button Special attack but still have to hold back or down to do them.

Now, let’s go through my time with using Modern controls and why I’m probably going to be switching back to Classic controls. I would have to say Battle Hub is a boon as it allowed me to pick fights with players who were more on my level. I didn’t want to go against a Master ranked JP when all I wanted to see was how Modern controls felt like! The Battle Hub let me check out what rank I was going to do battle with.

Since I’m mostly a Platinum level gal, I sought up matches with my Modern Marisa to see what it was like. I almost immediately found out you can’t just jump into Modern controls if you’ve been playing on Classic controls for ages because, despite the simplified control setup, I would commit even more execution errors! Oddly enough, it all boiled down to the single button Special attack.

Remember when I told you one of the features of Modern controls is that all you needed to do to perform a special attack was to push on the desired direction when you push the Special attack button? Well, that feature really mixed me up! Instead of getting her Phalanx/superman punch special when I wanted, I would accidentally execute her Scutum/block because I would be walking forward before trying to surprise them with the Phalanx/superman punch! I would think I pushed down but my thumb would press the Special button ever so early before I did! I then tried it with Ken and the same kind of thing would happen. I would accidentally throw out a Shoryuken instead of a fireball or do his Dragonlash Kick instead of the Jinrai Kick because I would slip up the button and direction input!

There’s also the hurdle of the entire Auto button and how it would modify buttons. Yes, I would rely on some Auto combos and that was good. However, as the Auto button changes what normal attack comes out, this didn’t feel natural at times. I would have to remember to hold down the Auto button while pushing down and Light attack to do her crouching low light kick. While doing specials were fun because I could theoretically do it instantaneously with a button, this didn’t work for her normals all too well because I would have to remember how the Auto buttons change my normal attacks!

It’s not like I didn’t try getting used to Modern controls. Like I said, I spent an entire week using it! However, I just couldn’t get used to it. That’s because I guess my brain has been hardwired to doing motions as I’ve been playing with Classic controls for years now. It feels like trying to learn a new language that’s kind of close to the language you’re fluent in. I would have to essentially re-learn something I’ve already engrained in muscle memory from years of playing.

However, I’m not against anyone using Modern controls. If you can rock it, that’s great! I’ve seen a lot of Modern players hitting the Master ranks of Street Fighter 6. That’s a feat I cannot seem to reach now. The thing is, I don’t think I’ll be able to get there even if I switch to Modern controls. It just doesn’t feel natural to me. I’m glad it’s there but I’ll pass.

Byee!

What do you think of Capcom adding Modern controls to Street Fighter 6? Do you use Modern controls? Let me know in the comments section below!