Hiya!

A good while back, I mentioned I was taking a break from playing Street Fighter 6. That was way back in October. I just recently started playing Street Fighter 6 over the holiday season. This was mainly so my younger relatives had something to play. Capcom made it incredibly easy for even my 6-year old nephew to get into the game thanks to the different control schemes. For them, I had all of their characters on Dynamic controls. So, all they had to do was mash on the buttons and the computer would do the rest. Despite not really knowing what they were doing or what was happening under the hood, they still has a fun time as they would see their characters pull off all sort of cool stuff like combos, special attack and Super Arts.

Of course, I would beat them, despite using Classic controls, which meant I had to do all those said combos, special moves and Super Arts manually. It did seem like they did have, at the very least, a fighting chance as the Dynamic controls allowed them to “react” to what I was doing.

Anyway, after the holidays passed, I went back to playing Street Fighter 6 online and, after a day or so, I was feeling rather bored. While I was feeling refreshed from my 2-month break from the game and I did feel I was playing better, nothing really has changed since then. I basically stopped playing a couple of weeks after C. Viper got released and everything felt the same as it was that time.

That’s when a weird bit of inspiration hit me while I was reminiscing about seeing how much fun my younger cousins were having playing with Dynamic controls. What if I tried something similar and change how I play Street Fighter 6? Although Capcom was smart enough to not allow Dynamic controls to be played online, they did make it so I could try the other “easy” control scheme. Why not try playing Street Fighter 6 using Modern controls?

For those who are unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, let me try to give a simple explanation. Most people associate fighting games with pulling off “complex” directional motions with button presses to execute special moves. This has been the “classic” way of playing the game. Well, in Street Fighter 6, Capcom introduced the Modern control scheme. Instead of rolling the joystick around to do special attacks, Modern controls has all of the special attacks mapped to one button!

You can do the different special moves your character has in his or her arsenal with specific directions on the controller. So, for example, with Ryu, throwing a fireball is done by pushing the special attack button and, if you want to do his Dragon Punch, you push forward on the stick at the same time you push the special attack button. No complicated motions needed!

That’s cool and all but there are some downsides to Modern controls. All special attacks for Modern controls do 20% less damage than their Classic controls counterpart. If you’re bothered by the 20% damage reduction, you can bypass if as long as you do the Classic controls motion to do the special move. So, it’s like having the best of both worlds! There’s also the chance some of your characters will not have all of their normals. For example, Blanka doesn’t have a regular sweep in Modern controls. What he’ll do when you input the “standard” sweep input his is slide. With M. Bison, it’s the opposite; he’ll do his sweep instead of his long-ranged low slide kick.

Even with that caveat, having single button specials sounds really good! It’s much easier to zone opponents with Ryu’s fireball-Dragon Punch pattern as there are no tricky directional motions to perform. This is the typical “Shoto” pattern of throwing a fireball at your opponent from around jump distance and, as your opponent tries to jump over it, you can nail them with the “Shoto” anti-air attack, the Dragon Punch.

Things like Zangief‘s Spinning Piledriver, which is 360-degree motion (actually a 3/4 circle motion but that’s a story for another time) with Classic controls, is performed by just pressing the special attack button in Modern controls.

So, I decided to give Modern controls a whirl. However, I didn’t want to do it with my main/real account. After all, most of my characters are in Diamond rank and it would be insane if I tried to fight these killers when I’m just getting used to this new control scheme. So, I created a new account specifically to test out if Modern controls is the best way to play.

Initially, I thought about testing it out with Guile, who I generally consider to be my main. I’ve noticed a guy named Tyler1 who started playing with Modern Guile. Now, I’m not discounting the fact Tyler1 just might be a gaming prodigy but I did find it amazing how he grinded it out in Street Fighter 6 and he managed to reach Master rank in just a couple of months of playing! Then you have me, who had been playing the game since it came out and only managed to get one of my characters to Master rank pretty much by accident just this year! Oh, that also happened after I’ve pretty much given up on getting Master rank because I felt it was too hard! Stupid Tyler1 showing off how bad I am at Street Fighter 6!

I did eventually not do this as I don’t really think charge characters such as Guile benefit all that much from Modern controls. The main reason why I play charge characters in the first place is because the inputs are already easy. It’s just holding down or back for a moment and then up or forward with either punch or kick. No zigzaggy motion for a Dragon Punch or spinning the joystick for a Spinning Piledriver! No, I had to pick someone with the fireball/Dragon Punch pattern since doing the motions in the heat of battle have always been problematic for me. I decided to try out Modern controls using Street Fighter 6’s newest poster boy, Luke.

Luke seemed ideal as he does have a modified version of the fireball/Dragon Punch pattern of a Shoto… kinda. He does have a Dragon Punch-like attack with his Rising Uppercut. Unlike a classic Shoto, however, Luke’s “fireball”, the Sand Blast is a super quick projectile that flies across the screen almost instantly! It doesn’t go full screen but it’s really good for pressure. So, with that, I jumped in with my Modern controls Luke and went through the Ranked Matches right from the beginning.

I was doing fine early on during my initial ranking matches. I was able to crush most of the Gold and Platinum players I ran across. It felt very easy at the start as all I basically had to do was stay away and pelt them with Luke’s Sand Blast projectile and, once they got frustrated enough and try to jump in, anti-air them with my 1-button Rising Uppercut. However, even here, I was encountering problems as what I mentioned wasn’t my style of playing and it was definitely didn’t feel right.

The biggest reason why this was so was because I wasn’t comfortable with Luke’s Modern control normal attacks. There was one thing I didn’t mention regarding Modern controls. With Modern controls, Capcom enabled something called Auto-Combos. Basically, you hold down the Auto-Combo button and then continuously press any attack button. This will make your character will, well, perform an automatic combo that will never drop as long as you rapidly press the attack button while holding down the Auto-Combo button. What the Auto-Combo button also does is modify that normal attack and this is what was throwing me off!

One of Luke’s best buttons is his crouching medium punch. It has good range and is cancellable to special attacks. However, Luke’s second best button would be his crouching medium kick! It’s a bit slower than the crouching medium punch but it does something the crouching medium punch doesn’t: it hits low! This means you can catch people trying to walk away with this button!

The thing is, I keep on forgetting about the Auto-Combo button! As I’ve been playing Classic controls for so long, it’s already embedded in my muscle memory how to do every character’s crouching medium kick to hit low! So, I keep on getting Luke’s crouching medium punch and not the normal attack I really wanted to perform!

Despite this, I did manage to get my Modern controls Luke to 4-Star Platinum. The thing is, it didn’t feel right that I got that high. Sure, I was reacting much better but Modern controls just felt like I had to rewrite my brain from scratch since I’ve gotten so used to playing with Classic controls! After all, I’ve been using “Classic” controls ever since I started playing fighting games when Street Fighter IV came out more than a decade ago! It certainly didn’t seem useful to start from scratch, especially since I’ve been doing fine so far!

So, yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever touch Modern controls ever again as it’s just too taxing. I do love how it got a lot of new blood into fighting games. Tyler1 is a prime example of that. I’m also not one who poo-poos on gamers who use Modern controls like a lot of the hardcore Street Fighter fans. In fact, I find playing against Modern players scary because of their 1-button special moves! Even with that benefit, I don’t think I’ll be switching over any time soon. Why try to fix something that ain’t broken?

Byee!

Which control scheme do you use to play Street Fighter 6? What are your thoughts on Capcom adding Modern controls? Let me know in the comments section below!