The 2nd Closed Beta of Street Fighter 6 is Tomorrow! See What to Expect
A 2nd Closed Beta for Street Fighter 6 is underway!
I’m excited to say it’s back! Street Fighter is back with its new street, cool art style with flowing combat and so many options to show you how to play if you dedicate your time. So we seen Street Fighter 6 show a brand new trailer during the 2022 Game Awards and it was dope to see all the new changes introduced like Dee Jay having a new design with his appearance and combat, story mode with its mini games and two new characters: Marisa and JP. I will go more in depth about what was shown in that trailer in another article. But for right now let’s focus on what is coming up!
Street Fighter 6 is preparing for its next Closed Beta that starts tomorrow December 16th at 8:00 UTC and it ends December 19th at 8:00 UTC as well. People who were able to play for the first beta were reinvented again, so I can’t wait to try it out again and see the new changes/additions to the beta. I hope more of you were able to get invites for this closed beta this time around!
So to prepare for Street Fighter’s 6 2nd Closed Beta tomorrow, I wanted to talk about how the game was experiencing the first closed beta, if I enjoyed it or not and some additions/changes I would like to see.
Street Fighter 6: 1st Closed Beta Impressions
I got to play the first closed beta on the PS5. Between me and my brother, I was the only one who got the invite. But we did find a way to still have us both experience the beta through PlayStation’s console sharing feature. Installing and starting the entire process went pretty smoothly. I had to connect my Capcom ID with my PlayStation account before I started up the beta.
Introduction to Battle Hub and Character Creation
The beta was based on the online mode Battle Hub. The Battle Hub was really cool to experience. It’s a place where you and players around the world is in this area where you can fight each other in regular battles, do ranked matches, take pictures, play classic games and more! It’s fun and at first I thought it was going to be corny or not so intuitive like Jump Force but it was way more invested than that.
When you start the beta, you get introduced to the battle hub by a character named Eternity once you create your character. The character creation is surprisingly really detailed. There are multiple hair styles (especially black hair styles which is a warm welcome), so many ways you can change up your characters face, and a wide range of skin tones. You could even change up your outfit after you get know how the Battle Hub works.
Your character can also have different styles that they can fight in but for right now, especially in that first closed beta, it seems like it’s locked only to Luke. Also you won’t be able to play as your character while fighting people online, but you can walk around and interact with others and the things in the area like starting or spectating a match. I think once the game gets closer to releasing, they’ll let us in to how fighting with our character and unlocking more styles can be.
Things You Can Do in The Battle Hub:
Ranked Matches/Tournaments
In your menu, you can do matchmaking. You can choose whether or not if you want to do ranked matches. That is a way you can search for matches without having to face the people that is with you in the battle hub. There are different ranks that you could reach and after a couple of battles – you are given one and you either win more matches to increase your rank. I seen a lot of people already the highest rank!
You could even sign up for tournaments! I unfortunately wasn’t able to join in one because you had to wait a while until the sign ups were available – but there were many people in there. There’s a counter specifically for signing up for tournaments so if you want to take things seriously on top of ranked matches – definitely check that out.
Casual Matches/Extreme Battle Cabinets
There are regular battles that you can do with the people running around in the Battle Hub with you. So there is many arcade cabinets around where two people can sit and play against each other. To switch your character, you would have to go into a menu and choose them while you’re about to start the game or beforehand.
It was easy to add someone too through the menu. Once you know their name in Street Fighter 6, you can search it up or have them search you up. You can join the server that they are in and battle against each other as well. That is what me and my brother did, and it was really cool to interact with each other through the battle hub.
We tried to play locally with each other, but it didn’t work, so we ended up doing the casual matches. But what was extremely cool to see was that when my brother came to look at my screen to see if there was any lag – we were able to play like we were in a local match – that’s how good their net code was! The delay time was nonexistent, and I was getting my ass beat smh.
The Extreme Battle Cabinets are like the casual matches but there are different things that can occur during your fight. So, it could be like weapons hitting the both of you, and both of you having to do a certain move to get a boost. When there aren’t anyone sitting with you at the other cabinet – you can train. It was a bit overwhelming how many options there were.
Game Center
You could play classic Capcom games by yourself or 2 players I believe! The games switch after a certain number of days apparently so that things are fresh! You could compete with others to have the highest score in the games as well!
Just Roam Around
If you want to chill around in the battle hub without wanting to fight, that is perfectly fine! You can spectate matches, take pictures with your friends and the things around you, or even speak to other people chilling there. Many people’s characters were very… unique. They were a whole bunch of proportions and colors and so creative that I should’ve expected that to happen with a good character creation process. You can even go and buy different clothing which is a nice addition.
“FIGHT!”
I’m not going to lie, I’m not the greatest when it comes to fighting games so when I hopped in, I thought I could mash buttons until some cool shit happens. Then I realized there are two different controls, modern and the good ole classic. If you want to do some cool moves with the press of a button, choose modern. It’s good for newcomers who want to experience that. If you want a more traditional button setting, use classic, as you can do more combos and understand the mechanics a little bit more.
The characters you were able to play with in the beta were Luke, Jamie, Rye, Juri, Kimberly, Julie, Ken and Chun-Li. We had a great roster to play around with and I’m grateful for that. I switched in between using modern and classic controls. You could even set certain controls for the characters you use as well, so Chun-Li can have modern controls while Ryu has classic controls. I feel as though some characters are easier to play with in modern and others is better to do combos with in classic.
I felt happy playing Street Fighter again! felt like I truly grew up with the game especially seeing the characters’ age like Ken and Ryu. Even if he looks a little washed up, ken keeps his head high with his badass flare, and Ryu is still as strong as ever with his reserved self. And the new characters are a warm welcome! Kimberly’s fighting and her art style are insanely cool and Jaime man! I want to learn more about him and do cool combos because I already see the vision with his attacks and combo list. Juri is um… detailed because of its unnecessary focus on her foot every time she wins a game, but she is as deadly as ever. Luke is all about the fundamentals: STRENGTH.
Me and my opponents only lagged two times throughout the time I played and that was surprising! The lag was interesting because our characters stayed in place until the lag issue was stabilized, which is a nice touch. The only issue I encountered was small errors here and there with the game crashing on me. But with the game’s quick loading speed I was back in a minute!
The Future of Street Fighter
The 2nd Closed Beta should be the same as the first but with a few additional things added and fixed from the first beta, so I am excited to see what’s new. There were more things I would like to talk about, but that will get mentioned after the end of this 2nd closed beta – so stay tuned for that!
Besides the 2nd closed beta, Capcom announced the release date of Street Fighter 6. It is releasing on June 2nd, 2023! I’m just itching to play more of it it’s so good, and you really see the amount of heart the developers put into this game from the cool battle hub to the little features /details in the stage background. Street Fighter 6 might be the game that reshapes the fighting game genre and seeing how excited the community is – I say we’re going to eat good in the future.