Street Fighter V review

When it comes to fighting games, only a few can hold a candle to the Street Fighter series and its track record of excellent, breakneck melee action. Five main Street Fighter games and numerous crossovers and spin-offs have been released since 1987.

Street Fighter V (2016) best represents the series. It’s a masterful fighting game that has managed not to lose touch with its roots over the past three decades: a true modern classic.

Mechanics

Young and old alike, if you’ve never played Street Fighter, let’s say you’re losing your life under that rock. However, in case you’ve never gotten to experience the fighting phenomenon, here’s a brief history of the series and a rundown on how their mechanics work.

Following the success of the original Street Fighter, Street Fighter II came out in 1991, eclipsing its predecessor and solidifying the series as Capcom’s flagship franchise. The second installment of the series established the formula of the side scrolling fighting game with limited health bar, which titles like Mortal Kombat still use today.

The game’s combat system looks relatively rudimentary on the surface, but is also fraught with underlying complexities. The inputs to perform basic kicks and punches, cues and even special moves are simple enough to perform, but the best players know how to chain these very specific moves into longer and deadly combos with absolutely devastating effect. In this way Street Fighter is at the same time very accessible but at the level of more technical fighters like the Tekken or Soul Calibur series.