Street Fighter VI is a knockout with Summer Game Fest and Diablo IV around the corner: Weekly Roundup
June is set to be a massive month for video games, and the first couple days of the month have proven that to be quite true.
Street Fighter VI, the follow up to 2016’s Street Fighter V, had a lot riding on it. While V was certainly good, it wasn’t great, as reflected by its adequate Metacritic score of 77 but painful user score of 3.7. Fighting games had been doing well, with Injustice 2, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Mortal Kombat 11, and Guilty Gear - Strive being strong continuations of their respective franchises. But Street Fighter had remained suspiciously quiet on its next entry, until 2022 and February’s fated announcement trailer.
Finally, after award shows, gameplay reveals, and endless hype, Street Fighter VI is here - and people are loving it. Though its first player mode has garnered some slack for its dull and simplistic structure, the game at large has been praised for revitalizing Street Fighter. Compared to Street Fighter V’s 77, VI sits at an incredible 92, with a user score thats nearly doubled since the last installment.
Street Fighter needed this win, as its rival series Mortal Kombat is set to reboot the franchise in September. Now, Capcom has set a new bar for Netherrealm to clear come Fall, and given fighting fans something to talk about for years to come.
In addition to Street Fighter VI, Diablo IV is also set to release June 6th, exiting its pre-beta and entering the official release stage. While most critics have withheld final reviews until the game is out of beta, the reception is clear: Diablo IV is already being called a renaissance for the series after the polarizing Diablo III.
This is great news for Blizzard and slightly troublesome news for Microsoft, as such a success could be used as evidence against XBOX’s neverending battle to acquire Activision Blizzard. Sony has already argued that owning Call of Duty alone would give XBOX an unfair advantage over other publishers. Now, they’ve got more ammunition, as the UK’s block of the deal almost guarantees a lengthy court battle.
Finally for this week, the sequel nobody wanted. With zero fanfare, Nintendo announced a sequel to Switch launch title 1-2-Switch titled Everybody 1-2-Switch, set to release June 30th. It looks to be more of the same Joy-con oriented minigames from the first title back in 2017, only with even less novelty. It’s hard not to accuse the game of existing only to fill a hole in Nintendo’s release schedule between Tears of the Kingdom and July’s Pikmin 4. But not that hard.
We’ll be back next week to discuss the biggest announcements of Summer Game Fest!
