Street Fighter 6 Roster Leaked and Sony's PlayStation State of Play

Yesterday, Sony held a livestream of their State of Play presentation for PlayStation. For those who are unfamiliar State of Play is a video presentation Sony puts out periodically to advertise upcoming games similar to how Nintendo has directs every few months. These presentations are always virtual and usually livestreamed. I caught the presentation as soon as I went home and got up to date on the news. I say this was definitely one of the better presentations they've had over the years. There were substantial announcements and not everything contained cgi cutscenes. Still, there wasn't anything that really stood out as amazing or a surprise announcement. 

One of the first thing viewers saw was the jungles of the Horizon series. I was a bit surprised at first and then just thought "Oh, this must be a DLC announcement." It wasn't however, as the trailer continued and the game transitioned from dialogue to gameplay and I saw disembodied hands it was evident that this was a VR spinoff. I've had little experience with VR so I'm not particularly excited for this. It's cool though. This title is called Horizon: Call of the Mountain and it will be exclusive to the PlayStation 5 VR2. There is currently no release date. Horizon Forbidden West also received a free update yesterday that adds a New Game + mode. This wasn't the only VR title announced during this presentation as Resident Evil Village will also be getting a VR2 port. There is currently no release date for that either.  A new Walking Dead title called Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners: Retribution has been announced and it too will have VR support.

Outside of VR we saw a combat roller derby game called Rollerdrome with a stylized cel-shaded look. It will be releasing on August 16th this year. The two fine dining meats of this presentation were the reveal of Resident Evil 4 Remake and Street Fighter 6. Both of these titles were known before the presentation. Capcom revealed Street Fighter 6 with a very brief teaser trailer back in February and a Resident Evil 4 remake was hinted since last year, but this is the first time we've seen gameplay footage of either and in the case of Resident Evil 4 an official announcement of the title.

SF6's revealed characters: Luke, Ryu, Chun-li and Jaime

Street Fighter 6's trailer has a focus on Luke who was the last DLC character for Street Fighter V. He's sporting a new look and what was most surprising here was that we got a brief look at some 3-D free roaming gameplay for about three seconds. Street Fighter V was heavily criticized at launch for having a lack of content and what we saw here may be a look at a new single player adventure mode. In addition to seeing Ryu and Chun-Li's new designs we also see a new character by the name of Jaime who sports a long shaved ponytail. There is some brief gameplay shown and it appears there's a new counter-like mechanic similar to parries in Street Fighter III, focus attacks in IV and V-shifts in V. The new art style is gorgeous to me, but I new some wouldn't be akin to it. I'm eager to see an actual standard gameplay match since the gameplay shown was more for flair and cinematics. At the time of this writing the entire base roster of Street Fighter 6 has been leaked. The roster is as follows:

Luke

Ryu

Chun-Li

Dhalsim

Blanka

Ken

Guile

Zangief

E. Honda

Cammy  White

Dee Jay

Akuma

Juri Han

Rashid

Ed

and eight new characters.

Street Fighter 6 launches next year. Unlike Street Fighter V this won't be a PlayStation console exclusive. In addition to the PS5 it will be launching on Xbox Series X, PS4, and PC. I like the little bit I've seen so far. It's not important, but the only thing I don't like so far is the logo. It looks an ad for some kind of fitness or athletic product. I do think it's interesting that they dropped the Roman numerals for the first time in mainline games.

As I mentioned earlier, Capcom officially revealed their Resident Evil 4 remake. Not a whole lot was shown, mostly just cinematics and sceneries from the original rendered in the updated engine. We just got a brief glimpse of gameplay at the end with Leon walking towards the village. Not much to say here. To weigh my opinion in I feel indifferent. I was against the idea of a RE4 remake because I think Resident Evil 4 is fine as is. It doesn't have tank controls and it still plays modern. In fact, it was so influential that the over the shoulder perspective it implemented showed up in a lot of shooters since like the Dead Space and Gears of War series. The only thing outdated about RE4 is its graphics and still it remains one of the best looking games on the Gamecube and PS2 and not to mention the hundred ports it received since which makes it feel even less old.

I have to see more footage and what it can bring different or improve upon from the original to get me interested. Resident Evil 3 was the last RE game to receive a remake and it was lackluster so I'm already cautious. There is no current release date. On a more positive note Sony announced that the remastered version of Insomniac's Spider-Man and Miles Morales will be releasing on PC this August on the 12th. Square Enix also dropped new footage for Final Fantasy XVI showing more combat, including summon on summon fights, and revealing a bit more about the story. That wraps up all the major news in the State of Play. Let me know in the comments below what you're most looking forward to.