UFC 2009 Undisputed
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Mixed Martial Arts is a sport that has exploded in popularity, so it was no surprise that a game in the same spirit was in the making, however no game has ever managed to capture the action and the complexity that is shown in the octagon, until now.
It’s so good, it’s like a kick to the face
UFC: Undisputed is a fighting game for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, as a fighting game, there is also an arsenal of different characters in different weight classes, and because there is so many playable characters there also exists several martial arts styles to choose from. The possibility to create ones own character in UFC: Undisputed is probably what interests people the most. The possibility to create a unique distinctive character is quite high. There are many different body types, hairstyles, colors and facial forms, which you then can take into “detail-mode” where you can detail your characters face, ie how far apart the eyes should be etc.
After the character-creation it’s time to choose your charater’s fighting style, in this the developers have chosen to divide the styles of two main categories: Striking and Grappling, you get to choose one sub-category each from these two main categories. In striking there are: Kickboxing, Boxing and Muay Thai. In Grappling there are: Wrestling, Judo and BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu). This means that the player will be able to mix their characters specialties quite well, depending on the player’s fighting style. It’s a nice touch.
UFC Undisputed has a fairly well-developed career, the player himself has to take care of training and resting. Everything you do takes a week to do. The player can choose to practice: power, speed or conditioning, or the player can focus on improving their skills ie making the punches, kicks to be more damaging, or improve similar skills. In addition to the training that takes place weekly players must have a constant eye on their character’s endurance (stamina), each training-pass uses up a percentage share of the endurance. Resting your character becomes important before each match since if you go in with 50% endurance you’ll only have 50% endurance when the match starts. In the career mode you will also get the latest news and scores from the other fighters matches. Sometimes you even get messages and interviews from opponents. It offers some pleasant reading but it gets repetitive fast though.
After you have created a character, you start as a professional rookie in the league and you have to fight your way up the ladder and how easy it is depends on what difficulty you play on: Beginner, experienced, advanced or expert. The difficulties advanced and expert, is not for those looking for some casual play, those who want to play the game without much effort should choose beginner or experienced.
UFC = Serious Business
The fighting itself is pretty well-made, if you have not gone through the tutorial you will find that the game is difficult to learn and hard. UFC Undisputed is not a game for button-mashers, but directed towards serious players, therefore the game’s complexity, initially you would think that the controls are illogical, but after a while you get comfortable with them. It is difficult to describe the fighting-gameplay, it’s still pretty stiff compared to human movements, but it is also the best seen I’ve seen and everything is due to the awesome knockouts, the complex techniques and the beautiful graphics.
The game has its drawbacks though. The “standing game” part of the game is well executed and easy to learn, the “ground game” on the other hand is not as fun or easy to learn or perform. When two sweaty men are hugging on the ground while punching each other they must be able to get out of each other’s grip, this is done with the left analogue stick by doing different semi-circles to succeed. Where the learning curve for the standing game is relatively low, the ground-game curve significantly worse. It takes a long time to learn and the player often feels that he has no control over what he does. The ground-game becomes acceptable when you’ve learned how to control it, but it’s still not as fun or easy as the standing-game. You can win using standing-game on harder difficulties but if you go down so the game turns to ground-game you’ll lose significantly since the ground-game is much much harder on the harder difficulties. Annoying and frustrating at times, but it depends on what kind of player you are, I’m more for standing-game and suck at ground game.
However, this is not the only negative aspect of the game, It may be a matter of taste or count as trivialities but the navigation time for the response of the menus are incredibly frustrating. For each button for navigating through menus feels like it takes an eternity. Because the menus are so slow it will easily become frustrating to create new characters fast, it’s may be a small thing but it has great importance for the overall usability.
Conclusion
UFC Undisputed is an incredibly entertaining and a good fighting game, it combines fun complex fighting styles that gives the player the ability to create their own unique fighter. The game has a fun career mode which is more filling than most realistic fighting games out there, the fights are fun , you grow and after a while you will learn and use your own tricks to defeat your opponents. The game has a good multiplayer mode, though there are many “Quitters” who constantly drop off the game when they are losing. The game has its drawbacks, but it’s a really good game.
