The Ultimate Fighter – EA Sports UFC Review

Talking about Sports is fairly difficult. Consider explaining all the rules of Soccer, American Football or Hockey to someone other than take ball/puck/football and get it to the goal to someone who hasn’t played the sport before, and you could be talking for hours and still not be able to really play. This isn’t the same for Boxing and MMA because fighting is human nature, everyone does it, it’s almost in our blood. Since gladiatorial times we watched each other pummel each other to death or submission with one simple rule, punch the guy as hard as you can.

This is the heart of the latest UFC game produced by EA Sports. It’s a combination that we did not fully expected due to problems between the EA and the UFC prior to their release on PS3 and Xbox 360 with UFC Undisputed from THQ. With the franchise under EA’s new Ignite engine, the game looks beautiful, but does it deliver that knock-out punch that fans are looking for?

Upon starting the game we get thrown straight into a tutorial, showing the basics of the game’s complicated controls as you take control of Jon ‘Bone’ Jones against Alexander “The Mauler” Gustafsson, immediatly after we’re thrown into a full blow fight giving us a taste of the action that we can expect further into the game. Win or lose the fight you’ll move on to the actual game which will provide you with several options.

UFC is separated by several modes; Career, Fight Now, and Online, as well as a character creation mode. The Fight Now option brings up the basic mode, giving you a pick of over 90 between 8 weight classes, as well as 7 fighters from the Women’s Bantamweight which is a first from the series. This mode allows you to pick you favourite fighter and brawl in the octagon against a computer controlled fighter or another player locally. The Online mode acts the same, adding a level and log system similar to EA’s Autolog/Battlelog from Need For Speed and Battlefield franchise.

Before getting into the Career Mode, I want to talk about the controls and general Play of how a match in EA Sports UFC flows.

Like with the actual MMA fights, there is two levels to a fight, Standup and Ground game. Working on Standup, the games controls get a bit complicated, while the face buttons are focused on punches and kicks with a set of buttons controlling the left and right punch/kick, attacks can be modified with an additional flick of the left stick, even set to strike the body by holding the left trigger. Complications with button presses come from the addition of the power shot which take additional stamina and are considered high risk with big rewards, each fighter has a large range of power strikes ranging thanks to the input being set to the bumper, both left and right bumper open a new set of strikes for each facebutton also factoring if the left trigger is held down for a body power shot, making some moves feel like your playing finger twister just to pull of a big strike.

Addition to this is the ability to Clinch which is controlled by the right analog stick. The Clinch game as any Martial Artist or Fight Enthusiast can tell you is very important, controlling the Clinch is simple requiring you to rotate the right analog stick in specific ways to get in the right position while using the attack buttons to bring down your opponent stamina or to bring in a powerful knockout with a knee to the face. A new addition is the showstopper moves, these moves are power shots that involve being near the side of the cage preforming an attack off of the cage for a big attack. These are highlight strikes that do massive damage and look cool doing so.

The Ground game has been the hardest to pull off in the series. Fights go to the ground one of two ways, a Knockdown or Takedown. Once on the ground, fighters have to attempt for the dominant position by rotating the right analog stick, you can strike to take down the other player’s stamina and health, or provide a win with a dominant ground and pound which will allow you to strike your opponent multiple times with out defending forcing the referee to intervene. From multiple positions, both dominant and not, you can start a submission.

Submission, I’m happy to say, is one of the best improved parts of the series, gone is the who can rotate the analog stick fastest style of winning and in is a new struggle mechanic. When a submission is started a 4 directional window appears, defenders will attempt to move the right stick in a direction to fill up one of the gauge to escape the submission. The Attacker has a two part job, one is to use the right analog to stop defender from escaping by selecting the same direction as him, meanwhile the attacker will need to wait for an indication to move the left analog stick one of the 4 directions, successfully doing so will move the next transition of the submission while failing will move up all the escape gauges for the defendant and giving them more time to attempt to escape.

While the controls look complicated in writing, some practice will make this almost second nature especially after the first few fights. Adding to these systems is the your character’s stamina and health. Stamina is used for everything from attacks, moving in clinches, moving positions on ground, defence and submissions, the more it is used the more tired your fighter becomes, causing him to throw weaker punches and defence against strikes.

Like with Wrestling games, Health and damage is indicated by a full body indicator. The more damage a specific body part takes affects the use of that body part and the use of stamina. For example, enough strikes to the leg will cause the fighter to start limping, limiting movement and kicking power, while strikes to the gut will lower stamina and leave the head open for more vicious attacks. The indicators also do more in career mode affecting your fighter’s longevity meter, but more on that later.

Career Mode opens up a well rounded experience of what it’s like to step into the Octagon. Starting off with an entry to The Ultimate Fighter Reality show, you work your way through some tough preliminary rounds to give you a taste of how your blank slate will react. Winning and doing well in training will give you Evolution Points which will allow you to boost your skills and unlock new moves to assign to your character. The Career is separated by video calls between some big fighters like Forest Griffin, BJ Penn and the head of the UFC Dana White telling how awesome your doing (or how much you suck if you keep losing,) as well as small documentary videos about what it’s like in the UFC, they type of fighters and those big moments and what it feels like. These scenes are well made, yet the video calls can get repetitive after a large win streak.

Stats play a big role in this mode, as you have to use earned Evolution Points given from wins and training to boost you strength and purchase the Power Shot moves. These will increase your custom character’s overall ranking in the UFC allowing you to build the character your way. The more popular you are from your fights, the more Evolution Points are given. The better health and defensive stats, the longer your going run your longevity meter, which fills as you sustain damage, once the meter fills you will be forced to retire, ending you career.

Both the Graphics and Physics of the game is amazing and the Ignite engine really shows off what it can do in UFC, however the game does have some serious flaw. In the strike department, punches and kicks feel like they have enough of a reaction or weight which takes away a lot of the magic in a fight, yet bruises and blood look amazing on battle damaged characters. The Character creator feels very shallow, allowing you to either upload your own face to the game or choose a pre-created face, and while most of the weight classes are available, the Women’s Bantamweight is not available for character creator which is a shame due to the fact that it’s the first time the class has been available in UFC.

The game feels like a great first try for the series, with the large amount of fighters and the ability to download more including the UFC 1 champion Royce Gracie and Bruce Lee give the game room to grow. For fans of Fighting, MMA and the UFC, you don’t want to miss out on this title.