Review: UFC Undisputed 2010

eGamer Rating:

Addictive: Yes
Worth The Time: Yes
Reasoning: Kicking your friends ass is always worth it. Even if it’s only virtual.

Things Loved: Realistic; Good commentary; Loads of realism; Knock-Outs; Can optimise almost everything; Quick & Easy tournament setup; Career mode is actually fun
Things Hated: Load screens; No Steve Mazzagatti (referee); Knock-Outs; Serious case of repetition; Intruding interviews

Reasons To Buy/Not Buy: If you’re a UFC fan or a MMA supporter you need to buy this. Thereafter, you’d want to play this with a friend, or two, or three. And more — if you have more. It is kind of limited to those interested to the sport.

Final Conclusion: Nothing is more rewarding than winning. Lots and lots of winning.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the most prestige mixed martial arts competition in the world. Every person currently, and previously, training MMA would love a contract into the UFC.

UFC Undisputed 2010 is a Mixed Martial Art game which comes as a sequel to UFC Undisputed 2009. Now, like every new game there are loads of changes when compared to the previous version.

But is change always a good thing?

Name: UFC Undisputed 2010
Genre: Fighting (MMA)
Players: 1+
Multiplayer: Definitely.
Developers: Future Media Creators
Publishers: THQ

There are two modes available in UFC Undisputed 2010 — Career and Multiplayer. UFC is definitely a multiplayer-orientated game however you’ll find yourself losing hours and hours of your life in Career mode.

Career allows you to create a fighter. Your very own fighter. You can customize almost everything with the exception of your nickname. Static nicknames are used for commentary, because without this the game would not be able to announce who you are.

One cool thing I found in Career mode: You can be Born In, or Fighting Out Of (where you train), Cape Town or Johannesburg. The addition of South African cities add realism to a realism-based game.

Overall, there are loads of individual customizations for your fighter. You just need to battle through the load-screens, and array of menu’s.

Realism in fighting is very important. You’d like to know that your punches actually hit when you knock someone out — and this is where the first problem lies. Knock-outs occasionally feel like they come from no-where. I do understand the sport and I’m an avid UFC fan. I’ve watched well over 50 official UFC events, most Fight Nights and the Ultimate Fighter Series. This being said, I understand how fights can change with a single punch or kick.

But you see, for a fight to change with a single punch or kick, it should actually hit the body.

The single problem I had with realism revolved around a few punches which seemed to miss, but yet knock you down or out. It’s seriously frustrating (especially in a fighting game), where your friend hits you and you’re rocked – even though he was being beaten up. And then, the replay shows that nothing actually landed. Perhaps maybe a toe to the lip.

Who cares anyway — knock outs look good. Plus, you feel really good after you knock someone out. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

UFC is spot on when it comes to fighting. When you land a punch on someone you can see their head go back. How far the head bobs back all depends on how hard you hit them. When they are on the floor and you’re bashing away – you’ll be able to see their head moving, followed by the blood squirting out the cuts.

Apart from mismatched hits, UFC 2010 is super realistic.

When it comes to fighting, the training you under-go is very important. You need strength and conditioning, you need to work your technique and you need to make sure you’re quick enough to land punches or kicks. UFC 2010′s Career mode lets you tweak this to your liking.

The Career will allow you to join various training camps which all offer completely different skills. All of the training camps are real and all of them exist, barred the Live camp. The Live camp will allow you to spar or train with a friend, or stranger. This is a really cool addition to the game as a real-life partner could teach you a few new things, things that you might not find in the lengthy tutorial.

Which leads me onto my next point: The lengthy tutorial.

It’s long, boring and often annoying. There’s no way to skip various parts and it often doesn’t help much. You’d be better off with a book showing you what to do because the tutorial is cumbersome with information. A book would at least let you skip to the good parts.

Despite my complaints/feelings about the tutorial, you’ll find a few helpful hints on what you can do in various situations. You’ll need to go through the tutorial, however without a decent understanding of how MMA works you’ll probably find that there are too many key combination’s. But this makes it fun and challenging — as if it were a real fight.

Every fighter says that training is the worst part of the fight. ‘The fight is easy’, you’ll hear them say. The three month long training camp beats you up, chews you up and spits you out again. Only to enter the Octagon to fight for money – or reputation.

Reputation falls part of UFC 2010. The more you fight, the better you fight and the more sponsors plastered onto your t-shirt — the better your reputation. You’ll be featured on magazine covers and be invited to events too.

You’d need Reputation to transition through the various fighting competitions. From amateur, to professional to UFC Champion.

As your reputation increases (and the more you progress through the game), the more your trainer will ask to hire more coaching staff. Throughout the game you will be able to gain skill levels in training with new coaching staff.

After all, the better you fight the better your reputation.

UFC 2010 offers a 12 year Career time-line, opposed to 2009′s five year time-line. The extra seven years allows you to fight more, create more rivalries and participate in more interviews.

Which, smoothly, leads me onto my next problem. The Intrusive interviews.

When training for a fight you’ll have 9 – 14 weeks of training. You can attend various camps, build your physique, attend UFC events and participate in Interviews or shows like All Access.

For the first, say, three fights it’s nice (and I use this term loosely) to participate in Interviews and All Access. However, after the 6th or-so fight you’ll find that there are more interviews and shows than training. Half the time you’ll be building reputation, opposed to training.

Declining interview after interview becomes tiresome. Even more tiresome when you’re not yet ready to fight your next opponent. And yes, it does become increasingly tougher fight-after-fight.

For the record, All Access is a real program from the UFC. It looks into the training and life of various fighters before they enter the Octagon. Following the All Access show, Dana Whites Vlog’s also play a role in the game.

These are healthy additions to the game, it’s just unfortunate that it becomes too media crazy. But hey – maybe this really depicts the real-life of a fighter?

A serious case of repetition. A very serious annoyance, especially when losing.

Don’t get me wrong, the commentary is excellent. When you first start playing the game Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg seem knowledgeable on the sport, and they are interesting to listen too. However, after a few fights — about three — they will repeat old facts.

Following this, it over-laps. They repeat what they say, a lot. Especially when fighting on the ground. It’s frustrating to fail at escaping side-control or mount, only to hear the two commentators talk about how you are failing.

While the above might hold a lot of negative, the game isn’t bad at all. It’s actually really fun — because of multiplayer.

It’s not meant to be a game for Career, although it does hold this functionality.

Multiplayer will have you fighting your friends, or a stranger, where you’d probably not pay attention to any of the above negatives – as those negatives mean nothing in the Multiplayer game.

UFC 2010 allows you to create tournaments on-the-go. There is a feature where you can create anything larger than a 4-man tournament. This offers fights and healthy competition between you and your friends.

The above essentially means that Multiplayer could, quite possibly, be perfect..

..However the game is seriously tough to learn. Similar to real-life MMA, you’ll find yourself battling to do the right thing. Punch or kick. Take down or clinch.

You need to know when and what to do to be truly successful. Without sufficient knowledge on what to do, you’ll find yourself being beaten to a pump really quickly. Especially in Human vs CPU mode.

For the record, in Multiplayer you might get away with spamming a single move. Time and time again.

This leads me onto the game dynamics.

It’s necessary for me to mention that Dana White, UFC owner, doesn’t really care about the fighters. He wants a show. He wants the best for the fans and the fighters must provide else they get into trouble. To him it’s about making money. To fighters, they would obviously want to win without getting too hurt. The money would only be a bonus, right? No – fighters do it  for the money. Winning is important, and winning without a show feeds still feeds the family.

And because of this we find that UFC Undisputed 2010 boasts easy stand-up fighting, and really tough when grappling.

The grappling is almost avoidable. It’s repetitive, and unless you really know what you’re doing you’ll probably find yourself standing up to fight on your feet – just because it’s easier and more flashy. I love a technical fight, but in UFC I found that I’d slug it out simply because grappling is retarded-ly difficult.

For example, in UFC 2009 when in Mount (on the ground) you’d be able to posture up and drop-bombs on your opponent with ease. In UFC 2010 you need a lot more than just swinging the stick to posture up and drop-bombs.

In fact, it takes loads of practice and timing to get this right. And this is silly, because when your opponent tries to escape from mount you’re free to posture up, but instead you don’t. You lie down for him to hold you.

Frustratingly frustrating.

Apart from knock-outs and grappling to submit your opponents to victory, you’ll also be able to achieve your goal by either cutting them up with your elbows and punches or winning each round and going to the judges for a decision. Personally, I love knocking the opponent out, however I’ll easily settle for bloodying someone up — forcing the doctors to stop the fight.

Therefore, you’ll be avoiding the ground, because fighting on your feet is where the fun is. But don’t be fooled. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as UFC 2010 was developed really well and very realistically. For example, if you keep circling away from your opponents power hand you’ll create good angles to hit him in the face. Time and time again.

Fighting is about angles, and surprisingly, UFC 2010 allows for angled fighting. It’s actually enjoyable to see your friends rage as you hit them every time, purely because your angles are better.

UFC 2010 offers loads and loads of fighting styles. In each martial art the game offers sub-categories of specialties for your fighter. You can be a kick-boxer or a Muay Thai fighter, or you can do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Following this comes Freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling — these are two different types of wrestling both included. Other martial arts are included, and UFC 2010 truly offers a wide array of options for your fighter. Unlike last year’s game, the variation and difference in fighting styles is noticeable and enjoyable. Each fighter is completely different and this allows for interesting and exciting match-ups.

And this is why I created a fighter with strong Offensive Punches and Offensives Kicks. As long as I could keep my fighter simple, and continue to move forward with hard punches and knock-out kicks I’d win. I had no defense, and no ground-game. I couldn’t clinch and I couldn’t take anyone down. But I could hit hard. Very hard.

This technique works for the first part of UFC 2010 where the fights are easy. For the championship, you’ll need a ground game, and I quickly realised this as I started to fail. The amount of fighting styles available is large, resulting in an increasingly tough learning curve.

Not to worry though, you can correct anything you do wrong–and continue to learn–with lots and lots of Training Camps.

UFC 2010 is amazing because it’s fun, challenging and enjoyable. It’s like Fifa for fighters, only better.

Only thing I, personally, hated about UFC was that Steve Mazzagatti is missing from the referee list. He’s by far my favourite referee and I always smile whenever he’s in the Octagon. There’s something about him always looking stoned, and being slow to react which make fights enjoyable.

Overall there are solid characters, good graphics, excellent commentary–to a point–, easy tournaments, good multiplayer support, realistic fighting dynamics and various competitions for you to entertain yourself with.

Lastly, the game includes challenges which allow you to unlock previous UFC rivalry fights. Complete whatever is required and you’ll be able to see what really happened in the fight.

*edited thanks to Sammy Swiegers