Last year gamers and MMA fans everywhere were ecstatic to finally get a big-budget fighting game involving the Ultimate Fighting Championship, from mega-publisher THQ and developer Yuke’s (studio behind the past couple WWE video games). The UFC Undisputed series was off to a good start, and the 2010 edition is the sophomore attempt at bringing realistic UFC gaming to the Xbox 360. UFC Undisputed 2010 takes everything the game learned in it’s first outing and improves on it, including a ton of more fighters and extra things to spend time doing. UFC is still in a growing stage and fans of the sport are hardcore, wanting each and everything about the UFC game to be perfect (or at least very accurate). We went into the review of Undisputed 2010 with this mindset, looking at all of the features from the perspective of the ultimate UFC fan. All of the control aspects are so important to whether or not a game such as this is successful, especially when it comes to a good ground game and solid jujutsu. Sports games are tricky because so much of the main game has to stay the same year to year, with enough new content to make the purchase worth it to the consumer. UFC Undisputed 2010 is mostly we imagined it to be and more, resulting in the best-available single player MMA fighting experience on the Xbox 360 video game console as long as you don't want to take the game online and are happy dealing with a five-minute wait just to get past the start screen.
To be honest there are so many changes in the 2010 edition of this game that we were a bit worried as to whether or not the feeling that we enjoyed so much while playing Undisputed 2009 would still be there in this much-updated version. Thankfully the development team took unimaginable effort to make sure that didn’t happen, and the end product feels exactly like we would want a second-year product to feel. The UFC as a whole provides an experience and setting, especially to young males that can somehow resonate into every nook and cranny of their testosterone-filled body. To translate this feeling into a game is somewhat impossible, even so Undisputed 2010 comes as close to that real-life feeling that we could ever imagine. One of the first, and most obvious, upgrades to UFC Undisputed 2010 is the presentation factor. Everything about the game feels like it has an extra layer of polish to it, pushing the experience far past what we got in last year’s edition. The menus, game modes, fighter choices, punch-by-punch announcing, even the post-fight announcement oozes with UFC authenticity. This is so important as each and every aspect of the Ultimate Fighting Championship helps create the amazing PPV events that we fans enjoy so much.
Moving on from all the glitz and glamour a fighting game is nothing without solid controls and fight mechanics. Once again, the controls and characters movements are phenomenal. The addition of the new Sway System allows your head and body to dodge your opponent’s jabs with some measure of grace. The weekly training also remains, as you can select light, medium, or heavy workouts on the three different character attributes all while trying to keep your fighter at a low level of fatigue. But some new additions to the weekly training include stats that will fall if you don’t maintain each. There was also the addition of “auto” training, which will allow you to skip out on the training, but in doing so you won’t always achieve the maximum gain possible. There are also plenty of opportunities to go to camps, which are optional this time around without the requirement of an invite. You more or less have more opportunities to micro-manage fighter from week to week, keeping them in the best possible shape or if done poorly, setting them up for a quick trip to the floor. As always the single player campaign is one of the most important things UFC Undisputed 2010 needs to succeed in to be considered a good investment, thankfully it’s a blast to play-through.
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