Last week we gave you our initial impressions of THQ’s virtual-shot at the UFC, now that it’s time for the game to finally hit retail shelves (on Tuesday - May 19, 2009) we figured it was time to give a final verdict. Over the past couple years the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has been making moves to try and become accepted as a legitimate professional sport all around the globe. The company’s head-honcho Dana White is pushing the company into all new areas and part of that is the upcoming video game from publisher THQ and experienced Japanese developer Yuke’s. We have had the lucky opportunity to spend a good bit of time with the final build of UFC 2009 Undisputed and are very pleased with the sport’s first true outing (we can’t count the previous games as they were so horrid) into our beloved games industry. The most important aspect to get right with this game was the gameplay mechanics and overall authentic feel of the sport, without a strong physics foundation or UFC representation there is no hope for long-term franchise success.
Luckily the strongest component of Undisputed is the actual MMA fighting mechanics so that’s what I want to tackle first, literally. After speaking with the developers and producers of the mixed martial arts game it was obvious that their most difficult hurdle was creating not only a good boxing game, but a good wrestling/grappling/clinch performing one as well. Merging those two criteria together was crucial in recreating the high-octane sporting experience in a virtual form. If either side was wonky or off balanced fans would instantly pick up on the downfalls and the game would fail miserably. Choosing Yuke’s to work behind the scenes was a genius move as it allowed a lot of the good aspects from the team’s work on the WWE franchise titles to be brought into UFC 2009 Undisputed while still leaving room to create from scratch the MMA-specific features. Each and every one of the small touches that is present in UFC TV presentations (referees, announcers, ring-girls, sponsors, etc.) makes its way into the game and helps cause it have that authentic feeling fans will be looking for.
The two different parts of MMA, stand-up (boxing) and ground-game (wrestling) are controlled using the face buttons and the thumb-sticks respectively. When boxing the controls is very simple, each of the different face buttons is assigned to either a left or right hand punch/kick. During our time with the game we found that our enjoyment was equally separated between both the boxing and wrestling portions of gameplay. Gamers who don’t know what UFC stands for will be able to pick up the controller and throw down in one hell of a boxing match, but the true player will quickly take them to the ground and pull a quick submission. There is something to hold onto for every type of UFC fan in 2009 Undisputed, whether you prefer the stand-up action of boxing or the ground-game centric aspects of wrestling/submissions. I found that there were massive advantages and disadvantages to choosing one fighting style over the other, the best tactic is to become very skilled at both and dependant upon the situation choose your attacks carefully; even so the ground-and-pound technique is always a hell of a good time.
