This week it’s time for me to take a leaf out of BazMorningStar’s book and talk about MMA, specifically UFC Undisputed 3 from publishers THQ and developers Yuke’s. We were massive fans of Undisputed 2010, but felt it left a lot of room for improvement. So did Yuke’s, apparently, as they skipped out of the annual release schedule to deliver a follow up with more refinement and polish. Did it work?
New Stuff
THQ and Yukes have added a whole bunch of new features to U3, not least of which is a revamped Career Mode. It’s certainly more streamlined, once you get past the loading, but more on that later. You can, as usual, take your created fighter (or a UFC roster fighter) through a ten year stint in the big, bad world of professional brawling, starting off in a small MMA organisation and working your way up to championship fights in the UFC or Pride Fighting organisations. Along the way, you’ll train to level up your physical attributes, and attend camps to learn more techniques and sharpen your skills. There are more fights and less busywork than before, but we’re sad to see some of the roleplaying elements from 2010 dropped, as you dont really get a chance to create a personality for your fighter. Gone are the degrading stats and laborious stamina/conditioning management that made the Career in 2010 a chore, swapped out for a less realistic but more user-friendly system.
Another huge addition are the new weight classes. A while ago, the head honchos at UFC realised that watching two massive heavyweights push against each other for 15 minutes was only slightly more entertaining to a layman than a particularly sweaty thumb war, and began broadcasting Bantamweight and Featherweight fights. The move added an extra level of spectacle to UFC events, as these fights tend to be quicker and more action-packed, which certainly made for a better introduction to the sport than slow, methodical bouts of technical grappling, which can lead many first time viewers to (wrongly) dismiss the sport as sweaty man humping. As such, the two new weight classes are represented in the game with full rosters of spritely wee killing machines available in all modes.
Pride Mode was featured prominently in the pre-release hype, and it’s a welcome addition. For the uninitiated, Pride was a mixed martial arts promotion in Japan which the UFC acquired in the mid 90′s. It’s not too different from UFC fighting save for one big difference: leg strikes to the head were allowed on a downed opponent. This may not sound like much, but in practice it’s a huge, and brutal, difference. You could deliver a head kick or foot stomp straight out of a traumatising CCTV clip to your opponent, something which current UFC fighter Shogun Hua did with almost disturbing efficiency. Knees are also allowed to the head on the ground, meaning certain positions which are relatively safe in UFC rules become deathtraps. You also get a separate roster of Pride era fighters to choose from in addition to the usual UFC set. Combine this with longer rounds, and fights become a lot more dangerous and take on a different feel and pace to their UFC counterparts.
Picture for the purpose of getting the homoerotic jokes out of the way early.
While Pride Mode is a nice addition for fans of mixed martial arts, it is a pity that it wasn’t incorporated into the fabric of the game in a more involved way. The Pride Grand Prix that you can undertake in Career Mode would, in reality, feature a fighter having to combat multiple opponents in one evening, but here it’s handled the same way as all fights – even allowing you to train in a gym between rounds. It feels a little bit like a missed opportunity, especially since so much about the mode hits the nail on the head, such as the bright lights, brutal strikes, and special commentary from Stephen “Fight Professor” Quatros and the legendary Bas Rutten.
Bas Rutten is so awesome it's against the law to deny him the right to fuck your girlfriend.
Gameplay
For those unfamilar with MMA, it’s a mix of striking, grappling, takedowns, and submissions, with most fighters employing a mix of all to get the best results. There is a solution to every possible mode of attack your opponent can employ, meaning good timing and strategy are more effective than simply wailing on a few powerful techniques. It’s this level of versatility that makes MMA, and, by extension, Undisputed 3, such a joy. Even if you have no interest in submitting your opponent, you’ll have to be able to deal with their submission offence. No two people play this game alike, and everyone will find a style that suits them. Fans of fighting games like Fight Night should definitely check this out if they’re looking for something with a little more depth.
The fighting engine is undoubtedly the best, most balanced and versatile of the entire series. Newbies can choose a much more simplified control scheme for ground grappling too, making the game easier to pick up and play for those not too savvy with the sport or the franchise. The fights themselves have been balanced in a variety of subtle ways. Reversals are less easy to spam, making the “lay and pray” strategy a little more difficult to pull off. Getting rocked in previous games was an almost certain death sentence, but here it serves more as a warning, and you usually get some an opportunity to spring out of it. This doesn’t mean it’s harder to finish fights, but this and other elements level the playing field to near pitch-perfect levels.
"Now that you mention it, I think I'm bleedin' inside my chest"
Submissions have been drastically improved. In previous editions, players had to spin the controller rapidly with little finesse or grace, leaving the chance of success or defeat purely down to the submission defence/offence skills of the character and wanking proficiency of the player. Now there’s a little mini game that plays out whenever a submission is engaged. It’s not the most elegant system, but it works and you’ll definitely know why you lost a submission.
Title Defence mode returns as the Arcade style mode for players who want quick action. It is as addictive as ever, and features new goals and mini achievements to unlock shop points, which can be spent on movie clips and gear for your fighter in the store. Classic Fights is a returning feature from 2010, and has the player fight matches with certain criteria to unlock rewards.
Wouldn't you hate to be the OTHER guy on the box art?
Multiplayer is strong at launch, with only a handful of matches suffering from the kind of lag that dogged 2010′s online modes. Whereas you could often be waiting up to ten minutes for a match in 2010, here we were able to jump into a game very quickly. Fans of the series will also be glad to know that “Super CAFs” can no longer be forged from exploits within the Career Mode, so there’s no fear of bumping into supermen. Not that it’d be a huge problem if there were, considering Yuke’s have added settings to equalise both players’ stats and remove random elements like flash KO’s. Time will tell if the
Presentation
The load times, even after a full (and lengthy) hard drive install, are absolutely unforgiveable. They are some of the longest and most soul-destroying I ever encountered. Getting to a fight can take up to a minute or so, but when you’ll really want to pull your hair out is when you realise that there are loading screens FOR LOADING SCREENS. As a result, playing through the career mode, or even doing some quick edits to your Create-A-Fighter, is a chore. I’m sad to say it, but in the 12 hours or so of career mode we played, we spent about 3 of those hours moving between menus or waiting for the game to load.
...said the elbow to the face
What is even worse is is that most of the cool new features, such as fighter entrances and a wonderful little replay feature that allows you to edit and save clips of your fights, have to be turned off to lessen the loading time. We can only hope and pray that this problem gets patched and soon, because it’s painful to have to put up with to get to the fast paced fighting.
The look and feel of the UFC is faithfully captured, from the referees, ring girls and announcers, to the strange chanting music that plays at the Tale of The Tape. This is great for fans but (even as a fan) the branding in this instalment feels a little more overwhelming than before. Chances are that you’ll see the UFC logo in your sleep after extended play. As for the graphics, the character models are good and resemble their real life counterparts convincingly for the most part, with Yuke’s even going so far as to accurately depict the chest zits on Nick Diaz. The framerate holds up nicely, and little touches like the expressions on fighters’ faces are subtly and effectively rendered. Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg return to play-by-play commentating duties on the UFC side of things. While it seems that quite a few lines from old games have been recycled, the accuracy of the commentary is as good as ever.
Overall
Even with the technical issues being what they are, once you get into the ring and start to fight you’ll see just how well Undisputed 3 can shine. The removal of some cool features means it’s just shy of what we were all hoping for, but it makes up for it by adding a whole lot of welcome improvement and streamlining the fighting engine to the best it’s ever been. It’s a must for UFC and MMA fans, offering a very different feel to EA’s MMA, but new players interested in a fighting game with a little more depth would do well to check it out. You never know, you might just find your new favourite sport, too.
Score: 7.7/10
Knockout: Fighting is still a joy. Tons of options in how to approach a fight. New additions like Pride Mode add a great level of variety. Enjoyable career mode. Improved submission system.
Cop Out: Load times are killer. Load times are made even longer by the use of Fighter Intros and Replay/Highlight reel features, meaning you’ll probably have to turn them off and miss out for the sake of your sanity.
UFC Undisputed is available for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 on February 22nd RRP €49.99. Published by THQ and Developed by Yuke’s.
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