As the hype around Mixed Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship continues to grow, avid fans of the sport have been patiently waiting for Dana White, current President of the UFC, to deliver a product that puts you in control of your favorite fighters. Everyone wants to recreate Brock Lesnar, current UFC Heavyweight Champion, pummeling Frank Mir’s face on the Octagon. Or maybe you hate Lesnar, and want to take advantage of Mir’s superior Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu skills. Whatever the case, this game allows you to step into the Octagon, without having to put an icepack on your face when it’s all said and done.
While the graphics on this game are nothing we haven’t seen already, the presentation is still pretty good. Every single one of the fighters look spot on compared to their real life counterpart, and it seems as if YUKE’s Future Media Creators, developer of the game, also did a pretty good job of getting down the mannerisms of these fighters and it translates flawlessly to the game play. I love it when I knock my roommate out with a kick to the head from one of my favorite fighters George “Rush” St. Pierre, and he does a back flip in the middle of the Octagon after. Additionally, when I recreate the annihilation of Diego “The Nightmare” Sanchez’ face with BJ Penn, he licks the blood off of his gloves and screams to the crowd.
There are four main drawbacks to this game. First, while UFC does a good job on including as many fighters as possible, there are a few fighters that UFC fans would like to see on here. For me, this game would have been better to see an option to fight with classic fighters like Frank Shamrock, Randy Couture, and one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time Royce Gracie. Avid fans also would like to see Kimbo Slice, although he only has a few UFC fights under his belt, and Fedor Emelianenko, even though he is a part of a different organization, Stikeforce. Undisputed next must focus on translating actual fight speed into the game. Punches, kicks, and combos are markedly slower than in real life, and the game developers must do something to address this so that we can have faster game play and speed which will in turn make it a more realistic game. The last thing that the next game must do is make the controls more user friendly. Unless you play this game on a fairly regular basis, you will not be able to master the myriad submissions, ground transitions, and wrestling moves fairly quickly. This will take countless hours of training. Last but not least, it is way too easy to get knocked out on this game. On a scale of one to ten, one being easy to knock someone out and ten difficult, I would rank this game at a three or four. This is a huge turnoff to people who always play this game. While UFC Undisputed 2009 is not a perfect game per say, it will definitely keep loyal UFC fans occupied until UFC Undisputed 2010 comes out.
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Sick graphics – great game.
Good read. I for one would love to see Kimbo as well. He isn’t exactly the best fighter out there, but I do see some potential in him as he continues to grow and work on his ground game.