by: trashcanman

“UFC Undisputed” is a masterpiece of a video game that does justice to the sport of MMA in ways I didn’t believe to be possible. It captures the intensity, challenge, and science that makes mixed martial arts such a treat for fight fans and brings that experience into your home. Essentially, it does for cage fighting what the (previously) unparalleled Fight Night Round 3 did for boxing and expanded upon it, adding multiple combat styles along with a deep and challenging ground-fighting mechanic to the mix. The result is something that will kick your a$z in every possible sense.

This is the greatest fighting simulator ever made. Just playing it makes me work up a sweat and after my created character’s jab/jab/hook combo knocked The Dean of Mean out I damn near jumped up and ran around the room like Chuck Liddell. You really have to work your skills and strategy to get ahead in this game and doing so is extremely rewarding and give you a sense of elation with every victory. I honestly can’t say any fighting game has ever done that for me. Building up your character’s career from scrub to stud is just a lot of fun. I thought I was hot stuff and built up an impressive record utilizing my muay-thai skills to beat opponents to a pulp while taking them down with judo to wear them out. It worked out well and I felt like a pimp when I broke into the top ten rankings and got to choose to fight The Iceman or Tito Ortiz. Since I like Liddell, I decided I wanted to take on Ortiz. Bad choice. Turns out I didn’t know jack about the ground-fightig mechanics and the fight went shockingly similarly to how a real life fight between me and Ortiz would go. He took me down the first time I threw a strike, climbed on top of me, and pounded on my face until I stopped moving. The end. It was ugly. Very ugly. This is to say that to make it in the big leagues in the virtual UFC you are going to need some serious practice. The ground game is complicated and hard to master, but it can be very rewarding as well. Personally, I’d rather stick to kneeing guys in the head, but that’s me.

There are six combat styles to choose from. Each fighter gets one striking martial-art and one grappling style of their choice. Each style has their own special moves and stat bonuses to bestow. You can gain levels and new techniques by engaging in training camps and completing certain tasks during your sparring sessions there. This can take forever, but it’s worth it once you get access to those headkicks and throws. But I do have to complain that the grappling camps are impossibly frustrating. For example, they’ll ask you to counter-grapple a punch and your opponent will only throw kicks or they’ll take you down and lay on top of you for minutes on end. I thought these people were supposed to be helping you learn. Honestly, that’s the only complaint I can muster at this point. Every other aspect is spot-on as far as I’m concerned. The fact that you have so many ways to train and a limited time to do it and still try to keep you endurance up for each fight adds another layer of depth to the game. The endurance system plays a huge part in the fight itself and it has never been done more realistically. You have one endurance bar which is invisible unless you select otherwise from the options menu. When you attack, the bar diminishes temporarily and the lower it gets, the more susceptible you are to getting knocked out. Taking body shots and other damage diminishes your endurance bar permanently and leaves you with less ammunition to throw down with without opening yourself up to a KO. Managing this requires a lot of strategy and planning because you will be an angry gamer when you spend 2 ½ rounds chasing a guy around the cage throwing everything you have at him only to get KTFO with one punch because you got rope-a-doped while you spent the whole fight tiring yourself out. You gotta think!

The physics in this game are awesome. I actually got an achievement for knocking a mouthpiece 3 meters out of my opponent’s mouth by using his own head as a croquet mallet. I mounted him and my first punch caused his mouthpiece to pop out of his mouth and fall to the side of his head and my second punch snapped his head to the side so hard that is hit the mouthpiece and sent it flying across the cage. That is awesome. No wonky collision detection, no clipping to speak of, the whole think looks like you’re watching an authentic UFC fight. Almost all of your favorites fighters are in the game and they look great. If you want a true-to-life fight simulator, this is it. There is definitely some room for improvement (in training camps and submissions, mostly), but considering this is the first game to really capture the sport of MMA, one could not ask for more.

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