If you’ve ever dreamed of jumping into the octagon and pummeling your opponent to the ground, then tackling him into a kimura until he submits, then UFC 2009 Undisputed is the answer for you. Take to the octagon as one of the world’s most renowned fighters such as Chuck ‘The Iceman” Lidell, or create your own fighter and train him through the career mode to become the next Ultimate Fighter.

I’m a sucker for customization so when I started up UFC, the first thing I did was hop into the career mode and create a fighter, of course, in the likeness of myself. Because, of course, I AM a big buff dude that can last three, five minute rounds in the octagon getting the sense beaten out of me… Most likely I’d cry like a little girl after the first punch. But that’s not the point! The level of customization in the character creator is baffling. As far as I know this is the most customizable create-a-character in any game of this genre. After spending 45 minute to an hour customizing your fighter you can finally enter the octagon and fight your first opponent for the chance to be a contender in the UFC.

It doesn’t take much to learn the basic controls of the game, the four buttons are used to control one of your fighters deadly weapons… I mean limbs. For example the A button is the right leg, and the B button is the left leg, while the X button is the right arm, and the Y button is the left arm. The right bumper and trigger let you defend high and low points respectively, and the left bumper is used to perform ’special’ moves, while the left trigger changes your attacks from high to low. The right thumb-stick controls your clinches and lets you transition between different positions. While under your opponent on the ground you could use the right thumb-stick to transition into a position where you have the upper hand and work your opponent from there.

Once you prove your worth you’re recruited into the Boot Camp and begin your career as a fighter. The Calendar is where you’ll spend 99% of the time in the gym. (I don’t know why there’s even an option to leave it…) You’ll have to decide what you want to spend each week doing, whether it be training to improve your skills (strength, speed, and stamina), sparring to improve your techniques, taking a little break to rest and recuperate, or parcticipate in a scheduled event.

Sparring is what you’ll be doing to increase your techniques such as striking offense, submission defense, etc. You enter the ring and fight as if it were a real fight. There’s only one round, and it lasts two minutes. After the two minutes is up you’ll be graded on your performance, and awarded a number of skill points to distribute however you’d like. These skill points are one of the most important aspects of the game, and as you put more points into a skill, it will cost more points to increase the skill. Choose wisely!

Throughout your career you’ll be presented with the opportunity to learn from some of the top names in the MMA world by taking part in camps to learn new moves in your chosen fighting style. These camps can be somewhat difficult because while in the camp, as opposed to fighting, you can’t access the moves list, so this really makes you learn how to do certain moves, and what each defensive and offensive position is called. If you can though, it pays off in the end by giving you new moves, and somewhat large boosts to your technique skills.

You’ll also be given the opportunity to participate in press events such as signing autographs at a DVD release, or a photo shoot for your sponsor’s latest line of crap… I mean gear. These press opportunities reward you with cred, or credibility. Cred is what you need to earn in order to get new gear, new sponsors, and just be known as awesome in general. The majority of the Cred you earn will be from fights. You gain Cred based on your performance during a fight, any awards you got (KO of the night, Submission of the night, or Fight of the night), and a fixed amount paid out by the sponsors you chose. You choose sponsors by putting their logo on your shorts. Because every company wants to have their logo on the crotch of some guy getting his ass kicked, right?

As you go through the calendar week by week you’ll start accumulating a lot of e-mails. Most of it is just useless rankings of the other fighters, and I really wish there was a way to turn these off. Other than that you’ll occasionally get e-mails congratulating you on doing well, or you’ll get offers to fight other fighters on short notice, these can be great for moving up in the rankings faster. Make sure you’re prepared though! If you go into a fight with low stamina you’ll get beat up faster.

When you’ve topped the rankings, defended your title, and retired a wealthy fighter, you can start all over again, or if you’re just looking for a quick fix, possibly with friends, check out the Exhibition mode. Customize the fight by selecting where you’ll fight, who your ref will be, the number of rounds, and then step into the ring for a viscous fight with some real life UFC fighters, or your own created fighter.

Then when you’ve mastered the game, and dominated all your friends, you can step back in time to do your best to recreate real life UFC classic fights. When you choose a fight to relive you get a small introduction video telling you what happened in the real fight, then it’s up to you to match that in the ring. If successful, you unlock highlight videos from those classic fights, if not, well, better luck next time!

Then, feel free to hop online and fight other people, with real life UFC fighters, or your custom created character. The online is pretty awesome, when you win a fight you get points towards ranking up, and whether you win or lose you gain or lose fans based on your performance. However when you join an online match prepared to be annihilated because the online portion of this game suffers greatly from immense lag and to top it off, there’s no matchmaking. Almost every online fight I was in playing as a rank 1 being faced against a rank 20, or 30.

Overall the game is pretty great, it’s without a doubt the best UFC game on the market today, but it still has some huge hurdles to jump before being top quality. If THQ takes this game to the next level and continues the franchise, UFC could be the next Madden.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Outstanding graphics - Good replayability - Easy controls	Doin’ It RONG: - Laggy online play - No matchmaking online
FINAL SCORE: 8 / 10

       

Tags: PS3, Review, THQ, UFC, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Featured, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.