Michael Bunning's blog

I’m really enjoying this! It’s an MMA (mixed martial arts, for those who don’t know) game. I’m playing on the Xbox 360, and despite some problems (more on that in a minute), it’s really drawn me in.

It’s got a career mode, classic fights mode (where you win unlockables for having the fight end the way it actually did), exhibition fights and online.

Career mode is where I’ve spent the most time (what with not having net access until today) – I’m Light Heavyweight Champion of the world! – and it’s pretty solid really. You create a fighter using the fairly limited character creator (I managed to make a caricature of myself, but the facial creation’s nowhere near as robust as Fight Night Round 3’s so it actually doesn’t look much like me), and begin your UFC career. Your time in-between fights is dealt with week by week. You can choose whether the current week is spent in training (either by sparring, which unlocks points you can spend on improving your fighter’s stats, or by choosing to work on your cardio, speed or strength), which lowers your stamina or by resting, which improves your stamina. You’ll also get ‘event’ offers, such as photoshoots or public appearances, which takes up an entire week, and you’ll be invited to training camps where you can work on your striking or your ground game. Training camps give you tasks to complete, and award you points based on your completion rate. Those points go towards improving the aspect of your fighting that you’ve worked on in the training camp, and when you level up in that, you get access to new moves that you can use during the fights.

It’s a lot of fun, but it’s hardly the slickest career mode I’ve played. The in-between-fights sections are functional, but hardly exciting. You’ve got a calendar and a menu, and you click on your option and watch the weeks go by. Sparring and Training Camps are good, but they’re like a single-round fight. I like the way that you unlock abilities as you progress through Training Camps (hopefully Fight Night Round 4 will take notice of this training camp stuff!) but it’d be nice to have some more mini-games, rather than just menu selections.

The fights themselves are fantastic though. Really complex and involved and technical, and the strikes definitely feel like they have a decent impact. It’s pretty brutal, too, just like the real thing. So brutal in fact, that occasionally I feel guilty after standing over someone and pounding their face in.

The classic fights are good, too, but you only unlock highlight reels. It’d have been really good if you could have unlocked videos of the full fights. I guess licensing them was too expensive, or disc space was lacking. Still fun though.

Problems occur in other areas of the game though. The menu system, for one. It’s incredibly slow. Loading between each menu is preposterous, and the amount of nested menus is nightmarish. Changing a logo on your fighter’s trunks takes five minutes at least. There’s not really any excuse for that.

Online is where it gets really bad though. I’ve played about a dozen matches, and only one of them has been relatively lag-free. Often I’m desperately trying to block, because I’ve seen a blow coming, but my fighter is standing stationary, hands by his sides, waiting to be knocked out. And ground transitions are worse – if your opponent is on top of you, hitting you in the face, you’d generally quite like to roll somehow (and there are plenty of options for this) to improve your situation. But again, my fighter just sits there not doing anything as my opponent’s fist comes down again and again in jerky slow-motion. I’m told that it’s “not too bad” if you play against someone you know is reasonably close to you (in the UK). But that’s still apalling when I can play Fight Night or Street Fighter 4 or Virtua Fighter 5 with someone halfway across the globe and have a virtually lag-free experience.

But would I recommend UFC: Undisputed to you? Yes, I think I would. I’ve poured a good few evenings into the career mode, and enjoyed messing about with the classic fights. Local multiplayer is incredible fun, and if you can find some way round the Live problems (such as joining rllmuk’s league, where you’re apparently pretty much guaranteed a decent connection, though I haven’t tried it myself yet) then I reckon you’ll get a whole lot of enjoyment out of it.

I certainly expect to continue playing for a fair while (especially if I can get some good online play going).