Game review: UFC 2009 Undisputed

One of the most popular sports right now is the UFC or Ultimate Fighting Championship. If you aren't familiar with this it is mixed martial arts fighting. So it's a combination of boxing, kickboxing and wrestling. Fights take place in an octagon shaped ring and it's pretty much anything goes. If you you watch a real fight it will consist of usually a decent amount of kicks and punches as well as the two men on the ground trying to gain an advantage.

UFC 2009 does a good job of creating this. You can pick from many different current UFC fighters in every weight class. Each of them are going to have different disciplines and so will play a bit differently from one another. Some guys might be pure strikers while others might be more mat wrestlers and submission artists.

Now as you can imagine this kind of fighting can get pretty complex and the controls of this game definitely show that. There are so many button combinations to remember and you will use the face buttons, both triggers and bumpers as well as both analog sticks and the controls change depending on if you are standing up or on the ground.

Now UFC is more strategic than other fighting games. In games like Street Fighter you just pound away at the buttons until your opponent falls down. UFC is similar to a boxing game where you have to pick your shots and make sure you don't get worn out. But at the same time you have to watch what your opponent does because one wrong move and you can be sent to the mat. In a real UFC fight they can change on a dime. One guy could be dominating and then the other guy lands a good hard punch or kick and just like that it's over. This game has the same thing so if you aren't watching your blocking or have taken too much damage or are winded you can find yourself hitting the mat very quickly.

The game does give you the ability to try and pull off submission moves but these are very hard to do. Most fights are only 3 rounds long and trying to wear down your opponent enough to get a submission is really hard. In all my time playing this game I had my character tap out a few times but was never able to get someone else to submit.

But there is one thing about this game that is very frustrating and that's the loading times. I was playing the career mode and found myself losing fights quite often. Not wanting to be stuck in a holding pattern never advancing I decided the best idea was to quit the game when I lost and try again. Well I timed it and from loading up the game to starting your career mode fight is just about 2 and a half minutes. Considering how short some of the fights can be this is really annoying. So much so that at a certain point I just gave up on the career mode after trying nearly an hour to win one fight and not succeeding. But these loads times are all over the place and going into a fight can take quite a while especially if you don't skip all the cutscenes.

I should mention the cutscenes. Before a fight begins you get Bruce Buffer announcing and introducing both fighters which really makes you feel like you are watching a real UFC fight. But thankfully you have the ability to skip over all of that which does speed up the process a bit.

The game does come with announcers that give you commentary during the fight. The commentary is given by Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg who do most of the commentary at the UFC events. They both do a really good job and even though they tend to repeat themselves quit a bit it doesn't get old or stale and usually does a good job of going along with what's happening in the ring. It's also cool to hear them both yell in surprise when someone suddenly gets knocked out.

I spoke about the career mode earlier. In the career mode you create your own UFC fighter. The creation tools are really good and give you quite a bit of flexibility to create your fighter to look how you want them to look. Once you have created your fighter you begin your career in the UFC. You start off fighting in undercard events and working your way up in the rankings. Now in between fights is where the career mode falls apart. It is all just a big menu system where you choose if you want to train your fighter, spar or manage other aspects of your fighter. You are shown how many weeks you have left until your fight and you train them and rest them so when you go into the fight you aren't already wiped out. But the menus take a while to navigate and the text is small and can sometimes be hard to read.

But the meat of the game is the fighting. If you are a fan of the UFC then I'm sure you'll enjoy this game. If you aren't familiar with it and like fighting games this one can be a lot of fun. Of course you might be taken aback at first by the fact that you can be knocked out at a moment's notice but eventually you learn to use some strategy. If you are a fan of wrestling games you might want to check this one out but you won't get the big flashy moves like you do in a game like Smackdown vs. Raw. The fights are enjoyable and sometimes you can get some really spectacular knockouts. The best one I had was with my created fighter. My opponent went for a head kick and missed which cause him to spin around. The second he finished spinning around I nailed him in the side of the head with a kick and dropped him.

The graphics in this game are really good. There was a lot of attention to detail put in the fighters. They all look like their real life counterparts complete with all their scars and tattoos. Also throughout the fight their bodies will build up sweat and they can get cuts on their face and have blood drip down onto their arm or their chest. Also throughout the fight the mat in the ring will become stained with blood.

I personally wish that the combination of the loading times and the frustration of having to do some fights over and over had not happened. I really would have enjoyed seeing the career mode to the end and winning a championship. But after nearly an hour of trying to win the same fight over and over and not getting anywhere it's time to hang up the controller and move onto the next game.

I should mention that the game does have support for Xbox Live multiplayer. I have been told that it is usually pretty free of lag but I can't attest for this. I decided to not play it because I knew I would just get my butt handed to me and that's just not that much fun in the long run.

My score: 7.0/10