Great sports-based fighting sim, with only a few flaws
As Dana White says in the introduction to the Single-Player Career mode, the UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world, so it surprises that there really hasn't been a high quality UFC game, prior to Undisputed 2009. Helped by Yukes, the company that has created all the Smackdown! games, UFC Undisputed 2009 puts together an impressive roster, solid gameplay mechanics and, something Smackdown never had, good commentary to create a unique fighting experience.
First, the gameplay. With the nature of the UFC, the creators of the game had to find a good balance between the ground game and the striking game and this has been executed through some well-thought out controls. The striking game is simply controlled by the face buttons and its a good simple system. Circle and X are for right and left kicks, square and triangle are for left and right punches, with L1 and L2 aiming them high and low and varying punch/kick types depending on your distance from the opponent. This is why you'll see the majority of newcomes unwilling to use the ground game, due to its simplicity, although the ground game isn't complex by any means, it does take time to get used to though. You take an opponent down by holding L2 and the right analog stick, then from there, you can strike your oppenets, get into a better position by moving the right analog stick or go for a submission by pressing the R3 button. Defending yourself is also relatively simple, you use the R1/R2 buttons to block strikes to the head or body or you can counter them by timing an up or down motion on the Right Analog Stick with your opponents strike. With your back on the floor, you can also move the right analog stick to get into a better position or hold it to block an opponents transistion.
What varies the moves you perform are the strike and grapple types, both of which have 3 different movesets. So for example, if you are a boxer, you can throw powerful ducking hooks, but you can't use flying knees. If you are a Brazilian Jujistu fighter, you have more grapple options off your back, but don't possess the variety of takedowns that a Wrestler or Judo fighter has. This is a solid system, but the animation for these moves can get repetitive, as there isn't really any "trademark moves" for any fighter. Rampage Jackson is the fighter most known for lifting an opponent off the ground and slamming them back down in a motion similar to a powerbomb, but any fighter listed as a Wrestler can do that and every Kickboxers head kick looks the same. Another slight flaw in fights is the lack of real cage physics. Although the cage is visible all the time, the only time you really see it affect a fighter is when he's knocked down and his head connects with it. In the UFC, whole rounds can sometimes be fought with one guy with his back on the cage, but it doesn't occur at all in UFC Undisputed 2009. Finally, there is an issue in that, on the higher difficulties, CPU fighters are near impossible to submit, a nagging issue set to be fixed in an upcoming patch.
As for the fights themselves, it does follow the Smackdown trend in some ways in that once you get a grip of the controls, you can already beat 3 of the difficulty levels, with the "Expert" difficulty really only requiring some training to be able to beat. There are no additional gameplay adjusters outside o the difficulty levels, so once you are "too good" for the AI, the placce to go is online or career mode.
Career mode is the only single player mode with real length. You play as a created character, fighting from #25 in the weght division of your choice, with the aim of becoming the Champion and entering the Hall of Fame. To be able to do this requires some effort outside of the ring, such as earning attribute points, skills for your desired moveset or "cred", which is what leads you to advance up the ranks. It's a decent game mode, but it will be a let-down for anyone who wanted to use an established fighter in some form of career mode. Also, there is a sharp difficulty sweep once you move from the game-created fighters to the UFC ones. If you are playing on the higher difficulties at this point, it is hard to avoid a loss at this point, as your fighter simply hasn't had the training to beat the real guys. The final single player mode is Classic Fights mode, where you goal is to recreate the exact finishes of some of UFC's greatest fights. It's a nice little feature, with decent opening montages of what happened prior to the fight, however the reward or beating these, a montage of the fights and a silver trophy if you beat all 12, isn't really that great.
The main place to be though is online. Online mode consists of two different types of match, ranked or unranked, that allows you to play other UFC Undisputed 2009 owners. It's a very good online mode, in the early stages. I found myself 16-0 early on, due to the lack of good fighters the game was pairing me with, then all of a sudden, I was .500 through the next 16 fights. Then, when you start getting around the 30 win mark, it really starts to get annoying, thanks to Disconnecters. Disconnecters hae found a flaw in the ranked system, in that if they "pull the plug" midway through or immediately after the match, the result does not count. They don't lose or have an increase to a DNF%, you don't win, so basically it rewards cheating. This will put quite a few of the higher ranked players off UFC Undisputed's online ranked mode, until the patch is released. However, if you can find a streak of honest gamers, then it becomes an enjoyable experience, one that beats playing it against the CPU.
Finally, the highlight of the game, the UFC-ness. Everything from the real UFC is replicated in this game, from the 80-strong roster, to the commentary team of Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg, to Bruce Buffer, to the cornermen and cutmen, all from the UFC, and its great. Yes, some may whine about how some of the bigger names like Couture and Guida didn't make the game, and how the excellent commentary seems to somewhat fall into moments of mute when lesser known fighters are in a match, but what THQ and Yukes have done is make an extraordinarily true-to-life game of the sport, and for that they should be credited.
