Bad Business Decision Mars Game
The follow up for the excellent original title has been launched. Will the series fall into the usual sports annual release malaise of small, incremental changes being hyped up as being huge to justify a retail price?
Fortunately, this is a new franchise (these seem to have little in common with the last gen UFC titles), so they have enough room to grow for a year or two. In this case, they've introduced a wealth of game modes. The career mode is the meat, with you going through 12 years of a career to become a Hall of Famer.
The controls have been simplified. I am able to avoid being pinned to the mat for entire rounds. True, I decided to focus on striking offense and ground defense, but the controls were still much easier to handle.
They also try to make rep more important. You can only unlock new trainers or new sparring partners when your rep and cred are high enough. The means of gaining rep, credibility, and popular are more than a bit boring. Interviews after the fight are boring. Public workouts are boring. Appearing at shows is boring. Weigh-in confrontations are boring. If these activities cannot be made more enjoyable, they shouldn't return.
The new addition of friends and rivals is a key addition. You can have feuds now and beating your rival gets you more cred than regular fights. If you train with a friend, you get stat bonuses. This is a brilliant little addition that isn't enough to hype as a major deal, but does provide a fun diversion.
Even with all of the pluses, there are major negatives. Load times are ridiculously long. 2-3 minutes to start a game is ridiculous and it seems to be consistently that slow. Visually, the fighters appear more plasticky than last year and clipping and issues of moves being stuck during transitions seems to be way more prevalent. And the irritating insistance that you pay $10 to play online if the game isn't bought new --- and the request is repeated every time, even if you say no repeatedly --- is infuriating. Asking once would be irritating, having to do it repeatedly is a waste of time.
