Beatin' Dudes Up is Pretty Fun
UFC Undisputed has some minor flaws that keep it from being great, but it does what it's supposed to do, make beating the crap out of guys fun, very well. The fighting in UFC is phenomenal. There are a few minor hitches such as scenarios that are almost impossible to get out of and some hits are a little overpowered, but duking it out in the octagon is just plain fun. There are a ton of moves available to each fighter and special moves available based on a fighter's disciplines (Muay Thai Clinch for Muay Thai fighters, for example). You can tell that the devs did their research and every move has some sort of counter or defense that can be used to prevent it.
I played the PS2 and Dreamcast UFC games and they were fun, but the issue was that the games always seemed to end up on the mat and fights would rarely go the full three rounds. In this game, your skillset really determines how you're going to fight. If you've got good striking skills, chances are you don't wanna end up on the mat. The way you work a guy also plays a big part. If you attack a guys head most of the match, you've got a better shot at knocking him out while working someones legs will let you take them down or perform a kneebar more easily.
This brings me to what I think keeps Undisputed from being great, the terrible career mode. If it was just a ladder where you just fought fighter after fighter, I think it would be 100x better than what they throw at you. The create-a-fighter process is fine, and you get to choose your disciplines as well as weight class. When you're actually fighting guys, the game is great and a ton of fun. The problem is that you have to go through a lot of junk in the process. You've got to spend time training to increase your stats, sparring to increase your skills, and doing camps to learn new moves. With all this overhead, I found that I was only actually fighting someone in a real match once every half hour or so. Granted, some of this stuff can be skipped, but a lot of it is required to take on the elite in your division. Which brings me to the next problem. You get to choose your opponent at each event, which I think is cool. The issue is that once you obtain the belt, you're going to have the same 3-4 challengers all the time. This makes sense, but I got a little tired of fighting Georges St. Pierre every other week for the last half of my career.
There are also some cool things like Classic Fights which sort of takes the concept of replaying big matches from Legends of Wrestlemania. Except it's done a lot better here. You're presented with the setup to the fight, and you have to recreate the result which may be knocking out Chuck with Rampage in the first round or winning by decision with Griffin against Bonnar. The only strange thing when you're doing these matches is that the commentators will sometimes talk about the matches in retrospect even though you're actually supposed to be reliving the match.
The multiplayer is functional and does what it needs to do. There are a few overpowered things in multiplayer, but what fighting game doesn't have that? I didn't play it a ton, but the online seems fine. You may want to look elsewhere for a more comprehensive multiplayer review. Overall, UFC does a great job at recreating the fighting you would expect out of a real MMA matchup. The presentation just keeps it from being a perfect MMA title.
