A fighter for people who hate conventional fighting games.
Finally we have a fighting game that has more in common with an EA Sports title than something more arcadey like Street Fighter. I gave the demo on Xbox Live a try and the first time i had a flash knockout i was hooked. Picked the game up day one after playing the same exhibition with the same 2 fighters for about 1 hour. Career mode is well thought out, it balances upgrading your fighter and making decisions as to what area you want to focus on before your next bout. In addition, you also have to give your fighter time to rest or he will be starting his next bout at a huge disadvantage. Controls are responsive, Graphics are pretty good. The detail is there where it needs to be. Let's face it, if you're playing this game and you're wondering what the guy in the 4th row is holding, you shouldn't be playing games anyway. Other modes like Exhibition and create a fighter are about what youi'd expect, Create a fighter can be time consuming so be forewarned that you and a buddy will spend about 10-15 minutes each fine tuning a created character if you want to make little digital dopelgangers to slug it out with.
I've heard people make claims that this game could almost be used as a teaching tool for anyone interested in learning more about the sport of MMA. I can say from my own personal experience that this is true. I never really knew much about MMA and just thought of it as 2 dudes beating the crap out of eachother but after playing this game i understand there's a lot more strategy that goes into it and have found a new found respect for the sport. This game is at the very least worth a rental but if you're looking for a fighting game with a lot of depth you could do much worse than this.
