Love video games, but not into UFC?
I'm not a fan of UFC, I never was and I won't pretend to be. Following the hype of this game and recently acquiring a Ps3, I decided to just go and buy this game based on some reviews of people I have been following for a long time. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.
UFC Undisputed 2009 will blow you away with its visuals, soundtrack, and tight gameplay. The fighting is reminiscent of a rock paper scissors concept. One move will counter another, but that move can be counted by a similar one. Fighting styles are split between 3 for striking and ground offense. Striking is Maui Tai, Boxing, and kickboxing. Ground is Judo, Brazilian Ju Jitsu, and Wrestling. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses even though only 1-2 fighters have Judo so you can really just count that one out. Flash KOs do happen, but not as often as one might think. Once you learn the game they rarely ever happen. Both players will be careful enough to not throw a move with the potential of letting themselves be open for a flash KO unless they are sure they are safe. A pretty solid fighting game from the get go.
Sounds better then a 3 star review right. I'm not finished yet. If bought this game for career mode, you will be severly disappointed. Career mode is basically a calandar that you follow picking the times in which you want to spar to raise your stats, run for cardio, lift for strength, and use the punching bag for speed. You don't actually do any of this though you just select it and your stats go up. The only thing you actually do is the sparring and training camps which are just 2-3 minutes of fighting a computer AI that randomly will just beat the living crap out of you sometimes. You get a certain amount of weeks to prepare for your fight, with Dana White sending you Emails to fight earlier. But when you do anything to train your stamina will go down. So if you enter a fight with say 64% stamina your guy will already be tired entering the fight. Career mode is just plain boring there's really nothing more to say about it.
Online play. Now this is what I bought this game for. Online is split into 2 areas which are player matches and ranked matches. Player matches are just normal pick a person to play against and go nuts. Ranked will track your points based on how many fans you get and who you fight. Now before i go any further I want you to know that the max rank is level 100. I am level 82 with a 100 - 70 - 0 no disconnect record. Also with a 30 hour online play time, so whether or not you think I am skilled enough to listen to my opinion I will give it anyways. Ranked online is very broken, although extremely fun to play people competitively. The points system does not make any sense. If you fight someone ranked higher than you, you gain way more points then if you fought someone the same or lower rank. Sounds good except that if they lose to you, then they lose maybe about 2-3 ranks. This creates a problem because the second they join your game or you join theirs someone will just quit out. So you end up spending 10-20 minutes joining and quiting games until your happy. Another problem is some of the balance of certain positions and styles that people online will exploit. I could go into detail, but it would take way too long. But you have to think, what game have you ever played online where people didn't exploit the cheapest tactics in order to get a win.
Look UFC Undisputed 2009 will probably drive you nuts with its Flash KOs, the same #&()#*%&) music tracks playing over and over, people disconnecting online, and a horrid career mode. But with all these problems I cannot deny that I still play this game a lot. Its just way too much fun. I can bash THQ for all the problems this game has, but for their first try It's definitely a strong start to a promising line of great games.
Thanks for reading.
