UFC Undisputed 2010 – Sidestepping instead of taking a shot

To be honest, I didn’t know what I should expect. When you look at sports games as a whole, it’s almost understood there won’t be many differences in yearly updates besides roster changes and gameplay/mechanical tweaks. I don’t know why I thought “UFC Undisputed 2010” would be anything different but after weeks of messing around in Career mode, Tournament and Title Defense mode, it’s clear that MMA can’t escape this common sports game affliction.

If you read my thoughts on the demo earlier, you’ll probably recall how optimistic I sounded about this game. I’ll admit I’m not too big into sports games. I don’t play Madden, NCAA, NHL or MLB games - I don’t even like racing games. I have always been a fan of fighting games and with my growing affinity for mixed-martial arts, THQ’s “Undisputed 2009” was an incredible improvement in MMA games over past attempts at bringing the sport to home consoles. Though its controls were initially confusing and its career mode (and the game in general) was very menu-heavy, it stood as a great first step in a series about a sport I thought would be near-impossible to convert to video games.

Perhaps if I were a Madden fan I would be more understanding of the slight differences and tweaks in the year-to-year upgrades commonplace in sports’ series these days. What I mean by this is, outside of the tweaks to the fighting system, a few (in my opinion, unnecessary) additions to the career mode, a few more fight modes (which also fall in the realm of unnecessary), and some new online features, not much has changed since “Undisputed 2009.”

Let me say this before I get into anything else – the fighting system in “Undisputed 2010” has grown by leaps and bounds from 2009. Animations are smoother, actions are now much more fluid giving players the opportunity to create their own combos (rather than having to memorize a list of moves) and the grappling/clinching mechanics have been overhauled with great success. With the addition of cage mechanics and the ability to create a fighting style all your own (picking a choosing moves rather than just a discipline), “Undisputed 2010” offers the most fun and complete mixed-martial arts competitions ever seen in video games.

Today’s gamers are a fickle bunch, however, and mixed-martial arts and the UFC don’t have the built in fan-base that the NFL and Madden have, for example. Whenever a new Madden game comes out, you can surely expect that pretty much everyone who picked up last year’s edition will be picking up this year’s. While MMA has grown wildly in popularity over the past few years, the UFC and THQ can’t expect that everyone who watches their shows or bought “Undisputed 2009” will buy “Undisputed 2010.” Without the established fan-base of Madden, THQ needs to rely on bringing new fans to the franchise and viewing “Undisputed 2010” in this light, you begin to see just how much really hasn’t changed from last year.

Exhibition, Tournament, and Title (Defense) modes are all essentially the same – picking a fighter and squaring off against any of the names on “Undisputed 2010’s” huge roster. Career mode has a few additions that serve to give gamers a closer relationship to their in-game persona as you train and fight your way into the UFC from the World Fight Alliance. Being able to conduct post-fight interviews or have the press film your workouts is nice but most of these additions do nothing for you but take time away from your precious training – and thanks to the biggest “addition” to Career mode, you’ll need all the training time you get. In an effort to make Career more realistic, THQ implemented stat decay to all of your fighter’s stats as well as attributes. Unless a stat is at 30, 50 or 70 it will decay within a week or two of the last time a point was added to it, forcing you to constantly spar to keep your stats up. How, THQ, am I supposed to have the time to keep my stats steady while also trying to attend fight camps (the only way to learn new moves), train my attributes or take part in photo-op sessions and be prepared for fights that are generally no more than 8 weeks away? Stat decay probably sounded like a good idea at the time but is nothing short of annoying when put into practice.

To be honest, I’m almost enjoying the challenge of not only having to fight opponents but also the game mechanics to find success – most probably will not, however. Sure character models look nicer, the fighting is more fluid and responsive and it has all the amenities that 2009 introduced but I just don’t see enough improvements and additions to the series in “Undisputed 2010” that will make non-fans of UFC or MMA feel like they need to put down their hard earned cash for what could essentially be last year’s game.