To those new to UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), this isn’t wrestling and it isn’t boxing, although elements of both are incorporated. UFC is one of the most popular brands of Mixed Martial Arts or MMA, a no-holds barred style of fighting that incorporates various fighting disciplines, including wrestling, kick-boxing, Judo, Jujitsu, and Muay Thai. The THQ-Yukes partnership that has been bringing us WWE Smackdown! vs RAW titles on an annual basis for years will now do the same each year with UFC, starting with UFC 2009: Undisputed.
Despite what you may think, UFC 2009 plays nothing like Yukes’ WWE games. If you do want to draw comparisons, however, Fight Night Round 3 would be a more appropriate subject. That’s a good thing because they’ve been pretty much running the Smackdown! vs RAW franchise into the ground, and I hope they don’t do the same with UFC as the years pass, because they really have done a fine job with UFC 2009.
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Many of the current crop of UFC fighters are included in the game, some of whom can even fight up or down a weight class. Sadly, there are no retired veteran fighters to unlock; that would have been a nice bonus. Different fighters will adopt different fighting styles, just as they do in real life. For example, Anderson Silva is devastating on his feet with a flurry of kicks and punches, whereas Frank Mir is a master of submission and will look to take the fight to the mat. These variations will also make you change the way you play the game. Against Mir, your fighter will need to be good at blocking and reversing takedowns and submissions. It’s like a game of chess, only with lots of bloodshed.
Before anything, you’ll want to head straight into Tutorial mode, because without it you won’t stand a chance in the Octagon. The combat is incredibly deep and the tutorial will seem overwhelming at first, so you will probably need to refer to it more than once before you master the controls. Combat is basically broken down into two areas – standing and on the mat, and there are blocks and reversals available for pretty much every move in the game, be it a strike, grapple, clutch, takedown, transition or submission. And incredibly, despite so many possible moves at your disposal, the game manages to let you pull them off without any hand gymnastics.
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The main focus of UFC 2009 is its beefy, if short, career mode. You start by picking a weight class and creating a fighter; you can’t play career mode with an existing fighter from the UFC roster. The fighter creation options, while not expansive, provide enough to tinker around with. You won’t manage a mirror image of yourself, but you can get close enough. The fighter customisation menu is unnecessarily convoluted though, and while that may not strike you initially, it really gets annoying later in the career when you need to go six-levels deep into the customisation menu each time you want to add a new sponsor logo to your trunks.
The career mode format will be immediately recognisable to anyone who has played Smash Court Tennis 2. There is a calendar system with once of many tasks that you can perform each week. However, performing most of these tasks depletes your stamina and you will need to take these up with one eye on your next fight, because you don’t wanna go into the ring with a tough competitor with anything less than 100% stamina. The game uses a Cred (credibility) system which rewards you with points for winning matches. As you earn Cred, you unlock sponsors, whose logos you can carry on your trunks to earn additional Cred after matches. Cred also unlocks gym equipment, additional trunks, etc.
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But all these unlockables are superficial and don’t really contribute to making you a better fighter, except the upgraded gym equipment to a certain extent. What will increase your stats is sparring. On a week when you’re not fighting, you can get in the ring with your sparring partner and duke it out for a round. Based on how you perform, you are given points (different from Cred), which you can use to increase your fighter’s attributes. Each attribute is further broken up into offence and defence. So you can mould your fighter’s style to your liking. If you want your fighter to be a kick-boxer, who prefers staying on his feet, you could focus on his standing offensive and defensive attributes. You will also need to focus on his defensive attributes for grappling and submissions, however, because you will come across fighters who are grapplers and prefer fighting on the mat, and without good defensive stats, you won’t last in a submission hold for too long.
Besides sparring, there’s also a Training option in your calendar, which can help you increase your strength, speed, or cardio/stamina. This is an automatic stats-for-stamina trade and doesn’t involve any fighting. You also have occasional training camps, which are similar to sparring, but here you’re taught new moves, and given certain tasks to perform. Doing so will increase the skill level in your chosen discipline. Lastly, there are promotional activities such as photo shoots for sponsors, autograph sessions, etc that earn you Cred without depleting your stamina.
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Next page: The verdict
