UFC Undisputed 2010 inches closer and closer. With the major success of last year’s entry, excitement is running high for UFC fans and gamers alike, as both groups are interested in what changes the developers at Yuke’s have up their sleeve.
While most fighters will be looking to take their fight to the online lobbies, some players are all about the Career mode, where a fighter is built from scratch, trained, and placed in the octagon all by the player’s capable hands. This year’s UFC career will not disappoint; it is part-fighting, part-strategy, and all UFC.
The Create-A-Fighter feature that starts the Career mode is much deeper, adding a ton of things for the player to tweak about their character. Aside from the extra body parts and new voice options, the player can choose his fighter’s actions during the introduction, stare down, and victory. Gone also are the set styles of fighters, replaced by the ability to completely customize a character’s move set through training at certain MMA gyms and schools in the game. My character, for instance, had Lyoto Machida’s left head kick and Chuck Liddell’s right straight, which I attained by selecting "Camp Invite" from the career menu. Different schools will teach him different moves based on what is selectable.
The Career mode starts you off in the World Fighting Alliance, a smaller, more amateur fight league designed to prepare the players for the big league without forcing them to jump right into the main UFC undercards. As you fight your way through the ranks of the WFA and UFC, you’ll be building your character’s stats through training and sparring sessions. The stat-building process has a new obstacle for 2010 called Stat Decay; if you neglect one of your stats for multiple weeks, the stat will actually decrease until you build it again. It’s truly remarkable how this seemingly minor addition creates a whole new layer of difficulty to this year’s Career Mode: the player is forced to make sure that his fighter is well-rounded, or he will risk having a major weakness during his fights.
The presentation of UFC 2010 is completely different, as it is based on the actual graphics packages of UFC pay-per-views instead of an original theme. Along with those graphics, the game does a terrific job of recreating the UFC pay-per-view event feel with pre-fight packages, a greeting from Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan at the beginning of an event, and post-fight interviews with the winner of the match. While the pre-fight package and greeting add to recreating the PPV atmosphere, the post-fight interview can actually influence a career path. You can answer the questions in four different ways, each with their own consequences, and in some cases, you can request an opponent for your next match. This new feature makes the player feel like they are actually in control of the entire UFC production, and not just what goes on the ring. Speaking of the UFC production, the commentators in this year’s game may be the smartest sports game commentators ever due to a feature called "Game is Watching You." This basically means that the game will know what your fighter has done throughout his career and will talk about it during the fight. For example, if you win a fight after a losing streak, one of your post-fight interview questions will be about snapping the losing streak. Game is Watching You is an excellent addition to the realism of the game, as the adaptation to your career path creates some very intelligent voices on the microphone.
Of course, there are other new modes besides the expanded Career Mode. Tournament Mode allows up to 16 people to compete in a single-elimination tournament for bragging rights, with the entire tournament tree being updated in-game. Ultimate Fights mode also returns with over 15 classic fights to relive and (try to) recreate, adding specific categories and challenges to each fight for extra replayability. Title Defense Mode is a survival-type mode where a player will try to defend his title as many as 12 times in a row, receiving Milestone Rewards after every 3rd stage. Possibly my favorite new mode is Event mode, which is essentially creating a PPV event from scratch, picking fighters, title bouts, and other options. What makes this mdoe so interesting is the ability to download and play the upcoming real-life UFC cards, with the stats from the downloaded cards being tracked on UFC.com. For instance, if Mirko Cro Cop is taking on Todd Duffee at the next pay-per-view, and the player downloads the event and has Cro Cop winning by a second-round knockout, the website will reflect your results. It’s a great wat for fans not only to predict the upcoming real-life pay-per-view event, but to have their predictions shown to the world in the blink of an eye.
There is a lot to be excited about when UFC Undisputed 2010 hits stores on May 25th. If you want to be a fighter, make sure you pick up this year’s game; it will certainly be worth it.
To make the wait that much harder, here’s a brand new trailer featuring Chuck "The Ice Man" Liddell. Enjoy!
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