UFC 2009 Undisputed review

OTHER NOTES

In Classic Fights, there are 12 fights from UFC’s past that you replay. If you satisfy the win conditions, then you unlock a video montage of the actual fight. However, the conditions are kind of difficult. A few fights want you to win by decision meaning you go all three rounds, which sounds easy, right? Well, not if you’re used to pouncing and trying to knock the other guy out. You may be better suited for reliving the Liddell/Rampage fight, which just asks you to knock out Liddell in the first round. No sweat. Liddell goes down like a chump.

Above: Relive!

The presentation is pretty cool, but we’d hoped for better unlockables then a short-ass montage video of the fight, like the whole fight for example. Okay, if that’s too much video to compress and put on a disk, then how about unlockable legends?

And what about the downsides? How about the long load times? Actually, it’s not that they’re slow, but like WWE SmackDown, THQ loves to put you through several…

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Get used to it! ‘Cause it kinda blows. Can any of this be optimized or happen in the background? It’s getting bothersome and cumbersome to sit through a loading screen for another menu. All told, it does take a while to begin a fight.

That’s because we slowly watch an overhead shot of the Octagon with no sound to speak of, before the tale of the tape (stats on each fighter). And then we see a good six skippable screens of Bruce Buffer announcing the fight, the fighters themselves, more introductions, and then an unskippable cutscene of the ref asking if we’re ready to fight. YES WE ARE. It’s kind of why we have the game. So we can play it. Watching WWE entrances are fun because there are pyrotechnics, intro themes, and animations of wrestlers running down the aisle. In UFC, it’s two guys prowling a cage, hopping up and down and getting ready to fight for real. That’s kind of boring to watch.

Above: Sexy

And the multiplayer? It works very well. A glance at the Achievement list makes it known that THQ really wants you to hop online and play against other people. While we didn’t do that for this review, we did play against other humans locally and had a blast. Also, please don’t be a dick. Let your buddies get used to the controls before you start putting them in hammerlocks and whip kneeing them in the face.

WWE SmackDown! vs RAW 2009
Not necessarily. Both are different beasts when it comes to replicating “sports.” SmackDown is a game of timing, reversals and grapple controls but feels completely different from Undisputed. It’s probably because we felt like we were training and improving our skill set to actually dominate and destroy our opponent. The match options for SmackDown are robust, but that’s because UFC doesn’t have matches that allow the use of flaming tables and barbed wire bats.

Fight Night Round 3
Not entirely. Fight Night handles the boxing controls extremely well, yet doesn’t allow for kicks to the face or tackling your opponent. So if you want more of a fight, we’d say go for UFC. If you want something that appears a little less like men writhing around on the ground, hit up Fight Night.

UFC: Sudden Impact
Oh god, yes. Sudden Impact blew.

May 15, 2009