Review: EA Sports UFC (Xbox One)

It's been a few years since my last crack at a UFC game, the original Undisputed made by THQ. There have not been many revolutionary new changes to MMA since then, besides the popularity increase of the sport, of course. Any time you switch companies, you are obviously going to switch engines and likely design philosophies. I was a little disappointed to hear that the Fight Night Boxing team was going on hiatus to work on this franchise – I've always enjoyed that franchise and will look forward to it's return down the road.

Right out of the box, EA Sports UFC is gorgeous. The level of animation and character detail continues to impress, especially in a combat sport where the character canvas gets serious pounded on for up to 5 rounds. The sound effects and the voice over work are excellent, which come as no surprise to any fan of EA Sports games. The level of improvement for this new generation of consoles is finally starting to be shown with greater regularity!

The stand-up combat is easily my favorite part of not only the UFC events, but of this game. The striking is so simple to pick up but underneath lies the complexity of counter-striking, directional hits, soft versus hard blocking, and finally aiming for a knock-out versus just wearing out your opponent. Flurry or panic striking will let you spend all of your stamina in a flash leaving you susceptible to a beating while you try and recover your breath. It's obvious to any fan of the Fight Night games that the design team has been working here: the striking is fluid and well animated and even the build-up of damage on fighter looks exceptional.

There are a few tics though – some of the kicks just look downright odd – especially for some of the disciplines where some animations are recycled. But that's more of a first-pass knock than a condemnation of work. All of the little things are definitely here – from a fighter developing a limp from targeting leg strikes to the perfect hook to the chin knocking anyone out.

My beef with the game lies firmly on the grappling system. It's a convoluted mess!

Ideally, you should be able to impart the most basic of maneuvers on a neophyte in a few minutes. As those become second nature, you can start learning the more complicated techniques and counters. Except in this case, you are unceremoniously dumped into the ocean rather than slowly wading into the pool. The shear amount of essential information is staggering – I was resorting to having a hand-written move list in front of me (because nobody makes an actual game manual anymore; it's imbedded in the code… thanks a lot, paperless society!). As a result, the grappling devolves into a series of context-less button pressing and directional moving. The striking not only makes sense as to what you are doing with your button strikes, the controller lay-out makes it completely intuitive. The grappling layout gives you no concept of what you are doing or even why you are doing it.

The fighter grading (score evaluations of every competitor) is my last complaint. In every other game, the difference between the super-star and the one-step-away-from-fired is significant and their scores reflect that not only in points but in character handling. Sure while the two people may both be able to complete the same techniques, the speed and power behind them will differ and the scores should reflect that. The score differences between the .500 fighter and the champion should be more than 10 points. While I understand that anyone should be able to defeat the champ at any given time, I refuse to believe that the champ is THAT susceptible to defeat.

At the end of the day EA Sport UFC is a first try – and not a bad one at that. There is an exceptional nucleus to the game, and I look forward to see how subsequent releases tweak the system to fix these problems and further expand the game.

- Tazman

The Good:
- The striking system is top-notch – at best only minor tweaks are required here

The Bad:
- The grappling system and controller lay-out… what a hot pile of mess.
- The grading system on fighters should show a little more variance than 10 points between the champion and a scrub.