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Review: UFC Undisputed 3

In the last few months, I have discovered my love for UFC. The sheer technical brutality of the fights. The thrill of watching one man pummel another into submission. The dislocations, broken bones and the buckets of blood. Suffice it to say, it’s become somewhat of a guilty pleasure. Being such a newbie to the sport, I hadn’t played either of the previous games in the franchise, so UFC Undisputed 3 was my first foray into MMA video games. Coming in fresh, I was staggered by the amount of features offered up, and impressed by the attempts of developer Yuke’s to ease newcomers in. However, the game still comes with a very steep learning curve which requires persistance and patience if you intend on becoming the champ.

Upon loading up the game for the first time, you are greeted with the option of Amateur or Professional controls for grappling. The Pro controls require you to roll the right thumbstick in a variety of ways to attempt transitions during grappling. The Amateur controls simplify this greatly by requiring only a flick up or down on the right thumbstick to pull off the same moves. The Amateur controls are a great way to get started and really help ease a player into the transitions and grappling side of the game. I played with Amateur controls for my first few fights and found moving onto Pro simple and intuitive. Having the option made learning the game all the more enjoyable. When playing the game for the first time helpful tutorial hints will pop up. I found these hints to be contextual and unobtrusive. If you are a seasoned veteran the option to turn them off is always there.

The real meat of the experience is the “Career Mode”. It’s here that you either choose an existing UFC or Pride fighter or use the Create a Fighter feature and take them all the way to to the championship. Starting out your UFC career is a daunting experience. This is where I found patience to be a true virtue. Every aspect of your career, from training sessions to fight camps — even scheduling fights — is meticulously explained. These voiceovers are skippable, but if you lack prior experience with UFC games you may find yourself lost without them. Once you have learned the basics the experience does open up.

Prior to every fight, you have a certain number of actions to spend. You spend them on Training Sessions and Fight Camps, which allow you to develop current skills or learn new ones. You can also choose to implement a Game Plan to give a temporary boost to your stats. Taking part in these sessions or in fights earns you “CRED”, the in game currency. With CRED, you can purchase new training programs, moves and items from sponsors to further customise your fighter. Outside of career mode, you can spend CRED in the shop on a range of items including locked fighters, cutscenes, taunts and nicknames.

Career mode is huge and it feels like it has been designed with fairly hardcore UFC fans in mind. There’s a lot of depth to it, and actually working your way up to the championship is going to require a pretty serious investment of both time and effort. If you are like me — more inclined to want to just jump in and start pummelling, then there are plenty of options for you too.

Exhibition Mode lets you jump straight in and fight against either the CPU or a second player. No stat fiddling, training sessions or tutorials. Just brutal combat. You can select to fight in either UFC or Pride League. I have to say that I became a big fan of 2-player Pride fights. The Pride League rules are a little different (read, more brutal) than the UFC. Head stomps and kicks on a downed player are allowed which leads to plenty of moments of sympathetic wincing from the couch.

The online mode is fairly robust and offers the standard ranked and player match options. You can join online fight camps which groups you with like minded fighters in a team. There are extensive community options for content sharing and leaderboards as well.

Graphically, the game is excellent. The character models are detailed and accurately represent the real world fighters. The damage system adds cuts and bruising to the fighters faces while sweat effects add an extra sense of realism.  Motion capture has been used to ensure realistic movement and striking by the fighters and it shows. The fights look fluid and fantastic.

The only problems I had with UFC Undisputed 3 were the length and frequency of the loading times, the lengthy and painstaking explanations of every aspect of the game and the very steep learning curve. For a game that requires a 3GB+ install on the PS3 I felt that loading should be minimal, but before and after every fight I was staring at a loading screen. For players of the previous titles in the series I’m sure that skipping the explanations wouldn’t be a problem and the learning curve wouldn’t be as steep, but for me I found it took perseverance on my part before I felt confident playing.

However, UFC Undisputed 3 is great fun. It looks great and has a huge number of modes and features ensuring that you’ll be playing it for some time to come. For all of the purported effort gone into making the game more accessible, it’s still very much made for fans of the previous games though and newcomers may be put off by the complexity. If you love your UFC, UFC Undisputed 3 is a must-have.

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DeltaPhoenix08