Gamersmint Review : UFC 2010
UFC as a sport has seen its popularity sky rocket in the past couple of years and it was only obvious that someone would develop a videogame revolving around it. THQ came into the fray and delivered a rather solid fighting game in the form of UFC 2009 and after tasting relative success have bought in the next edition of the franchise for gamers to enjoy. UFC 2010 really plays and feels a much better game than its predecessor. Yukes have improved a lot of aspects which were found lacking in the first edition and also have taken a great deal of effort to simplify things and make it enjoyable even by gamers who have no idea about UFC in general.
We all know that even though UFC 2009 was one of the most well developed and advanced fighting games to come out in recent times, it did have a rather steep learning curve for rookies and was simply not planned well enough. Sparring against human opponents online or offline were the only options to have some genuine fun as the game modes were mostly broken and the game’s career mode really felt out of touch. However, UFC 2010 has made sure that it won’t be the same anymore. The game brings in a lot of new and interesting game modes and also revamps the Ultimate Fights mode which makes it feel all the more interesting. The career mode has seen a lot of improvements aswell and now you can do a whole lot of new things with your fighter as he climbs up the MMA ladder.
The career mode lets you create your own fighter and the level of customization is remarkable. You can select everything from his fighting style to stance to how he enters the Octagon and celebrates a victory. Visual customization is also very deep and now you can even place tattoos anywhere on your fighter’s body rather than pre-set locations. Once you’re ready to step into the octagon there’s a nifty tutorial which I suggest that everyone new to the game should try out. The tutorial is rather detailed and will help you figure out most of the basic things before you compete in your first fight.
The fighting too is tier-based, with your fighter starting off in a small junior fighting division and slowly progressing towards the big divisions and finally Dana (the boss of UFC) will come up and offer you a chance to compete in the UFC. This is rather interesting and its fun progressing through the tiers before your first UFC fight. Once you’re in the UFC you will have to start as an under card and as you win more fights, you can go on to the main cards and then feature in main events and ultimately get that title shot that every UFC fighter dreams about.
You can start off your career under any weight category and once you win the title in a particular segment, you can give up your title and move on to compete in other weight segments. After covering all the weight segments you will receive a 100% career completion achievement. Now, the stuff you can do inside the career mode is a mixed bag. UFC 2010 gives you a chance to hone your skills and learn new moves in fighting camps. Sparring there will enable you to learn any moves that you like and this gives your fighter immense flexibility and feels a whole lot more fun. You can even take part in online camps to improve your skills and spar together with your friends. Another nifty feature is that you will have to monitor your skills as ignoring them over time will result in their degradation. This keeps things fresh as you need to train in order to keep in shape.
Other features like giving interviews after your main event fights and your replies making an impact on your popularity and bonding with other fighters are fun. Make a negative comment and your animosity with your just defeated opponent will increase while your popularity among the fans will get better but show him respect after winning and you will become friends while your fans will consider you “uncool”. Rachell Lia ( the UFC hottie and Playboy cover star) will also make visits in between your training schedule and this impacts your popularity. Complete these sequences successfully and see a boost in your cred. However, some of these require you to sit through computer controlled UFC events and make predictions and I don’t see how that can be appealing to anyone. Something Yukes needs to sort out before shipping the next edition for sure. On the brighter side, her offers can be refused and those sequences can be skipped altogether.
All in all, the career mode just about manages to hold your interest for seeing through a particular weight segment but still it all gets repetitive after a while and there is way too much gap between fights and not enough interesting stuff to do. Watching the A.I fight is not something which I think might excite a lot of gamers and I wish the action was more instant and you need not had to do so much of the “same” stuff over and over again in between.
