Personally I’m not the biggest fan of MMA. Sure I’ll watch a few minuets of UFC Unleashed on Spike when nothing good is on, but other than I don’t keep up with the sport. Not that UFC or any of the other MMA leagues are bad, its just not my cup of tea, so to speak. But when the Undisputed series of games came out, I was hooked.
The Undisputed line of UFC games made major improvements over previous games that came out. Better controls, more fighters and a solid grappling system gave gamers the feeling of what its like in the octagon. The newest entry to the series, Undisputed 3 continues these innovations and pushes them even further, as shown in the demo released yesterday.
One major thing you will notice about Undisputed 3 is that you’ll be able to pick from two leagues: UFC and Pride FC. That’s right Pride FC is in the game as its own separate section, more on that later. So lets start with the UFC first. After picking a fighter (Anderson Silva or Jon Jones) the game starts off with fighter entrances, something that wasn’t in the previous games. While not needed it gives the game a nice realistic touch. Now as for the fighting system goes, its simple enough. Square and triangle are the left and right hands while X and circle are the left and right legs. L1 and pressing a combination of the face buttons will alter the strike. Again nothing new but this time, by pressing the left stick forward, the fighter can now extend the strike further. This ties in with the arm reach of the fighters which now take into consideration the arm reach. The longer the reach, the farther he can extend the strike. The submission has also gone under some changes as well. Pressing the right stick towards the other fighter will cause you and him to enter in a clinch. Flicking the right stick up or down will have your fighter attempt a take down or fend one off if being taken down. Once on the mat, the ground game is similar to past games with L1 and any of the face buttons modifying the strike. As for the submission system, it has been overhauled for this game. Pressing in right stick (R3) will start a submission, and a graphic of the octagon will appear. The fighter that started the submission will have their color represented on the outside of the octagon while the fighter who is defending the submission is the color in the octagon. The one outside of the image has to try to overlap the inner color to hold a submission and apply it successfully. Other factors such as position, stamina, arm reach, height and weight factor into a submission, giving it a really nice touch of realism. The match lasts the standard 5 minuets and depending how good you are can end in a knockout, TKO or a submission. Each time I played I could never win by submission, but knocking the hell of my opponent out cold felt just as satisfying. But let’s not forget about Pride FC.
For this section of the demo, Quinton Jackson and Wanderlei Silva will be available to use. The fighting system for Pride FC is similar to the UFC controls. The only difference is that: 1). it takes place inside a traditional and slightly larger boxing ring and 2). Pride FC rules are in affect. Pride FC rules allow soccer kicks, stomps and knees to the head of a grounded opponent. There are no weight classes per se, but during championship matches and grand prix fighters of similar weights will be matched up. There are three rounds with the first round being 10 minuets and two five minuet rounds. I’m wondering if they’re going to also have it to where fighters are booked to fight twice in the same night.
After playing both sections, I can say that I’m pretty pumped for this game to drop and can’t wait for the added extra such as training in some of the most famous MMA gyms in the world, custom character seasons, and other features in store. Give the demo a try, and if you enjoyed yourself as much as I did, the game is set to release on February 14.
