Ultimate Fighting Championship

"Very good at what it does...but not good enough!"

I must say, this is a very good game. I can see the effort that went into this game. There's a lot of technical stuff to marvel at. But when Crave first started putting this thing on the drawing board I wish someone remembered the things that make a game fun over a long time. Even though I'm playing this game a lot, I know that this game will lose its punch.
I really admire the stick to realism goal this tries and succeeds to reach. It plays with a lot of cat and mouse, chess like feel. In some ways I think of this as the Bushido Blades of hand to hand. This is a good thing...however, Bushido Blades had large environments, and thrown weapons in it's favors. Bushido Blade had a wide open experience...UFC is just plain claustophobic. In UFC you are stuck in a small octogon ring. Its the same octogon ring no matter where you're fighting. I could live with this but the fighting objective many times is to grapple, and tie each other into a tight little knot on the mat. Most of the action is just rolling around on the floor, trying for that punch here and there, and the supression grab. It feels flat and suffocating. I think a lot of this could have been pumped up if they just added a little color. Like maybe a different ring girl in each location. Maybe and announcer. Being able to make the supression grap NOT such a match killer would have even been better....like in many boxing games the match isn't over until you're third knock down. This maybe isn't for the purist, but I'm not a purist, I'm a video game nut. Just give me the options.
I read alot about the intros and they are pretty impressive. But they are the pretty much the same no matter where you are or who you are. They are also in most cases longer than the matches. So although they try to build the tension it just end in a big thud after the first few time of watching them. Just not enough personality to highten things.
Then theres the character generator. I was dissapointed, because here, most of all shows how uninspired they where. They failed to do even simple things. Like each premade character has four different costumes. Instead of making the character look like a different person, instead of changing their face or even hair color, they change the color of their shorts, or just their halter top in the case of the card girl. Imagine if there had been a different card girl per location, you would have had more to choose. The fighting styles also are not varied enough.
Now, don't get me wrong...I don't hate this game at all. At first the computer just killed me with those suppression grabs. But once you learn to counter those supression moves and counter, this game can go down to the wire. Until you reach this point, this game can be a completely flat experience. But if you think you can stick it out, and more importantly you have a human competitor who will also stick it out, this game will be worth it. It is a good game engine.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/00, Updated 09/15/00