Ultimate Fighting Championship

"Best Fighting Sim Ever"

The Ultimate Fighting Championship began in 1993 as Pay Per View events. This was real martial arts in no holds barred matches. They were fought in octagonal cages with the minimun of rules. During the early days of the event, the fights did not have rounds, they just continued until one man submitted or was knocked out. Often, as you can imagine, when the sight ended it was not a pretty sight. Well, this fighting game is the perfect simulation of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. This game ignores all notions of what makes a good beat-em-up and instead, offers you the closest thing yet to a real fighting sim. When you first start the game you can choose from 22 of the best of the current batch of UFCers. Sadly none of the classic names from the early days of this event are featured such as Royce Gracie, Tank Abbot and Kimo. Although this makes no difference to the game in the terms of gameplay. If you have never seen an Ultimate Fighting Championship, the rules may look rather odd to begin with, until you realise that this is what real, brutal fights look like. All of the four buttons are action moves relating to a particular limb, Tekken style. Pressing combinations allows you character to do a wide range of grappling holds and take downs, a fundamental part of mixed martial arts fighting. You are likely to spend just as much time jockeying about for the perfect position on the mat, and attempting to lock on and reverse submission holds, as you are exchanging kicks and punches with your opponent. Although to begin with, it appears that there is only a small amount of moves available, but once you get into the game you will beging to realise that there is a wide range of moves available. These moves are not Tekken style moves, infact far from it,
these moves depend on where you are in relation to your opponent. For example hitting two buttons can make you do a leg sweep when you are in front and a take down when you are behind. There is a whole host of modes available ranging from Exhibition to UFC tournaments or to championships. The best of all as in most fighting games is the carrer mode where you can create a character from a range of the options available and take that character through a season mode. a 30-level sparring system allows you to earn points and upgrade your characters stats and learn him new moves. When you have completed the carrer mode you can take your made up character through all of the other modes of the game in an effort to relentlesly plough through the competition. The Al of the computer controled fighters is spot on, even with the difficulty set to rookie these guys are no dummies. If you use the same move over and over again, they will work out this tactic and show you the error of your ways. The only two bad things is that you can only participate in one-on-one matches and that these fights don't last very long, but don't let this put you off. Once you become accustomed to the controls, you will realise that this is one, if not the best fighting sim ever.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/13/00, Updated 11/13/00