Ultimate Fighting Championship: Throwdown

"Insert generic quip about "throwing down" UFC throwdown here."

Mixed martial arts is a rather new experience to the North American audience. Throw pro wrestling fanfare, The Ultimate Fighting Championships and Pride Fighting Championship have grown in popularity over the past two or three years. UFC Throwdown is not the first of the mixed martial arts games, but it is the latest that attempts to whell-in the casual audience.

Gameplay
The controls are easy to master, but with a confusing L1/L2 system in which you're allowed to mix up combos after punching that never seems to work, it becomes frustrating to run a fight with more than a ''punch, kick, punch'' formula. Unlike the SmackDown games in which you can use a face button and a directional button to perform a different move, UFC allows you to do different moves when in different set-ups: ground grapple, behind, at the legs, etc. It's great- in theory- but considering the amatuer UFC player will only ever be in standing and ground grapple position, the system only appeals to the true masters of the game. Chances are, most will become tired of the 30 second bouts and never come to realize the brilliance of the grapple system, which is a real drawback.

The Career mode sucks. You're allowed to choose from very basic create-parts to compose your fighter: you select a style (kickboxing, pro wrestling, submission, etc.), which bases your CAF's appearance. Pro wrestlers have masks and tights, while kickboxers have gloves and shorts- cycle throw a mere four colour combinations per style to choose your look. You can atler to one of five skin colours as well as tweaking the height and weight. There should be a lot more variety in the appearance in CAF mode- one out of ten fighters you'll face in career mode will look exactly like you.

In Career Mode, you take on challenges to increase your stats and work towards a tournament. By defeating five spar partners, you qualify for said tournament, where you can showcase the new grapples and attacks picked up by completing tasks (usually calling for you to defeat an opponent by KO just using kicks or punchs, or to perform a certain submission move). No matter how much you unlock, your character plays very easily, in that you'll only ever do about six moves. Added to the fact that at the pause screen you can only view button combos for moves and not the move name, the confusion of whether you have to hit triangle and square together or quickly after the other gets old- fast.

Graphics
Average, at best, visually UFC is nothing to brag about. The character models look realistic, but with a painted on look of hair, it's worse than WWF SmackDown: Just Bring It's poor hair composure.

Sound
IGN said than UFC had an incredible mix of rock-metal music that supports the intense gaemplay. Outside of the main opening movie, I only hear generic studio-riffs that replay over and over again. With a strong soundtrack to compliment the intense gameplay, some UFC's flaws would have been easily concealed.

There's no commentary in UFC: Throwdown. Why this is, is beyond me. It would be simple to program a large variety of calls going into one two-minute bout. Aside of the ring enterances which call out the names of the fightersand the rules, there's not much to hear.

Overall
It's a rental, for sure. If you really love MMA, check out Pride or even the latest in the SmackDown series.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/03, Updated 04/20/03