Game review: UFC Undisputed 2010

In <i>UFC Undisputed 2010</i>, any night's alright for fighting. Photo / Supplied

Being something of a physically imposing fellow since my younger days, I've not been drawn into many fights. So given the absence of an underground fight club in the office, how is a guy supposed to let his inner brawler loose?

UFC Undisputed 2010 could be the answer. Stacked with a comprehensive roster of fighters from across all weight classes and martial arts disciplines, and a superbly detailed and complex career mode, THQ's second crack at the ultimate fighting arena is a sweeping and ambitious effort which aims to make the experience as close to reality as possible.

Players can engage in short tournaments pitting UFC stars against each other, recreate classic bouts from inside the octagon and, in an inspired touch, run their own online fighting camps.

These are fun. These are what you'd expect to get out of a great fighting game. Just fire up your console and start leaving welts on your best mate's face.

Those welts, by the way, are spot-on. UFC Undisputed 2010 has an incredibly clever visual damage arrangement. The nicest touch probably being the blood which gently spurts from the forehead of a fighter whose brainpan has been pounded against the mat too many times. It flows so realistically that it must easily be the most stunning blood effect seen in a game since Mortal Kombat's fatalities first outraged tweed-wearing geriatrics nearly 20 years ago.

The career mode, there for anyone who salivates and nods furiously whenever they hear the question "so you want to be an ultimate fighter?", is the largest and most time-demanding feature of the game.

Unfortunately, a bit like the boffins behind the Manhattan Project, UFC Undisputed 2010 manages to make career mode both its greatest accomplishment and its gravest mistake.

By capturing in minute detail almost every aspect of an ultimate fighter's career path, the game's 12 year, 48-or-so-fight setup puts players at a serious risk of tapping out from the boredom of clicking through training menus, juggling technique stats, completing meaningless promotional activities and staring at the same sequence of loading screens before stepping into the octagon for a match that could be over in less than a minute.

Hats off to the developers, Yuke's, for capturing the essence of what it is to be a fighter rising through the ranks of the UFC. It's almost perfect in that regard. The problem is that the life of a champion skullcruncher, it seems, is irredeemably dull. At an average and completely unscientifically quantified ratio of five or more minutes of menu navigation and loading screens to every 30 seconds of actual fighting, career mode just isn't worth the effort.

So, do I want to be an ultimate fighter? If this experience is any indication, then the answer is a definite no.

It's a shame, because you'll want your in-game avatar to make it all the way to a championship bout with Frank Mir because the AI is so good, and the skills recreated so expertly, that you'll swear Mir himself has been ported into the game via witchcraft. But unless you have hour upon hour to spare staring at the UFC loading screen logo, which is now burned into the backs of my retinas, you'll have to forfeit your date with Frank Mir and send Brock Lesnar in to deputise in one of UFC Undisputed 2010's more user-friendly modes.

You don't need anything more than that.

Verdict: UFC Undisputed 2010 has near-perfect fighter AI and a wealth of techniques and styles to employ. It's easily the best pure fighting game of its type, but the career mode is actually too realistic to be much fun.

Rating: 3/5

Format: Xbox360, PS3, R16