UFC 2010 discussion

Looking forward to this one, having a bit of a tough time deciding which console to grab it for as I believe PS3 has exclusives and I bought the PS3 version last year because the 360 version was sold out all over town. I heard you can port your fighters over? Not that that is a huge deal.

Is the game significantly different or it's just an updated roster of players? I still haven't played out 2009, so if the gameplay is basically the same I think I'll pass. I'm not paying another $60 just for new fighters, personally.

I didn't really put the demo through too many paces last night, but played a half dozen or so fights and while there are some new animations and I'm sure other gameplay I didn't see, there wasn't much that made me want to upgrade from last year's version. Granted I haven't played in months, but nothing about the game blew me away as a massive improvement from last year's game.

Maybe with time or as I discover some of the new features, but I'll likely just wait for the price to fall to < $40

What are the different strikes this yr? I think I seen upper cuts in a gameplay video.. I have 09 & can't do a upper cut.. Unless I'm doing something wrong.. How does the Ebb N flow feel.. Can you really end the fight with a quick sub or KO if you are getting the crap beaten out of you for 4 rounds? Does Stamina play a more prominent role?

So, upper cuts are in? And you can flash submit and KO your opponent at anytime in the fight. I want this based on the fighter, staminia, power, ratings and chance.

Funny, I thought flash KO's were almost too regular in 2009. With no button mashing to get out of submissions that could really tilt the balance too.

Thanks! Added to my queue.

Here's the link:
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/ga...=0&sb=1#offers

I'm with you.

Playing UFC 2009 and now this demo, it still doesn't feel right. It feels more like the old WWE wrestling games than a real fighting game. And the fighters' proportions and animations are strange and unnatural. After seeing how amazing Fight Night Round 4 was (prior to the game-killing button patch), I'm hoping that EA's title will feel better than THQ's.

I could care less about the roster and UFC license since I'm not interested in playing a management sim. I'd much rather play something that looks and feels more like actual fighting.

You're gonna need Natal and the optional "Smack Back" add-on for that.

I'm sure even then you will throw a punch and it will do something completely different.

I like my fighters to have buttons.

Bah. My point is that IMO the folks who designed Undisputed didn't do a very good job of translating the feeling of MMA fighting to a game. That's what I liked about what the Fight Night games did for boxing. I'm not talking about "realism"; I'm just talking about how the game looks and controls.

My number one concern is controls and to me throwing the punch or kick you want, every single time is my number one priority, thus my desire for buttons. I will agree that the stand up game needed a bit of work in Undisputed, and supposedly a lot of that had to do with the collision detection being a work in progress, which also translated to some of the character model decisions as well as the lack of southpaws and certain fighters with signature hair cuts that glitched the modeling. But the grappling and ground games were very well done for a first effort. I've yet to play this new demo so we'll see tonight if it lives up to expectations.

Personally I am not a huge fan of the Fight Night games though I probably didn't give 4 a fair enough chance.

Totally agree. I don't think a good fighting game needs to use FN's stick control system (though it works brilliantly in the FN games, especially FN4).

It's the blocky, chunky movements in Undisputed 09 and now '10 that really bug me. For example, mount positions are far too linear; each mount position is at a perfect 90 degree angle to every other mount position. Maybe that's true in the abstract, but in practice it's never so linear. There's just not enough room for the finesse and constant fluidity of the ground game. And the standing game is even worse in its chunkiness. Most kicks and punches are totally static with little opportunity for immediate take-down follow-ups, shifted weight, and general footwork (and the legs on the character models are weirdly stumpy on all the characters).

Overall, everything just happens too slowly and statically. IMO the chunky animations are just a bi-product of the even chunkier controls. I'm dying to play a good MMA game and have been for years. I'd hoped that Undisputed 09 would be that game, then I was hoping that '10 would fix what was wrong with 09. Unfortunately, they took the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude. They tightened up a few things to make the button/stick presses more intuitive, but they didn't really change the way the game feels overall.

I will play it before I comment further.

You are right about the linearity of the ground game, I don't see how that is going to change any time soon. The system we get covers the main positions, you always need to suspend a certain amount of disbelief knowing that the animations are going to be locked into the constructs of the rules. If you could be halfway between transitions you'd need a whole new set of moves for the new position, at which point you'd still go linearly from a->b->c instead of a->c.

...and that's why I think FNR4 is so revolutionary. It takes away a lot of those "scripted" positions and attacks by using a physics system.

Consider this: if the Fight Night team can make a dynamic physics system for standing blows, there's really no reason why you couldn't apply something similar to groundwork. Weight dynamics (position and applied force) could dictate how your opponent's body responds and how their movements can react/interact with yours.

There's the sense in Undisputed that "underneath the hood" there's just a rock-paper-scissors algorithm at work. Fill in a few variables with stats, and that's the core of the game's mechanics. But if you introduce a dynamic physics system, the entire feeling of the game changes. You'd no longer be dealing with scripted positions with just a few possible responses. It would be much more about the application of weight and force through your position, holds, and strikes. It's sort of like the difference between digital and analog. Obviously there'd have to be some "scripting" going on so that you're not fumbling around on top of your opponent, but it would still give you a lot more free and dynamic movement.

I guess that's what I mean when I say that Undisputed feels like THQ's pro wrestling games. It all feels a bit canned and "game-y." But, yeah, this is all just judging by '09 and the demo for '10. The full game might be less stiff.

as awesome as a dynamic physics system would be here..... holy **** that is a leap in programming skill from normal rock paper style. For these sports games with yearly iterations I don't know if they would have enough time to implement that and still get their yearly release out. Hell do they even have the programming talent there to even do that?

not trying to undermine or say they suck, but thinking of trying to do that myself and the sheer amount of variables and calculations involved is mind boggling. For boxing/striking I can see some easier implementation for physics formulas of one moving object impacting with another, but multiple hitboxes from 2 characters interacting at the same time each needing their own physics data for each hitbox area. All at the same time legs interacting, arms, chests, heads..... Does the xbox even have enough horsepower under the hood to do all these calculations and still provide a decent gaming experience???

That's what folks thought before FNR4. Like logicalnoise says, a lot of the heavy lifting is accomplished via middleware. The Madden games have started to use a primitive version of more dynamic physics. And the forthcoming Backbreaker is supposedly pushing the envelope much further than Madden ever has (and is using the Euphoria engine).

One fight lasted 7 seconds! CPU VS CPU on Advanced. Evans threw a lazy straight right, Shogun countered with a left hook. Fight over!

I ran 4 CPU VS CPU on the highest difficulty level.. The ground game is very disappointing.. Only 2-3 submissions were tried..All ended in KO or TKO. & the ref kept standing up the fighters even when there was action.. Stand up is fine, along with the fighters tendencies.. Evans usually went for the take down.. Rampage preferred stand up. Way too many one punch knock outs.. Need more grey segments.. Flash knockdowns are not bad.. Just the over done one punch knockouts.

I am truth be told a bigger boxing than MMA fan but boxing is a million times simpler than MMA to program for because you're essentially limited to your fists and moving around the ring plus body movement for defense - incidentally one reason I hate TPC is because I think they should have focused on using the second stick entirely for body moves and defense with the first used for ring movement.

With MMA truth be told there really isn't enough inputs which is why I think they go the rock paper scissors route.

I'm confident that a smart, talented, and well-funded development team could figure it out.

Yes, boxing is a bit simpler in terms of control mechanics and physical interactions, but there are ways to streamline the gameplay for an MMA game. For example, take-downs could be made more dynamic by linking them more directly to the angle and direction of the analog stick movement. It's almost there, but it all feels too canned ("press forward to do x").

The physical interactions for take-downs wouldn't be much more involved than in FNR4 since you're talking about one basic line of force. The multiple points of contact (shoulder, swept foot, trapped arm, etc) would be cosmetic from a game design perspective. The only relevant thing in terms of the physics engine is one basic vector (and another one for the opponent).

On the ground, the physics would get more complex, but it still just amounts to one basic vector per fighter. The major complication would be the force exerted by the ground itself (which makes two points of interaction per fighter rather than just one). They really need to get people on the dev team who deeply understand the physics and body mechanics of ground fighting. From my perspective (and I'm no game designer), the problem seems to be not so much the tech as the know-how.

The really tough work from a tech perspective would be all the cosmetic stuff (making sure body parts react to one another in a visually believable way). But in theory, the physics governing the fight itself don't seem to me like they'd be that different from boxing.

Anyways, this is all just wishful thinking.

I picked up a copy on both ps3 and 360. Just getting into them now.

You can play the retail version at the Best Buy in Milpitas, CA. The game play seems a bit quicker and more fluid. The movement is less herky jerky. I watched a match between Sho gun and Coleman. Nice ground work. The guy using Sho gun tried a triangle choke, arm bar, and Kamari, all in less then 2 minutes, but Coleman got out of them. In the second round. Sho went for the take down and got full mount. He started raining punches.. One connected just right where it bounced Colemens head off the mat. The screen turned gray. Colemen was in defensive mode with both hands covering his face. But enough punches got in to warrant a stoppaged. I think it was stopped a bit to soon. My main gripe is blood. Every fighter bleeds all over the canvas.. Every fight.

I've had the game for a few days now and so far I like it. It seems like submissions are extremely hard to complete now. In last years game if you have a fighter like Demian Maia you could triangle choke a guy who has bad submission defense pretty easily. Also, I have to agree that one punch KO's occur way too frequently. I played through Title Defense mode last night with BJ Penn and for some reason I couldn't do anything off of my back from Mission Control. One other interesting thing is that looking through the list of pre-programmed names in the CAF mode shows a first name of Fyodor selectable and and last name of Emilianinko (can't remember exact spelling but it's just slightly off). I thought that was pretty funny.