UFC 2010 Undisputed Create-a-Fighter Hands-On

With the release of UFC 2010 Undisputed less than a month away, publisher THQ invited us to meet some of the real-life fighters and play a new build of the game. In this latest version, we had the chance to go in depth with one of the most interesting aspects of the game, the Create-a-Fighter mode.

We decided against starting with one of the provided templates and chose to create our character from scratch. First of all, we had to input his basic details. With a mind to test the system to its limits, we decided to go for the most unique character possible. Since the real UFC roster seemed to be lacking any aged and freakishly tall fighters, we set ours to the maximum possible age of 46 and the height limit of 6 foot 8 inches. We then had to choose from a list of preset hometowns, with the only options in England being Birmingham, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Leeds.

We next had to select our preferred victory scene and taunt animations. The former is exactly what you'd expect: choosing how you want your character to react upon winning a match. As for the latter, we were able to map three separate taunts to the D pad. These were largely aesthetic and meant purely for goading fellow human players.

We were required to choose from a list of preset nicknames and had the option to do the same with first and second names. Presumably this is so the in-game match commentators can refer to the characters, though we couldn't be sure since our setup wasn't outputting any audio. There was also the ability to choose from a variety of voices for our fighter, but we skipped over this part since we couldn't hear any of it.

With Kazuo "The Punisher" Wagner's basic details all set, we next had to establish how we wanted him to fight. Our specialisation, stance, and animations were determined by selecting from an array of mixed martial arts styles, which included Brazilian, Russian, Japanese, Muay Thai, wrestling, and boxing. Then, we were able to spend points on specific attributes and abilities. Our character's focus was defined by how we distributed points across basic strength, speed, and cardio (stamina, in other words). A separate set of points were granted to define more specific strengths and weakness in areas like punching, kicking, striking downed opponents, grapple offense, and grapple defence.

The final third of the creation process was to detail our character's appearance. This allowed us to tweak individual parts of our fighter, with every perceivable part of his head minutely adjustable through an impressive series of sliders and options. Continuing our theme of ridiculousness, we gave our aged fighter an unnatural brown-grey skin tone, a bushy white beard, and a bright red Mohawk hairstyle.

When it came to customising our fighter's torso, we were limited to a preset range of body types, presumably put in place to avoid potential collision detection issues in matches. However, we did have the option to deck him out with scars and tattoos, so naturally we decided to stick a giant Union Jack tattoo across his back. We also gave him a tribal dragon tattoo on his chest, though this was largely covered up by his thick mass of white chest hair.

There's also a range of options for customising your fighter's attire. Personalising our trunks was the focus, and we were able to choose from a variety of styles and colours. As in the actual sport, sponsor brand names play a big role. While only the THQ and Yukes logos were available for us to use, it looks as though more will become available in the full game when progressing through the career mode. We could also choose from an assortment of different knee and ankle supporters as well as gum guards to add the finishing touches to our fighter. There didn't seem to be the option to edit our character's gloves, though perhaps this is due to restrictions of the actual sport.

Overall, the system was very powerful yet highly intuitive. We were able to create our lumbering tattooed monstrosity and have him duking it out in the octagon in a matter of minutes. Look forward to creating your own fighters when the game is released worldwide at the end of May.