An outstanding fighter is unforutnately brought down by an awful career mode and laggy online play.
To be good at this game you'll have to master both the standing game and the ground game. In the standing game the goal is to throw a series of punches and kicks to knock your opponent out. Depending on which of the three fighting styles you use determines what moves you can do here. Boxers have a better variety of punches but cant do high kicks. Kickboxers have high kicks and a superman punch and muay tai can deliver devestating knees to the head. While standing you can also clinch your opponent which opens up different options. You can choose to try and hit your opponent while in the clinch or take the fight to the ground in different ways depending on your grappling style. If someone tries to punch you in a fight you can push the analog stick up or down to catch the punch to get yourself into an offensive clinch position and you can do the same with kicks to take the fight to the ground. You can also choose to shoot for a takedown and depending on the timing determines how successful it will be. Overall the standing game is very good, easy to pick up and has plenty of depth.
When the game goes to the ground thats when it gets interesting. The idea of the ground game is to try and improve your position so you'll be able to perform some brutal ground and pound to finish the fight. Transitioning to better positions is done by movements of the right analog stick and it works very well. Whether you're grappling style is wrestling, bjj or judo determines what special transitions your fighter has. Wrestlers are best on top of the opposition for getting to the best positions quickly. BJJ fighters are good at getting from a bad position to a very good one and judo fighters can perform a hip toss in a bad clinch position and can get from defending the full mount to standing easiest. You must block and reverse each others transitions in an effort to get the best position to ground and pound. It all works really well and the ground game combines with the standing game makes this a deep, complex and outstanding fighter. In fact if I'm judging this by the fighting system alone then this would be my favourite fighter ever.
Unfortunately I cant do that. Whilst the gameplay is amazing, the content here isn't the best it could have been. The classic fights mode is great. You've got 20 classic fights you get to recreate my finishing the fights in a certain way. When you do this you unlock a montage of the fight, which is pretty cool. You've also got a promo video for each fight. I love this mode but it doesn't last very long with only 20 fights. Other than this and exhibition the only main single player mode is career mode. Career mode is absolutely terrible. It's only available for your created fighter and you spend way more time in the menus than actually fighting. The stats your caf starts off with are way too low. You spend way too long in the menus grinding your stats and having to monitor your stamina all the time is tedious. Tedious, thats definitely the word that sums up the career mode. Some sort of tournament mode for the ufc fighters should have been in there. They could have even had a TUF mode for your created fighter before you actually fight in the UFC. Hopefully they'll do this for the next game.
This game also has online multiplayer, which should have been great. In fact it is great........sometimes. When there isn't any lag the online is brilliant. Unfortunately this doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it should. This isn't my connection. Every other game I play online is lag free. Plenty of people complain about this as well so it's definitely the game. Most of the time the lag doesn't make it unplayable, but it does throw off timing significantly, especially for reversals.
The presentation of the game is also fantastic. The graphics are great and the character models are very well done. You really feel like you are in the ufc. The flash knockouts are awesome, the blood and the hits are realistic and there are plenty of little details that makes it feel like the real ufc. The commentary plays a big part in this. Joe Rogan and Mike Goldbergs voices are used perfectly. The only thing missing is entrances for the fighters, but I can see why they didn't include them. The songs they would have to get would have been a liscensing nightmare.
At the end of the day, this UFC game does the sport justice. They made a superb fighter with very little wrong in the gameplay department and one that does something very new for the fighting genre. No fighting game has ever had a grappling system this deep and intuitive. Unfortunately the awful career mode and laggy online play make this fall just short of 9/10 for me. Fix these issues next year and you've got possibly the best fighting game ever.