Mini Review – EA MMA

Mixed Martial Arts Simulation

At least we’ve got Randy.

Lurk

Being a fan of mixed martial arts in general, I did enjoy the first UFC Unleashed game, but wasn’t too fussed about the second one. So when I managed to pick up EA MMA for twelve quid brand new, I thought I should give it a shot. For a start the majority of the character models are pretty good, even if they do look slightly cartoony, though during the story mode you only ever face real fighters near the end of your career. The roster of fighters is fairly good, though a lot of them will only be known by knowledgable MMA fans, with the biggest names in the game being Randy Couture, Fedor Emelianenko, Ken and Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten.

You break my record... like I break you! Like I break your friend!

The story mode involves you creating a fighter, you can do this by making a fighter form different face parts or use a camera and the EA Game Face. The game face surprised me because it does actually look like me, but only if I had been involved in some horrible industrial accident with a vice. The training you do to improve your fighter’s stats are a huge improvement over UFC Unleashed, with you actually doing what you are supposed to do. So improving your submissions means actually attempting the submission on an AI controlled opponent. Same goes for your punching and kicking, either doing combos against an AI or a punch bag.

The punches and kicks are all controlled by using the right stick, which is very smooth and works well for the most part. The stamina bar means you can’t just spam attacks, but for some reason it seems that the AI’s stamina never really goes down at all. Whilst your own stamina goes down fairly quickly after just a few punches or kicks and it goes down very quickly whenever a fight goe to the ground. This is where the real downfall of the game comes from, in the UFC games moving from one position to another is controlled by moving the right stick. Since in this game the right stick is for attacks you just use the A button to move into the next position and the B button to block you opponent from moving.

The submission system is better than UFC Undisputed’s as well with chokes involving you moving the right stick around to find the sweet spot whih keeps moving. Sort of like the mechanic used in many games fro lock picking. Joint locks like armbars or leg locks are completed by bashing the X button, except you don’t want to use up all your stamina. So you have to bash the button give it half a second and bash it agin, like a fighter would get an arm into position, hold it then crank it some more. I’ve attempted to play online, but have personally found it to be rather spotty with only being able to get into 4 matches total all of which were very laggy. Overall whilst I found the stand up fighting to be very competent, it goes downhill rapidly when it comes to the ground game. I would give this a reccomendation if you pick this game up sub fifteen pounds, though be aware you will need to buy access to get online if you pick up a second hand copy.

6/10