UFC: Undisputed 3 – A Division of its Own

If I had to sum up my review of UFC: Undisputed 3 in three words, they would be fluid, immersive, organic and bad ass. Five, whatever. The newest installment of the UFC Undisputed franchise is head and shoulders above it’s predecessors.

Undisputed is still filled with a number of modes, stacked with an enormous roster of more than 150 fighters and even including the newest weight classes added to the UFC, featherweight and bantamweight. Additionally, on top of all this content is the super robust career mode, along with the option to fight in the legendary Pride organization.

The combat has been amplified immensely in terms of the depth, fluidity, realism and most importantly enjoyment. No more does your fighter straighten up and raise his hand, even before your opponent has hit the floor after being knocked out. The knockouts in the previous installments became stale after watching your opponent go down exactly the same way, every time. Now, there are moments where you clip your opponents chin just enough to buckle their legs, but not completely take them out. Watching as your fighter follows your opponent to the floor seamlessly, is fantastic. Giving you a visual feast, keeping you in the moment, and all the while maintaining the action at an exciting pace. The speed of the striking has been increased allowing for more in-depth combinations. Also the variety of strikes has been immensely increased, again providing a more robust and in-depth striking system. UFC: Undisputed is easily the champ when compared to any other realistic fighting game out there.

The submission system has also been altered. The days of circling your stick in a frantic pace with no indication of how you’re doing are gone. Thank goodness. Now when a submission is attempted an octagon appears on the screen. Inside of the octagon appears a red or blue bar with one color representing a players. Also there’s a red and blue bar outside of the octagon representing the other player. If you’re attempting the submission your bar will be on the outside. Your goal is to keep your opponents bar covered with your own. Keep it covered long enough and the submission attempt will succeed. Also to point out, your bar size increases with your fighter’s level of technique in submissions.

Last but not least sways have been added. Giving you the ability to easily dodge the barrage an opponent will launch at you. Transitioning in ground battles and clinch grappling is superb. I cannot lavish Yuke’s Co with positive enough comments on how this game handles. Every aspect of the combat is almost flawless.

From the combat we’ll move to everyone’s favorite (well my favorite, I don’t care what your favorite is) mode, career mode. You still have hundreds of options when creating your own fighter for career mode. Added this time around is the fact that you can take a real fighter into career mode. Choose Frank Mir and take him from the humble beginnings of his career all the way to UFC Heavyweight Champion. I prefer the latter though. This time around there will be three organizations you can become champion of, WFA, Pride and UFC of course.

The training of your fighter is probably my biggest gripe with this game. Now your base stats (cardio, strength, speed, etc) are tied to your skills (striking, takedowns, submissions.) Which seemed great at first. In the previous Undisputed game, your skills would decrease from them not being trained, fine. Now your skills decrease depending on what you train. Train in stand up and your submission skills fall. Train in submissions and your stand up falls. Pretty damn counter intuitive to becoming a “well-rounded fighter” if you ask me.

How you train your fighter has been changed as well. Now with training exercises you’re given more of a mini game. Which is good and bad. Some of these mini games actually help you learn to control your fighter better which I think is the whole point. Others don’t, like the wheel lift, doesn’t teach you anything. I already know how to transition, so this mini game of using your transitions to pick a side of the wheel and lift, didn’t improve me. I may just be nitpicking, but I didn’t enjoy most of the training exercises.

The camps are back as well. Not as many camps to choose from, but now the camps resemble the real life camps. Also added is the chance to permanently join a camp. The head coach will accompany you to your fights and learning new moves will have you training with actual members of that fight camp.

In an effort to keep this review from going too long, I’ll jump to the last addition I’d like to point out. PRIDE. I’m sure you already know the Pride organization is here. During your career mode you’ll be given chances to enter into a tournament in Pride. You’ll be able to customize your walk-in from the lighting effect to your entrance music. You’re even greeted with the new rule set. Soccer kicks to the face anyone?

If you’re fan of MMA fighting games, this one is a no brainer. UFC: Undisputed 3 far surpasses any competitor. A $60 well spent, without a doubt.