EA Sports UFC Takes Next-Gen Fighting Seriously

MMA is a sport with a lot more to it than even a bulk of its fans realize. What the layman sees is two people savagely beating on one another, and sure, there’s a certain base-level barbaric thrill to that. But anyone who pays closer attention knows that it’s all a lot more complex, especially when the fight goes to the ground. Even my favorite MMA games over the years have failed to make the ground element anything more interesting than a collection of button-mashing mini-games, but after a recent hands-on, EA Sports UFC looks like it’s bucking the trend.

The striking game is still very much in line with the conventions established by the very first UFC games: each face button controls a limb, and pressing a direction on the analog stick modifies that limb’s attacks in different ways. The trickiest part about the stand-up fight in any of these games is that, in keeping with the sport, any punch can be the one that ends the match. That can be thrilling when you watch a fight, but it’s usually maddening when you’re on the receiving end of it in a video game.

Fortunately, a good deal of simulation is going into when and why these flash knockouts happen. Your fighter’s current stamina, the state of the body part struck, and whether or not they’re recovering from throwing an attack of their own will all factor heavily into the equation. So a well-placed strike can definitely rock someone, but in theory, it will be a reward for fighting smart rather than winning the lottery.

Rocked!

Once the fight goes to the mat though, UFC diverges pretty heavily from genre standards. Where other games rely on timed button-presses to counter grapple attempts or frantically mashing them to break submissions, things plays out more naturally and strategically here. Simply pressing and holding the analog stick in the direction you want to advance your position in begins the process, and your opponent has to hold R2 and the same direction to cut you off. How long you need to hold for before you make your transition is dependent on your fighter’s stats relative to your opponent. You can’t halt your opponent’s movements while advancing your own, so you’ll need to make fast, tough choices – and choosing wrong could land you in a compromised position from which you may never escape.

Submissions take this concept to a whole other level. In other MMA games, submissions happen pretty out of the blue. You press a command, your fighter tries to grab a limb, and either succeeds or fails right away depending on who mashed harder. If you’ve ever watched a real fight though, you know that submissions take time to initiate and sink in.

When you initiate one in UFC, a four-quadrant interface comes up, and the defending character can hold in a direction to try to escape in the corresponding way. The attacker needs to match what they do to temporarily halt their progress while looking for prompts to advance the submission with a specific input. If they succeed, any escape progress is reset, and they sink their hold in deeper.  This continues until the defender escapes or the attacker succeeds several times to complete the hold.

Nighty night Rashad.

It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple in practice and it opens up the door for a lot of mind games and frantic reactions. Each of the 29 submission holds are animated over five stages of progress, and the commentary escalates with them nicely, effectively recreating the tension leading up to a tap-out in a real-life fight. Fighter attributes play a major role here too, so no matter how good you are personally, a dedicated striker will always be at a major disadvantage against a seasoned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert. Suffice it to say, this is a lot more interesting than trying to mash your way to victory.

As a famous Gracie once said, the ground game is a sea, and while no video game can capture all the little ripples, UFC’s approximation of it is as thoughtful and intuitive of an attempt as I’ve seen. Hopefully the rest of it comes together just as well.

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's third newest recruit, and third biggest MOBA fan. He also doesn't suck at fighting games. To hear him nerd out about them and other games, follow him on Twitter.

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