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UFC RULES

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 40
Date: December 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is the best UFC game there is. The Playstation one was a joke, and the Dreamcast version was fun enough. But this one takes the cake. The best fighting game graphics I have ever seen, blood, sweat, it's all there in perfect detail. The fighting engine is amazing, and the extras like create-a-fighter are great!!! Besides high profile titles like Oddworld and Halo, this is the REASON to own an Xbox.

Very Disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: March 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Being a big fan of NHB fighting, with many Pride, KOTC, IFC, Battlecade etc. DVD's, I looked forward to this game with great anticipation, but was sadly dissapointed. The graphics that were highly rated in previews, seem pretty average compared to those of DoA3, but the camera angles are done well, and do not intefere with controlling the fighters (as in the terrible charachter control of Silent Hill 2).

My main gripes are :-

1) lack of a training option - this would have made the game much more fun to learn and play
2) A useless manual that gives very brief and bad instructions on moves and strikes.
3) lack of "retry" option - in exhibition matches after EVERY bout, you are returned to the menu, and must reselect your fighter. Come on guys, just a quick retry option would save having to wait so long between every bout.
4) The fight intros look nice to start with but quickly get boring when they all look the same. They can be bypassed with a couple of clicks, but once again slows the game and deters from the action. More variety would have kept this interesting.
5) The game was advertised as being "bloody", but even with the gore turned up to maximum, I have yet to see anything except a few splashes of blood on the canvas. What happened to the bruises and cuts people were expecting.
6) A lot of moves seem missing or very difficult to perform. Still not seen a headbutt or elbows, sidemount or half-guard, and even knees are very difficult to use (once again a good manual would have helped).
7) So far low leg strikes seem to be far too effective, and can end most fights very quickly. How realistic is this, remember the one and half hours it took Sakuraba to use this taking out Gracie?
8) It is very difficult to keep the bout going for long. It is true that real fights can end quickly, but backing away from a clinch is far too slow and difficult to perform, which means slowing down or "holding" to catch your breath as in most real bouts is almost impossible.
9) No demo mode - the game intro of real fight footage just starts playing again. If there was a reasonable demo, or even better random AI fights, this would at least allow players to see what moves are possible in the game.

Without the detailed instructions on moves, it almost turns into a random keyboard basher (ala DoA3 - but al least that game describes the moves for each key combination). Trying to find out what is possible becomes very frustrating, and because there is no training option, this has to be done against a live opponent, who'll submit or beat ...[you up] before you can test what a key combiantion actually does. People will say "there is the moves option on the menu", but this just tells you which keys can be pressed in each situation, it doesn't tell you what they do!

I know they are trying to make money, but at [this amount of money] per game, I do not think it is too much to ask for the full instructions with the game. Oh well, have ordered the Strategy Guide, and hope that the game gets better with it.

Awesome Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: February 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I just got this game the other night. The graphics are incredible. The gameplay is great. I still haven't mastered the submission moves and counters to submissions but it's a lot of fun. I can't wait to play against someone else. The game is very realistic, that's what I like the best. It's different than normal fighting games. All the characters have special moves but most are only documented by pressing pause in the game and then looking at a grid. The grid shows the buttons you have to hit. Some of the characters have documented moves in the book as well. I read another review that didn't like the part about how fast a match can end. Well if you're a UFC fan you know, it can turn at any moment. Someone can be winning and then get knocked the f*&# out.

Somewhere in the middle.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Being a big UFC fan, and having dabbled with martial arts and ground-fighting in the past, I was looking forward to this Xbox title above all others. The screeenshots looked great, and the official web page sent me into a frenzy. I never owned a Dreamcast, but I have friends who loved that version, and others that loathed the Playstation edition. I was hoping that the designers had ironed out any bugs from those installments and the Xbox would provide a better system to present the complexities of true NHB, mixed martial arts fighting.

Unfortunately, after the long wait, it could not live up to my high expectations. While the designers have done a great job making the fighters look like their real-world counterparts, they could have done a better job on the shading and textures. All the graphics look a little unfinished to me, and when the action gets fast, they can get really glitchy. I've noticed that when throwing punches and kicks, the fighters tend to flicker or blink. Once you notice it, it becomes hard to ignore and very irritating.

The gameplay is a little lopsided as well and it's far more strike-oriented than I'd like. In the arcade mode the first night I owned the game, I got 47 victories in a row using Tito Ortis and all I had to do was punch, punch, punch. I liked the ground-fighting a lot more (which isn't surprising for those who know me) but victory seems to have a lot more to do with chance than skill. While I really liked the realistic submissions and takedowns, most of the grappling is clunky and not very fluid at all. It seems that they have a ways to go before they can really simulate the feel and flow of this type of fighting.

It's not all bad though. I really liked the create your own fighter feature. I was disappointed that Royce Gracie wasn't in the game, so I made my own version of him. There are lots of different advantages you can use to specialize your fighter, and several different fighting styles. On the down side, I wanted to create Tank Abbot, but the game doesn't seem to offer a model for the less "defined" body types. Seems sort of unfair. I was hoping the unlocked characters would be actual fighters, but most of them turned out to be fictional characters more at home in a "Street Fighter" game than the UFC. The two exceptions are referee John McCarthy and, my personal favorite Ice T. Yes, that Ice T. I got a good chuckle out of that one.

So far the big saving grace of the game is playing with a friend. I played it for a couple of days alone and was very disappointed. When a buddy came over and we started playing it, I warmed up to the game considerably. The AI is nothing compared to a real person, which is true of most games. This game is a great distration and the quickness of the matches is nice when you don't have time to get into something long-term like NFL fever or Halo. It's a pleasant distraction.

I would suggest to anyone looking to buy this game: rent it first. It has it's high points, and big UFC fans will undoubtedly be interested, but the flaws are not easily ignored.

Fast and steep learning curve

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

It's a good game, specially if you play it with a friend, but the move list doesn't say what are you doing. For example, it tells you that standing up when moving forward you can press X and Y, or A and B, or B and Y, or X and A, or A, or B, or X, or Y, and so on, but it doesn't tell you what each keystroke does. You have to experiment a lot and start to figure it out and it takes time because it doesn't respond exactly the same, specially if your opponent is making his/her own moves.

The level of gore doesn't do a lot, just add some blood drops on the matt on its max level, but that's it.

The fights can be very very fast, specially if you and your opponent don't know exactly what moves are doing, and that will happen because you won't know wich combination of buttons to press in each situation you'll encounter. You will probably end up pressing a couple of combinations for every match and that's it, or maybe connect the other control and play against your self to try to figure out what does what and how each character respond to what you have found.

I really recommend that you find yourself a guide or something if you're planning to buy this title. Or rent it beforehand.

All that said, it's a fun game.

Great graphics, more of a fighting game than pro wrestling.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: February 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Welcome to the Octagon. This is an amazing mixed martial arts game (fighting / wrestling), where you can chose from 25 real athletes from the UFC roster (like Tito Ortiz, Josh Barnett, Dan Severn, Frank Shamrock, Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr). Each fighter has a different fighting style, such as Jujitsu, Judo, Karate, Pit Fighting, Freestyle Wrestling and Submission styles. So you can pick a fighter suited to your playing style, such as some fighters have devastating punches, kicks and combos, others have grapples, takedowns and submissions, and still others have enough endurance and stamina to keep coming back! This game is different from wrestling games and its more suited as a fighting game with its fast paced and quick matches of 3 rounds of 5 minutes each. The gameplay is easy and very smooth, as there are four buttons, Right Kick, Left Kick, Right Punch, Left Punch, then from there, you can press Right Kick and Right Punch simultaneously to do a shoot (dive in), and press Left Kick and Left Punch to do a takedown. With a shoot and a takedown you mount your opponent in true UFC style either to beat them up with the punch buttons or slap a quick submission on by pressing a combination of buttons. It really only takes 10 minutes to learn how to play. To block you merely hold back, and the game offers so many combinations of punches and kicks to create incredible combinations. The name of this game is, aggression, because the matches are so fast paced you can finish the matches in a matter of seconds with either a knockout or a submission. With submissions they happen very quick, so once you get a submission you immediately win, but expect to be countered or blocked from the submission! The fighters are huge on the screen, the graphics, blood and animation of this game are great, and you can even hear the crowd's comments, however these are all one on one fights, so players may get bored quickly with the lack of matches. This is more of a fighting game than a professional wrestling game.

Great game.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: July 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you like UFC buy it. If you want a good fighting game buy it. If you don't know what to buy, but it. It rocks but it is too easy, I unlocked all 7 hidden characters in a few hours.

Excellent game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: February 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have 3 friends who actually compete in the UFC, one is featured in the game.

I loved the dreamcast version, spent several hours a day playing it when I was laid off from work. Just my luck, this Xbox version comes out right after I got laid off again.

It's not quite as good as the dreamcast version, less features, for instance, no career mode. The arcade feature of the game is a blast and allows you to unlock extra characters, such as Ice-T a couple of chicks and this guy "Mask" who kicks mucho... The regualr UFC mode is exactly the same as the dreamcast version.

Graphics are good, not great. It's just a little better graphicswise than the dreamcast version. The sound is horrible but the action in the game makes up for it since you wont have much time to listen to the guys grunt. It's very playable with a large learning curve. They really [messed] up not including a tutorial for it. I've pretty much got the game whooped right now only because the moves and such are just like the dreamcast version.

If you like fighting games, they dont get much better than this. If you like the UFC this is a must have.

Ok but matches go to fast

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I am a owner of this game and i think it is the worst game i own. for one thing the matches are to fast all it takes is a couple hits and punches and there down. so if you want a game like this i recomend WWWF Raw or another fighting game.

Very realistic

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Great game. The graphics and gameplay are amazing. I would like to be able to adjust the damage so that multiplayer matches would last longer or to handicap better players, to make for more exciting matches. The control setup seems a little awkward in comparison to other fighting and wrestling games, but they're relatively simple, and can be mastered quickly. Overall this is an outstanding game.

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