Read this if you consider buying the game. It brings great ideas but it seems unfinished.
As a huge fan of MMA, I had to have both UFC Undisputed 2010 and EA MMA this year. Since when EA MMA gameplay videos were revealed, it was impossible not to think it would be definitely the best game. The graphics were great and the strikes seemed more organic and fluid, clinch had better animations than Undisputed, etc.
Also, if you have already played Fight Night Round 4 from EA Games, you would like to play with these controls in MMA. This fighting controls were simply perfect in Fight Night Round 4, so I was expecting a perfect combat system in EA MMA too. What was even more impressive about the game is that you could choose between fighting rules from different countries and leagues.
I bought both EA MMA and UFC Undisputed 2010 and played each one of them a long time before making this review and having opinions about them. I also watch MMA (not only UFC, but other leagues too), fight Tae Kwon Do and already practiced Jiu-Jitsu for one year, so I intend to do make the best comparison that I can between the 2 games and the reality. Here it is:
PRESENTATION:
EA MMA was far less than I expected from the game. First of all, the presentation is poor, very poor, and that is one of the main problems of the game. It has just a few game modes and there are almost no extras. In UFC Undisputed 2010 you have lots of game modes, such as title defense, playing in historical fights trying to rewrite the history and other ones. There also remarkable UFC fights completely in video, and that's just great.
The fighter entrance is a great idea and a great addition in EA MMA, since it lacks in Undisputed and is one of the most exciting parts of the fights. The problem is that the entrances are short and incomplete, it ends before the fighter approaches from the arena. After the short entrance, the fighters simply appear in each corner and the fight starts. There is no talk between the team and the fighter in the corner before the fight, as in UFC 2010 that has this feature good represented.
During the fight in EA MMA, the referee do almost nothing, doesn't even move, even when you are stomping and soccer kicking the opponent's face before the TKO. The referee just appears in an animation after the TKO, it's like you could stomp or punch the other fighter's face forever. On the other hand, in Undisputed you see more participation from the referee stoping you in TKOs, during the ground and the clinch and the referee moves frequently to get the best view of the fight, just as in real life.
Commentary in EA MMA is boring as well, while in UFC it's superb.
When you fight in the career mode from EA MMA in leagues such as vale-tudo championships in Brasil or in Japan's event "Mystic", you don't get the spirit from this different events or countries. I mean, brazilian vale-tudo events doesn't look like that old fights from IVC, where there were just a few people watching, low budget, poor arenas and etc., and the fights in Japan doesn't have the real excitement of the Pride FC fights. Only the Strikeforce event seems like the real one, captures the real atmosphere. In UFC Undisputed 2010, it's incredible and stunning how the UFC atmosphere is perfectly recreated. Everything is there like the real broadcastings, it really gets the feeling from it.
COMBAT SYSTEM:
If you have already played EA's Fight Night series, you already know how to strike in EA MMA. The controls are very intuitive, their are easy to learn and it's easy to execute the moves you want. In Undisputed the controls are complicated, especially in the clinch or in the ground game. While in EA MMA you have a good manual and good tutorials to show you how to play, tutorials and the manual from Undisputed can't teach you properly, you have to learn really how to do some moves by practicing in the game or asking to a friend.
The biggest problem in EA MMA, in my opinion, is that it lacks a lot of moves and positions. The strikes are very limited , it gets repetitive in 30 minutes of gameplay. All the fighters punches' and kicks' style are the same. Kicks and punches from Andrei Arlovski and from Alistair Overeem look exactly the same. And there are simple moves that are treated as special moves, like a kimura or a katagatame, and that's absurd. There are also only a few clinch and ground positions in the game. In Undisputed 2010 there a lot of moves, the possibilities of strategy in the game are infinite. The one and only problem in Undisputed standind strikes is when you are in close range with the other fighter, when your character just keep giving elbow strikes. This doesn't happen frequently in real life and it cuts fast, giving a lot of damage quickly.
Standing strikes in EA MMA also doesn't seem like they are beeing throwed against a pro-mma fighter. Kicks, for example, seem like their are beeing demonstrated rather than used to knock down an opponent. Not even in the Olympic Tae Kwon Do you see such perfect roundhouse kicks, with this perfect motion. The gap is huge between Cung Lee's high kick in EA MMA and Cro Cop's high kick in UFC Undisputed 2010. In Undisputed, punches and kicks look like pro-fighters' moves.
Combat in EA MMA is good, it has some great ideas, but it's not accurate. The stamina administration and that "strike to pass, pass to strike" are great ideas, for example. The problem is that stamina depletes too fast, even in the beginning of the fight. Also, when you are in the ground or in the clinch, when your opponent blocks a strike, you lose imediatly a great amount of stamina, and that doesn't make sense. In Undisputed, you also has the same stamina system, but the problem is that it recovers too fast, so it's way too easy to administrate your stamina, what isn't accurate too, but better than in EA's game.
The stamina and head, body and legs display in EA MMA makes the fights predictable, you know how is it going to end if you want. The coolest thing in UFC 2010 is that it's totally unpredictable. Your opponent can dominate you in the first 2 rounds, but a solid shot to his head can turn everything around.
Ground fighting in EA MMA is also inaccurate. It's very easy to pass, and it always end up in a non realistic ground fight. Also, changing positions in the ground doesn't depends this much on stamina as it's portrayed in the game, but also depends on how you lock the other fighter, not allowing him to pass. It's annoying how easy it's to escape a full mount. This is much more realistic in UFC Undisputed 2010.
Submission and choke system in both games isn't very good. Either in EA MMA or in Undisputed 2010 it's hard to escape from a submission or a choke performed by a BJJ fighter, even when you have full stamina and it's a simple move such as an arm-bar.
The characters move lightning fast around the arena in EA MMA, in an inaccurate speed.
Leg and body strikes in EA MMA, in counterpart, have very accurate effects. How body hits deplenish your stamina and how leg strikes make you move slowly is superb, and it opens up good strategies for the players. You also can do this in UFC Undisputed 2010, but, as the stamina bar recovers too fast, you always end up knocking down your opponent with body hits before he has a great stamina loss. Leg strikes in UFC 2010 to make your opponent slowly also seem like a stupid strategy, since the fighters whose legs were hit recover the movement speed faster than it would in real life.
Other cool thing about EA MMA is the possibility to choose between the different rules. I think every real fan of the sport prefered the Pride FC rules over the UFC ones, such as soccer kicks, head stomps and knee to the head allowed on the ground. The problem is that it doesn't make sense to have these rules if you can't use soccer kicks and stomps during the fight, but only during the moment before TKO. Soccer kicks and head stomps are only effective if you can deliver them when you are standing and your opponent is in the ground waiting for you to go down.
When I talk about EA MMA and UFC Undisputed 2010 I like to say that fights in UFC Undisputed actually resemble real fights and real strategies. When you watch the replays in UFC Undisputed it's easy to imagine it's a real fight, it seems more natural and organic, though the animations look better in EA's game. In EA MMA there are real fights strategies, but the fights don't resemble a real one.
ENGINE:
As in Fight Night, the engine in EA MMA is pretty solid, the reactions to the strikes are beautiful, much more than in Undisputed 2010. But both games have flaws in this item. I just think that in EA MMA it's too easy sometimes to do perfectly timed strikes that make your opponent lose his balance, and in Undisputed 2010 it's too hard to do that sometimes. In EA MMA you see overreactions to punches and kicks more often than in real life, in almost every strike. In Undisputed 2010 it's the oposite: Despite the reactions, direct well timed punches to the opponent's face, even when he is not blocking, seem not to do the damage it would do in real life, since the characters appear to feel them like a jab in almost everytime.
The blood spilling in EA MMA is also beautiful and incredible. The opponent's blood can drop to your body in a convincing and incredible way. There are bloody fights in the game, sometimes you end matches covered in the opponent's blood, and that looks awesome. Blood is realistic in Undisputed 2010, but it isn't spilled in a convincing way on the ground or in the opponent's body. The damage in fighters bodies is convincing and extremely realistic in both games.
The camera in EA MMA could be closer to the fighters, allowing the players to see better the damage to characters, apart from that, there isn't much to complain about it.
ROSTER:
Well, EA MMA doesn't have a great roster. It is disappointing that there are more Strikeforce fighters than fighters from other leagues, so good and memorable fighters are out of the game. UFC Undisputed 2010 roster has a large number of fighters and more remarkable ones. The only wheight class in EA MMA that has many remarkable fighters is the heavywheight division, with Overeem, Fedor, Randy Couture, Andrei Arlovski, FabrÃcio Werdum and etc. The other divisions have only few superb fighters. But that's not a big problem, since you can download other famous fighters in Fighter Share from EA MMA, since as Wanderlei "the axe murderer" Silva, Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar, Frank Mir and etc.
CAREER MODE AND CREATE A FIGHTER:
Career mode in both games isn't the funniest game mode, but it's easily better in EA MMA. The best thing about the career mode in EA MMA is the possibility to move to other mma events, what adds a replay factor to the career mode. Learning special moves is also cool, you have to acomplish a task to acquire the move, and the system works in an intelligent way: if you chose to be a kickboxer when creating a fighter, your standing strikes skills makes it easier to acomplish the task to learn the spinning kick or the superman punch (witch are landing combos on a fighter or knocking him under 30 seconds) and the oposite when trying to learn a triangle. In UFC Undisputed 2010 the career mode is cool when you're playing it for the first minutes, having to answer the post-fight interviews and trying to predict fights results, but it gets repetitive and boring before you can reach the UFC title. Stat decay in Undisputed career mode is the worst thing in the whole game.
Creating a fighter in both games is terrible. While it's hard as hell to create a real fighter in Undisputed, there are only 4 body types, around 15 faces and 15
hair options in EA MMA. At least, the photo game face system in EA MMA allows you to create real fighters easier than in Undisputed, and the fighter share option in Online mode allows you to download created fighters from other players. There are created fighters like Lyoto "The Dragon" Machida, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Anderson "The Spider" Silva and others that are exactly like the real fighters.
ONLINE:
I think there's no need to talk to much about this: EA MMA's online mode is superb, while UFC Undisputed 2010 online mode is poor with massive latency.
CONCLUSION:
The debut from EA MMA is good because the competition between it and UFC Undisputed is great for the gamers, since it forces the mma games to evolve. EA MMA was a good game, but the poor presentation and all the flaws in the combat system doesn't allow the game to be a great MMA game. UFC Undisputed is still the most realistic and the best experience/atmosphere from mma that you can have in a game, by far.