It feels like THQ worked so hard to make the game realistic, they forgot to make it fun. (Career mode focused review)
The graphics in Undisputed 2010 are top notch. Fighter likenesses are vastly improved over last years game, and while some strikes and animations look broken, overall the game engine does a good job putting on a realistic MMA match.
The gameplay is only slightly improved over last years game. While most hardcore gamers like myself were hoping for a serious overhaul, we only received a few slight tweaks to the core gameplay, with most of the changes coming in the form of superficial and mainly useless "tweaks". Cage physics have been integrated into the game, the clinching has been pretty much revamped (although not necessarily improved), and dozens upon dozens of new strikes have been added to try to increase fighter diversity.
Cage physics are a great addition. Pushing your opponent up against the cage with the Muay Thai clinch and wrecking him with vicious knees to the head is extremely effective and satisfying. You can now also take guys down against the cage, which is hugely useful for wrestlers and other grapplers.
The clinch has become more of a two sided battle, instead of last years game where it was one man trying to counter while his opponent tried to knee or uppercut him in the face. However now that they have changed the controls to their "transition system" (which typically ends up with players spinning the right analog stick wildly) you end up having to frantically switch between blocking transitions and striking as, once again (in the clinch and the ground game) your opponent can simply spam transitions over and over, even after their stamina is depleted.
The striking controls are once again very easy to pick up, and beginners will want to stay on the feet for the most part. Strikes are controlled with the buttons and modified with the left bumper and left trigger. Once again, blocking is controlled by the right bumper and the right trigger. However strikes are plagued once again by the lack of power. Especially at lightweight, your opponent will easily absorb over 10 consecutive power strikes to the head (kicks or punches) before they get rocked. There is basically no such thing as a flash KO in this game. In addition to this, striking combinations have been basically removed in this years game. While last 2009 allowed the player to set up two, three, four, and five strike combinations with a jab or even a leg kick, 2010 only allows for only two strike combinations, taking a huge amount of the skill and excitement from the striking.
That's where the easiness ends. If you've never played the game, you'll need to go to a months worth of night classes at your local Gamestop in order to figure out the ground game. Transitions are executed by "swinging" the right analog stick. Once in postured up positions, you have to then switch to the left analog stick to posture up to land powerful strikes while still having to hold the right analog stick to block your opponent from moving. Fighting against a human however, this is damn near impossible, because fighters can spam transitions even after they have completely depleted their stamina (which recovers ridiculously fast). Once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly find you need an extra set of thumbs in order to effectively attack and defend on the mat. Submissions are executed by pressing R3 (or clicking down on the right analog stick). Once a submission is initiated (they cannot be blocked by the way) you...get this...rotate the right analog stick like a madman to defend and attack with submissions. THQ affectionately calls this "The Shine System" probably because it leaves you with blisters all over your palms. The very nature of the system will end up damaging your analog sticks and forcing you to buy new controllers, as the sticks will eventually no longer return to center.
The career mode was majorly revamped over last years game, but was not really improved. Several features like "stat decay" make the career mode a total pain to play. If you are attempting to train up a stat, and forget it about it for a few weeks while you train up your attributes, it will rapidly decay down at an insane pace until you lose all your hard work. You will reach milestone points with your stats at which they cannot decay past the milestone, however the last milestone is at 70, and stats can go up to 100. This paired with the fact that improving your stats from 70-100 is ridiculously expensive (it takes increasingly more sparring points to improve them as you get up to the higher numbers) it is literally impossible to get more than 2-3 stats above 70, let alone even close to 100.
The camp invite feature seems pretty cool at first. However you will find out quickly that most camps have many of the same moves, and there is an absolutely unreasonable amount of them to sort through. Some moves are only available at one camp, however unless you keep close track, you will usually end up searching for half an hour through the 30 different camps trying to find it. You will travel around to these different camps and learn different techniques, ranging from strikes to transitions and submissions by completing certain tasks in a sparring like setting. Some of these tasks are unbelievably frustrating. If you want to learn a new clinch strike, the game will ask you to land a certain amount of strikes from the clinch in order to complete the task and gain the move. Upon starting the task your "training partner" will immediately take you down and hold you there for the entire duration of the exercise, allowing you to score no points and waste your week of training. There are only a total of six exercises as well, none of which are any fun, and all of which get extremely repetitive almost immediately. Not only this, but you will soon realize that all the moves are basically the same strikes with different animations. Most do the same amount of damage and some are just a bit more flashy than others (like the jumping switch kick, which is extremely hard to land, and lands with as much power as a normal head kick, which is much faster).
Training your core attributes of strength, speed, and cardio are the same as last years game, however these stats also decay if you leave them alone, forcing you to constantly retrain them once you max them out. Many times trying to balance between training your attributes and your stats is impossible. In order to be successful you will have to leave one of the two at the highest milestones (which is 70 for attributes as well) while you train the others up, but once you have reached the maximum milestones in both, you have to make a choice between the two, because keeping both up is simply not an option given your time constraints.
Sparring is just as mundane and repetitive as last years career mode. Luckily the ability to earn far more points during the sparring sessions makes it much easier. You can also save up as many points as you want and then wait until the end of career mode to add them. This allows you to create a fighter who is truly elite without having to worry about stat decay. However don't worry about these improvements, THQ came to the rescue to ruin them for us. With the most recent patch (which comes with a variety of much needed fixes for flaws, like the impossible CPU submission difficulty) they limited the amount of sparring points you can get to 50 (it was like 250 before), which is not nearly enough. This low number can also be achieved at the beginning of the career mode, rendering all of the sparring upgrades you receive throughout the career completely useless. It makes you truly wonder if there are nine year old kids running things over at this gaming company, but then you remember even nine year old kids aren't this stupid. This new "feature" will now force you to participate in at least 200 boring sparring sessions over your career if you want to create a good fighter. Sparring sessions are also designed to give the most points to you if you take down your opponent and punch them as many times as you can before time expires. Meaning you will go for the take down and then press one button over and over while occasionally blocking transitions with the right analog stick. Did I mention you will have to do this 200 times?
Once again this year, career mode suffers horribly once you win the championship belt, as they continue to match you up with the same 3-4 fighters for the rest of your career. They keep it semi fresh by allowing you to switch weight classes at some point, however you end up fighting the same 3-4 opponents in the other weight class as well. There is also a glitch that hasn't been fixed where the announcer messes up what weight you are when you take your fighter to exhibition mode. Also, once your fighter gets good enough, with the predictable AI, the last 1/4th of career mode becomes far too easy, even on the highest difficulty.
Posterboy, President of the UFC, and major Cry Baby Dana White has also had an animated version of himself (with his voice obviously) plastered all over career mode, where he spews cliche and annoying lines like "That's right *female dogs* the best fighters ALWAYS fight in the UFC." Intentionally and directly slandering fighters who do not fight for the organization.
As far as the AI, it is also awful. Opponents make the same stupid mistakes over and over which are far too easy to exploit (like throwing a fake, swaying, and then counter punching). They will fall for this trick over and over again until you KO them, which takes all the fun and challenge out of every match. Before the patch, it was not only impossible to submit the CPU, but they would submit you at will no matter where either of your stamina bars were at. After the patch, it was still basically impossible to submit the AI, however you can no longer be submitted immediately like before. This essentially turns this MMA game into a kickboxing game when you play against the computer.
Online matches are laggy over 50% of the time. In a game that is all about timing and precision, lag is massively detrimental to the fun and functionality, making online play useless and frustrating over 50% of the time. Luckily playing with a friend sitting next to you is lag free, and therefore still enjoyable.
Features like Title Mode and Title Defense mode are good fun, the first time you play through. The achievements aren't even interesting to unlock, and after one play through it's unlikely you'll want to play through again.
Overall, this game suffers from amazingly obvious design flaws which leave you scratching your head as to how a professional game company could have missed them. It has horribly uncreative and underdeveloped controls. And the replay value is simply non existent. Do yourself a favor and save your money, because unless you have someone you can play it with every time you pop it in, it will be sitting in the box collecting dust like my copy.