THQ learns nothing from previous installments and fails miserably once again.
So you can see why I was so resistant to purchase this one. However initial reviews seemed very positive. Most people cited it as a huge improvement over the previous game, with much smoother striking (which was by far the worst part of the previous games, especially 2010), and improved grappling. Being a huge MMA and video game fan, I caved and bought it for $60 at Gamestop.
I immediately embarked on a career mode, since that is my favorite part to any sports game. My first career mode fighter was a heavyweight wrestler, wanting to try out the new Ground and Pound system. It was somewhat fun at first, especially on the lower difficulties, to pin my opponents against the fence and then rain down heavy bombs on them until they were KO'ed. However that got old once the game became too easy. I found as soon as I cranked up the difficulty, executing ground attacks on the computer was pretty much impossible. They would escape immediately as soon as I tried to do anything besides lay on top of them and transition block. On the hardest difficulty I found I would either get bucked off as soon as I tried to strike, or reversed as soon as I tried to transition. Giving me the strong sense the AI knew what I was trying to do before I did.
The striking is, I am sad to say, hardly improved whatsoever. The biggest flaw both 2010 and the original suffered from is what I like to call the "health bar" system. Unlike real MMA, where KO's can occur at any moment, Undisputed still requires you to continuously hit your opponent in the head dozens of times before you get a KO. In reality, knockouts come from a single (or a few) strong strikes. They are not the result of an accumulation of damage as this game would have you believe. Especially with the new damage indicators, which show how much damage has been incurred to each section of yours and your opponents body (arms, legs, head, torso). A situation often arises in each match where you or your opponent are a punch or two away from being knocked out, despite how strong or effective the strike may be. This is simply not realistic, and more like a game of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat than Mixed Martial Arts.
The combination striking has improved somewhat, however that is not saying much since it was completely nonexistent in 2010. It still does not feel like throwing combinations. It simply feels like you are throwing one strike after another, rock em sock em robot style.
Strikes are also not very satisfying. They, quite simply, do not feel like they connect with much impact. This may be a psychological result of being aware that it is going to take me 25 wild haymakers to my opponents dome piece with my yolked out heavyweight boxer before he shows any signs of brain trauma. However strikes that land simply do not seem to have that "umph" factor. I was hoping Undisputed would adopt some of EA MMA's striking mechanics, since I felt they were far superior. However it seems they decided to stick with the robotic striking engine used in the previous two games, plus the frustratingly unrealistic "health bar" system.
Now for some positives. The ground game has been improved somewhat from the previous games. Swaying is now available on the ground, which is a fantastic feature missing from the previous two games and EA MMA. Especially during situations where an opponent is trying to TKO you, it is extremely satisfying to recover after successfully swaying out of the way of their strikes. This one simple addition makes the ground game in Undisputed much deeper.
Transitions are still annoying. However they did include an "amateur setting" this year. Which allows you to make transitions with a simple flick of the stick, rather than the clunky rotation system. In my opinion, this is how it should be, and with no "expert control" whatosever. The minor and major transition system is flawed and frustrating and offers no depth or strategic advantages gameplay wise. It only complicates the game and makes it so new players are unable to pick it up and play with you without you refusing to fight on the ground.
The submission system has been revamped from the "shine" system, or as I liked to call it, the "thanks for breaking my analog stick" system. However the replacement is not very exciting or creative. A pretty significant improvement over the previous system (which isn't saying much), this new system requires you to have to look away from the action and focus on an unrelated mini game. I thought EA MMA had a great, simple submission system, and once again I was hoping Undisputed would adopt something similar. While they did sort of take the idea behind the choke system in EA MMA, they butchered it to the point where it feels like you are no longer playing an MMA game when a submission is initiated, and instead are all of a sudden playing a mutated version of pong.
Lastly, game play modes. Pride mode is a decent addition, however head stomps and soccer kicks are hard to pull off, especially in higher difficulty modes. Other than that the only changes are cinematic. I have to say however that I love the screaming Pride announcer and the announcing team of Quadros and Rutten.
Title mode and title defense mode are back, and still pretty boring. I do like the addition of tournament mode, which is especially great for playing with friends, or even by yourself.
Career mode has unfortunately very little replay value. This is once again a place where I was hoping Undisputed would adopt and improve on some of EA MMA's ideas (in which, after you mastered a training exercise, you did not have to play it again and could simply simulate the results). However, once again, Undisputed forces you to play through tedious and boring training exercises before every single fight if you want the best results from the training. While the training exercises are FAR improved from last years "sparring" sessions, which basically involved nothing more than you trying to pitter patter your sparring partner as much as possible. There are now training exercises that involve actually practicing the different aspects of fighting (hitting a heavy bag, grappling transitions, take down defense, etc). However none of them are particularly fun, which means being forced to play them over and over again ruins career mode and takes the fun out of the fights. The fight camps have been improved from last year, however you are locked into a camp after a certain amount of time, and some moves (like the crucifix position), are simply unavailable to learn to career fighters at any camp. They did however remove the absolutely atrocious feature of stat decay from the previous game, which was a design flaw I can only guess was suggested by a retarded monkey (who is probably also the president of THQ).
Overall, there was so much room to improve over 2010, that it is very disappointing to see that THQ did not do a better job than they did. I am personally glad to see this game flop, as I am highly looking forward to EA making the next UFC game.
I am still annoyed however that when I went to sell this game back to Gamestop, three weeks after I bought it, I was offered $14 for it. I guess they must have played it too.