REVIEW: EA Sports UFC 2

Update: The day one patch fixes a majority of the online issues. Our policy in accordance with Metacritic is to never change review scores no matter what unless we’ve been supplied with an incomplete game by accident as in the case of Yasai Ninja and The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone expansion. We updated the score for Yasai Ninja to reflect that the game was in an incomplete state when we reviewed it and we scrapped our The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone review the minute we were notified we were still playing a beta version. This policy is strictly enforced and no exceptions are made unless the review code we received isn’t for a finished game.

Introduction

UFC is one of the biggest sports in the world right now. I mean, who doesn’t want to watch sweaty men and women beat the life out of each other until one of them either falls down unconscious or forfeits? So, of course when THQ was closing down and they were selling their IP’s, EA jumped at the chance to have UFC under their EA Sports license. Thank God they did!

As someone who only casually plays sports games from time to time, UFC 2 is one of the most brilliant sports games I have ever played. It perfectly captures the essence of UFC. You feel every punch and kick thanks to screen shakes and controller vibrations. You see the blood splattering against the floor of the octagon. You hear the crowd and commentators dynamically reacting to the brutal hits. EA perfected their formula of putting you in the lives of some of these professional athletes with UFC. When I play Madden or FIFA, I feel like I am just playing a football or soccer video game. When I play UFC, I feel like I am a part of the fight.

Combat and Controls

In 2014, I played the first UFC game developed by EA and was in awe by how EA nailed the essence of UFC and MMA fighting. It was a great starting point for the future of UFC in video games. The only major complaint I had with the game was that the controls were a bit too complicated and clunky. It didn’t feel very accessible to me, and I know I am not alone in this as Jez stated it in our review for the first game two years ago. While UFC 2 hasn’t nailed the controls completely, I can tell they tried to address these complaints when developing the game.

UFC 2 feels much more fluid than the previous game. It isn’t massive changes, it’s minor tweaks that help improve the experience. For example, when in a clinch or on the ground with your opponent, there are now on screen prompts that tell you what buttons to press to adjust your position which eases the stress of being in a clinch. There is much less panicking and frustration when you’re pinned on the ground! I can’t tell you how many times my anger got the best of me in the first UFC because I was pinned on the ground and had no idea how to get out. The controls aren’t perfected, as I am still unsure how to prevent someone from overtaking me in a clinch even though the game tries to explain it.

I can tell EA truly tried to make the controls much easier to comprehend, and even though they didn’t quite make it as good as it could be, I applaud them for their efforts. I hope in the inevitable UFC 3 they can perfect the controls to make the best UFC fighting experience in any video game.

Career Mode

The career mode is back in UFC 2 and it’s still pretty simplified. In fact, it’s pretty much beat for beat the same career mode with small tweaks. Fight, do the same training exercises, fight, rinse and repeat. It felt pretty lazy and repetitive, I didn’t feel a whole lot of progression happening. You gain and lose fans, but it’s not like in NBA2K where you can see those fans talking about you on Twitter or some sort of social media. It’s just a number with no real meaning. While I can see and feel my character getting stronger, I don’t see any progression outside of that. It would be nice to see EA take notes from someone like 2K and introduce a more interesting story mode.

Ultimate Team

With UFC 2, EA decided to bring their trademarked Ultimate Team mode into the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I feel this both works perfectly in for a EA Sports title, but also feels strange when you think of this game as a UFC sim. Your character’s progression is now halted by opening card packs that cost in-game currency instead of using a gym to build their physique and power. It’s now all down to luck to make sure your character can hold their own in the octagon. You can’t actually train in a gym to build your character, no punching bags, no bodybuilding, no sparring. You must play and earn coins to buy packs that may or may not have cards designed for your weight class.

While I enjoy Ultimate Team in FIFA, I am not sure it works well in UFC. You’re only using one fighter at a time in UFC, in FIFA if your player isn’t working out so well you can just switch to another player somewhere on the field or substitute him. You’re building a team in FIFA. You’re building a singular person in UFC. While you can switch out your fighter in-between matches, it just doesn’t work for UFC in my opinion. I think changes can be made to make this work however. Keep it like the career mode, you can train a few times in-between fights to build your character but also mix in elements of Ultimate Team and keep the card packs so your characters chances of winning aren’t completely based on getting stuff out of card packs.

I still enjoy Ultimate Team even though I would like to see change. It’s almost like you’re going into each fight with a bet. If you win, you’ll get a nice payout to buy those heavenly packs that make you feel like you have some sort of gambling addiction. If online players are giving you too much trouble, you can switch to just fighting CPUs that borrow player character created models. Once you’ve won a few CPU matches, bought some packs and gotten your character to a more even playing field with the others you can jump back into multiplayer matches and test your might (Wait, that’s a different fighting game isn’t it?).

Multiplayer

The online portion of UFC 2 can be played both in Ultimate Team with the character you’re building or in standard fight modes with fighters from all around the UFC including both men and women. Fight with fighting legends like Bruce Lee and Mike Tyson or fight with the massive stars of the current UFC like Ronda Rousey and Jon Jones. There’s nothing holding you back in UFC 2’s standard online experience, except for the netcode (we’ll come back to this in a bit). There’s nothing more satisfying than unleashing some sort of monster on your opponent and landing all of those brutal strikes to see the blood fling out of your foe’s face.

As sadistic as that may make me sound, it’s much more satisfying to take down another person than just a standard CPU. The challenge, the build-up and the tension all add to how amazing it feels when you give that killing blow. I have had some of the most exhilarating things happen in UFC 2’s online mode. The last 30 seconds of the final round are counting down. I know if I don’t make the knock-out or submission, my foe will win by default. My eye is almost swollen shut, ribs bruised, blood all over my back from rolling around on the sweat and blood stained floor of the octagon. I can’t lose this fight after getting this far. I decide if I don’t take this opportunity, I’ll lose anyways. After spending most of the round cowering from my very large and intimidating opponent, I charge him with full force, swinging once with a left hook and missing to fake him out. I put my right leg right into his abs, left leg to the side of his head, right hand to his abs, and finally ending on a Superman punch into his face which knocks him on his back. I lunge into my downed, now not intimidating opponent and plunge my fist deep into his face. Without stopping, I drill my elbows 2-3 times into my enemy until he is out cold and I am crowned the winner of the match. I drop my controller and hold my arms in the air, actually feeling like I just mercilessly beat someone unconscious when in reality I was just pushing buttons on my controller. It’s much more satisfying then beating up the CPU. If it weren’t for some technical issues holding it back, this would be a masterpiece of a multiplayer mode.

Technical Analysis

UFC 2 is almost a technical marvel, keyword “almost”. Every character model looks like a real person, your character and surrounding dynamically change throughout the fight, and almost every fight plays out differently thanks to unique animations and great AI. The game is absolutely gorgeous to look at, sometimes the game has short cutscenes that blend real fights and gameplay together and I can barely tell the difference. It’s one of the best looking games of this generation that isn’t platform exclusive. Sometimes I felt EA got a bit lazy, however. The animation (singular, just one animation) for the octagon girls that hold up the cards with the round number in between rounds is the exact same as the first UFC game, there is no change at all. Put them side by side and you can tell it’s literally copy and paste. It’s little things like this that are very frustrating to see, it’s laziness and there is no excuse for it.

The game’s online suffers tremendously from all sorts of technical issues that are actually game breaking. There were times I actually lost fights because the game started to lag out of nowhere! One time, a fight actually completely restarted mid-match for no reason. I am not sure how it happened or what triggered it but in that same fight the match ended with the clock stuck on 30 seconds left and my opponent lying on top of me sweating and looking into my eyes for more than a minute with neither of us able to move. Needless to say it was incredibly weird, awkward and hilarious but we both had to quit the fight because the match wouldn’t end. If it wasn’t for this, I would give this game a much higher score but it made the online incredibly frustrating to play because I would lose fights due to the game’s technical faults.

Summary

Even though UFC 2 suffers from its issues, it’s still an incredible game that builds off of a solid foundation that was presented in its predecessor. UFC 2 offers incredible, visceral combat that makes you feel like you’re truly in the octagon and stunning visuals that make it an experience like no other. It’s a very immersive title with room for improvement, but it’s still incredibly fun and a must play for fans of UFC or the fighting game genre.

With UFC 3 most likely coming down the pipeline in the next few years, I think they will finally perfect the formula they have created. I must say though, EA is treading dangerous waters by cutting corners and acting lazy. I’m willing to let it slide this time as it’s fairly minor right now, but next time I don’t think many people will be as forgiving. Especially if they decide to get lazy with much more than just animations of the octagon girls and aspects of the career mode.