Fair enough. Not liking it then?
At the minute, no. As someone who has followed the sport for 13-14 years now, it’s a far cry from what I would like it to entail. I’ve seen you in the MMA thread, so I would guess you’re more than a casual fan and are more in tune with the myriad of nuances within MMA. This iteration does a spectacular job of eliminating nuance and turning the game into a spam-fest.
- The sheer amount of times you need to land on someone before knocking them out is.. bizarre. As you know, in real life, ‘It only takes one’ - In game, it may take dozens to see any impact.
- The character models are, in some cases, grotesque. Think cartoons crossed with UFC 3.
- They’ve gone a long way towards ‘dumbing down’ the minutiae. For example, Fighters are now assigned a star rating on the fighter selection screen. When selecting your fighter, think something comparable to Mortal Kombat for the SNES, with a star rating. Kamaru Usman - *****, for example. On that screen, they list Gilbert Burns as a boxer, despite him being an incredibly credentialed BJJ practitioner. Little things like that just break the immersion and give the impression the developers don’t follow/care about the sport. Burns is a much improved striker and he can hurt you, but to classify him as a boxer is odd, for me.
-The clinch could be interesting and an improvement on what we’ve seen in past iterations; however, from what I’ve seen it appears the only way to escape it is to run away from it. Looks like it’s going to be very, very open to abuse this year again.
-If you get taken down or score a takedown, that’s the fight over. Submissions are broken. Almost every submission attempt is successful. I dabbled a little online and whoever initiated a submission first would win. I would tap my opponent, then the next guy would tap me. No real skill involved, just initiate the submission attempt and swirl the left analog stick and your opponent can’t do a single thing about it. Also, perhaps in a bid to appeal to casuals/kids, the grappling is dumbed down to offer three options: stand up, submission or ground and pound. Those are the three options you have for default settings. If you don’t want that, you can go back to ‘Legacy’ controls, which is essentially the same grappling interface from UFC 3, which really makes you wonder if there’s any point in buying this title, when things have not changed.
-Stamina is another issue. Fighters are indefatigable, unless you really go out of your way to throw combinations out of range. It seems that as long as you connect, you cannot gas on the feet. There are no repercussions for failing takedown attempts. Just pick Colby Covington and spam the takedowns. A guy stopped me several times when I tried to take him down; however, my stamina bar was unwavering. As ties back in with my previous point, when I finally did get the takedown, I initiated the submission and won in scumbag fashion. I’m only playing around with it - Imagine what tryhards are going to be able to do when the work out the mechanics fully and get online. It will be brutal.
-The added ‘taunt’ prior to each fight is childish, unnecessary and doesn’t actually happen in real life. Again, this will appeal to 13/14 year olds who think Conor McGregor would knock Francis N’Gannou outcold and can’t understand why Jorge Masvidal can’t be selected to fight Jon Jones. Imagine Buffer has done the announcements, the referee has done over the rules, the fighters have touched gloves and when they’re in their respective corners, the referee says, ‘Ready?’ and the camera pans directly to them.. then the game offers you to chance to perform a taunt. Think of McGregor walking forward and blowing kisses prior to the Alvarez fight. Yes, he did it, but he did it during Buffer’s announcement, not immediately before the fight starts. Again, it’s gimmicky and feels like when you fight a new fighter in the story of Mortal Kombat/Tekken/Dead or Alive.
I’m sure there are more things that will come to my head and my ideas might even change if I play it some more, but, my days.. It feels like they’re getting further removed from what fans want and are catering for a wider, more casual audience.
