Now this may comes as a surprise to you, but I’m a huge fight fan. I watch nearly every UFC event, I keep relatively up to date with boxing and I have a huge love of Muay Thai and kickboxing. I even train myself and have had a few gym bouts.

However unlike a lot of people that are into combat sports I’m a pretty big gamer. I wouldn’t go as far as to call myself hardcore because I have no clue what defines a hardcore gamer. However I am definitely more into video games than my gym mates who are more inclined to play FIFA on the weekends than delve into The Elder Scrolls.

So when I say that combat sports games aren’t doing well, I say this from the perspective of someone that really wants to see them do well. The issue with a lot of combat sports games is that they try very hard to be a simulation, but still seem to fall short.

I’m going to talk about MMA first, because this is the sport that is currently the most popular in video games with the recent release of EA Sports UFC. There have been MMA games for quite a long time. The earliest one that I can think of is Pride FC: Fighting Championship, whose title technically should be read as Pride Fighting Championship: Fighting Championship, given the ludicrous subtitle.

The game was decent for the time. It managed to handle the ground based fighting aspect of MMA decently well and, while it certainly wasn’t great, future MMA games improved upon it. The same however cannot be said for the striking. As and since that game, out of every MMA game I’ve played, only one has managed stand up fighting well, UFC Undisputed 3.

This game made striking work in a way that not even EA Sports UFC has. From the footwork, to the punches and kicks everything feels smooth and natural. When your fighter throws a punch he just throws it, he doesn’t pull his arm back to launch the single biggest punch he can throw each time. He’ll punch like an actual fighter will punch.

The footwork was, while not plodding, more grounded. When your fighter walks about he is actually walking about, as opposed to EA’s MMA games which, much like their boxing titles, feel as though you’re sliding around on ice the whole time.

If I’m playing an MMA game over a game like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat I’m probably doing a reason: I want to simulate the experience of an MMA fight. This is why, although developers have certainly tried, I only feel that the team behind Undisputed 3 have succeeded. The movement feels natural, it feels real.

They also put a lot more time into making every fighter in the game feel like their real life counterpart. A great example is their use of Rampage Jackson, because I know a lot of my audience are probably not as familiar with MMA as I am let me explain something important about Rampage.

First of all, he did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWXERqsfrg

 

Second of all, this man threw maybe five kicks his entire career. He always liked to rely on his hands and didn’t have much variety in his arsenal beside his boxing skills. So if you try to throw a low kick as Rampage Jackson… you’re going to have a hard time. His kick is slow and awkward.

Conversely when you play as Jose Also or Shogun Rua, two fighters known for their leg kicking prowess, their low kicks are very fast, chopping down on their opponents leg and are very reminiscent of the real life fighters.

 

However in EA Sports UFC this isn’t nearly as present. Sure there are some fighters that mimic their real life counterparts, but there is an over presence of flashy moves and cartwheel kicks that are actually easier to throw than a basic roundhouse kick. While this is fine for some, it definitely displeased a lot of fans who would have preferred those flashy kicks be something difficult to pull off or at least implement them in a way that this doesn’t happen:

 

After all, THIS is cool:

 

This however, is annoying:

 

In fairness this is their first attempt at an MMA game and hopefully they may fix some of these problems but with the sliding footwork and every shot seeming like its being thrown by an exhausted 40 year old, it’s leaving a lot of people disappointed.

Next time, I’m going to talk about kickboxing!