UFC Undisputed 2009 Wins Best Individual Sports Game at Video Game Awards
by Luke Thomas on Dec 14, 2009 12:27 PM EST
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I'm a little hesitant to put too much stock in news that an awards show from the same channel that is partners with the UFC would award the UFC an accolade for its video game, but I confess I know nothing about gaming. Chad Dukes of The Lavar Arrington Show With Chad Dukes explains the significance:
There was stiff competition from some very established franchises. "Tiger Woods PGA Tour" by gaming juggernaut EA was nominated. EA also had "Fight Night Round 4″ (draw your own MMA vs Boxing parallels here) nominated while Nintendo offered the wildly popular "Wii Sports Resort."
Keep in mind this was the very first "Undisputed" title and really the first all encompassing MMA game of it’s kind. It ended up winning the category. This is a much larger deal than most people realize. The gaming universe is very stratified. Sports gamers are usually a very different breed than your traditional nerd gamer. It is very rare when one game can motivate both to make a purchase. "Madden" has that. "Modern Warfare" seems to have it. "Undisputed" looks to be following in that mold.
You don’t have to be a geeky gamer or mixed martial arts fan to be drawn to the game’s deceptive simplicity. You want to button mash your opponent to death? Ok, you can do that. Say you are a more seasoned fan and you want to try your hand at the takedowns and submissions? You can do that too. The key is "Undisputed" harkens back to the golden years of "Street Fighter 2″ and "Mortal Kombat." It has something that those games didn’t have though. Credibility with sports fans.
Guys that just buy "Madden," "NBA 2K" and "Tiger Woods" are more likely to give "Undisputed" a try than, lets say "Dragon Age". Nerdy gamers don’t have to be put off by their aversion sports sims though because of the similarities the UFC game has to "Tekken," "Marvel vs Capcom" or "Soul Caliber." It’s a tremendous opportunity to bridge the gap between the two factions of gamers and it could be a very profitable bridge that THQ and the UFC have built. Video game developers and Zuffa are going after the same demographics in potential fans and customers. It’s good to see they appear to be aware of that and are working together.
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The one thing about Undisputed 2009, was that people were blinded by how fun it was to play against other people. Thats not really a bad thing, but I hope the lack of criticism from the big game reviewers dosen’t lead to THQ taking it easy this year.
Theres been a lot of hate on the trailer so far, people saying the only changes between 2009 and 2010 will be things that should just be patched in, but thats a REALLY ignorant statement, considering how the only piece of info we got on the game is about 20 seconds of gameplay.
I think the fact that EA MMA is looming on the horizon will push THQ hard enough to come up with enough improvements to keep the fans happy.
"You guys are jerking eachother off with some pseudo deep bullshit." - Kid Nate
by Kaleb Kelchner on Dec 14, 2009 11:06 AM EST reply actions
Maybe you’re right, but I just have this feeling that the EA game is going to blow Undisputed out of the water. I’ve hardly been impressed with THQ in the past. They’ll always be able to say that they were first though, for whatever that’s worth.
Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.
by lowellthehammer on Dec 14, 2009 11:22 AM EST up reply actions
They’ll always be able to say that they were first though, for whatever that’s worth.
Being able to say ‘We have the UFC brand’ is worth a LOT more.
There is a reason that every non-official football/baseball/basketball/hockey game withered and died when the top leagues in each sport started awarding exclusive licenses to a single developer.
The EA game will only sell a fraction of what the UFC/THQ game sells. At least for the duration of the UFC-THQ licensing deal. After that, I fully expect EA to win a bidding war for the UFC license and abandon the EA MMA title in favor of producing their own UFC title.
Dana is pretty bitter over EA ignoring him when he first brought it to them…Although the right kind of money can change his mind it will have to be a lot larger then it would if they didn’t shun him the first time.
Eh... I'd like to hear EAs side of the story.
Rumor is they’ve been developing this game for a bit over two years. Dana says they wouldn’t touch MMA until Undisputed was already a success. Timelines don’t add up. I think UFC went to EA, wanted a UFC game with unified rules and UFC roster. EA wanted a game with more options (Ring vs cage, PRIDE/Unified/Strikeforce rules, Japanese fighters) and then negotiations died. Dana talks shit like he loves to, goes to a smaller developer who rush the game out because of their own financial needs. Looks to me like EA and UFC were both looking out for themselves and their interests just weren’t aligned.
Oh it was a great game, I’m not into sports game, but I play all fighting games worth a damn, and this was a good one.
Most characters do feel the same it’s true, but they are too much of them, take any game that allow you to play 40+ characters, if it’s not a 10 years old franchise, all characters will feel somewhat similar. This can be fixed by improving the stand up game , and adding more submissions IMO.
Also to kyfm621, the forum is filled with complaints, they patched the game once to fix atrocious lag and online exploits. I’m positive they know what they had to improve, though they might leave some stuffs for undisputed 2011).
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
And this game is very technical too, that’s something you appreciate when you buy a game 70€. Actually it’s so technical it’s ahrd to find a player your level, most of the time he is eitheir way too bad, or way too good.
I didn’t play the Fight night though, but hey, Spike…
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
I don’t think all the characters feel the same. Sure, there is some overlap, where one wrestler/boxer plays just about the same as another boxer/wrestler, but guys with different styles don’t feel the same at all. Playing as Demian Maia feels totally different than playing as Anderson Silva or Yushin Okami.
It feels like there are about a dozen unique characters which, while less than the 80+ fighters in the game, is still a decent amount of variety for a sports game. I mena, do people seriously complain about wide receivers in Madden being similar, or point guards being too similar in NBA 2K9? The truth is, some fighters are similar, just as some wide receivers and point guards are similar. No one complains that playing an NBA 2K9 game as Baron Davis doesn’t feel much different than playing a game as Deron Williams, so why should anyone complain that playing Undisputed as Gray Maynard feels similar to playing as Sean Sherk?
I call shenanigans, fight night r4 was by far the superior game, in every aspect,
gameplay, controls, graphics, replay value…
by kanodogg on Dec 14, 2009 11:16 AM EST via mobile reply actions
I disagree...
I pre-ordered Undisputed and downloaded the demo the day it came out and just recently stopped playing it. I bought fnr4 about two weeks ago and, two careers later, am already done playing it. To each his own I suppose but definitely no shenanigans involved here.
To go all gamer dork here Fight Night Round 4 is about 100x a better game than Undisputed.
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 11:17 AM EST reply actions 2 recs
I dunno. FNR4 was good but the analog controls were pretty shitty. But I was a fan of head movement/countering. They have to improve that engine though cause the counter window ruins the flow of the game in my opinion. Also, this game/ea mma/fnr5 should allow for open weight fights. I’d personally like to have BJ fight Brock. It’d be entertaining.
by Matthew Roth on Dec 14, 2009 11:22 AM EST up reply actions
Eh. FN is undoubtedly a great game, but it’s also building on 3 previous iterations. I think Undisputed was a very good game that handled the potentially deadly (from a game design POV) mix of striking clinching and ground game pretty well. FN is able to do its standing game very very well because they don’t have to worry about takedowns and clinches and such. I think Undisputed is a surprisingly solid foundation to build on and I don’t get why people are bagging on it so much.
"an excellent example of why most MMA "journalism" is a joke. Pseudonyms like "toxic" and shitty writing like that dopey article"--- Joe Rogan.
I'm not bagging on it at all...
it’s a fine game. But this was an award for the best game. not best foundation to build on.
Undisputed is fun, and a great start to the franchise. But it was in no way a better game than FN or Tiger Woods
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 11:24 AM EST up reply actions
On a related note I heard that the next Tiger Woods game is actually going to be a fighting game, unfortunately there’s only two playable characters.
The only thing Jon Jones does better than Matt Hamill is hear.
(And smash faces)
by ufc4 on Dec 14, 2009 12:09 PM EST via mobile up reply actions
don’t you mean nine? oh wait, ten? damn, eleven now?
We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms, turning every good thing to rust.
by Anthony Pace on Dec 14, 2009 1:45 PM EST up reply actions
I don’t play any game online anymore. Everyone will find a reason to cry about everything…it’s annoying as all shit to me.
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 11:26 AM EST up reply actions
Yeah at some point it gets unbearable, I only play online with my friends.
Too bad for this FN game, I know nothing about boxing except old stuff, what I read here and what I read in hajime no ippo …
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
Lay n pray is a legit MMA gameplan. It actually can be abused in the game, but not more than in real life. Turbo controllers users are just sad, the reason why I stopped playing ranked after 2 weeks.
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
yeah i understand that, but when playing a video game do you really want to play a very boring fight that you wouldn’t even want to watch? if you are fighting for cash and to build a career i can understand doing whatever it takes to win, but when you are playing a video game i would think the prime objective is to have fun.
What exactly do you consider lay n pray in this game? Cause I hate the stand up, I think it sucks, my only interest in the ground game, and people (during the two weeks I play ranked) complained about that, calling it lay n pray. Hell I play demian maia and you want me to trade with your hendo, dude! I don’t know why all these people bought this game honestly.
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
when people take you down, and dont do anything at all, just hug the right stick.. i’m not talking ground and pounders or people looking for subs, but people that literally just take you down and hold you there and hope for a decision.
It's a much more complete game...
as well it should be given the amount of development and time to learn that EA has had…etc.
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 11:33 AM EST up reply actions
In my oppinion....
Americans make terrible video games for the most part, especially fighting games. The Japanese know how to make a good fighting game and I wish that (with the sucess of Undisputed) Japenese developers like Capcom, and Namco would get on the ball and make a good MMA fighting game of their own.
for all intents and purposes, just consider all my posts as works of satire.
Why not a Dream game? That would be awesomew to fight as Hong Man Choi.
for all intents and purposes, just consider all my posts as works of satire.
well, alot of dream fighters gonna be in the ea mma game.. what with the strikeforce/dream alliance.
DREAM (the promotion) will be in the game as well.
=)
by MMASuPreMaCy on Dec 14, 2009 3:14 PM EST up reply actions
I don’t know if you’re talking about undisputed but his game was made in japan. Yukes are the developers, THQ are editors.
http://www.yukes.co.jp/hp/game/
I grew up playing japanese games, but I have to give the American devs props for making the best games for the last 3 (or so) years. The japanese blew it since the ps3 and 360 came out.
I watched on metacritic (kind of the consensus ranking of videogames) for the top rated games (ps3, japanese console for “fairness”):
2007:
1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
3. Rock Band
4. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
5. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
2008:
1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. LittleBigPlanet
3. Bioshock
4. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots*
5. Rock Band 2
2009:
1. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
3. Street Fighter IV
4. Braid
5. God of War Collection
Two japanese games. And if I get the top 360 it only gets worst. I have to look on wii to find japanese games, mostly nintendo games.
"You hit too hard, too hard, too hard..."
Somehow none have you have ever played Fire Pro Wrestling
Go buy Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for PS2 and play the “Gruesome” matches (in a 12 sided cage)
There are a bunch of pride fighters in the game already, under stupid aliases, and a DEEP create-a-fighter. It’s the best MMA game ever, with Undisputed coming in second.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oJr0nW2xe8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-OpMCE4pU&feature=related
by Kaibo on Dec 14, 2009 12:41 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
This IS a Great Game...
and what I recommended EA to study for their EA MMA game.
=)
by MMASuPreMaCy on Dec 14, 2009 3:15 PM EST up reply actions
FPW is quite possibly my favorite video game series ever
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 4:08 PM EST up reply actions
I don’t see the significance here. Nobody within the industry respects Spike’s VGAs, and the people who vote for these things have to take time out of their day to go to the Spike website and vote on every award… I dunno. All I see here is UFC’s very specific demographic voting for a UFC game on a Spike website.
by Gong on Dec 14, 2009 1:24 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
Saw some new shots of EA MMA in my new GameInformer magazine today, Randy vs. Monson. Very nice! :D
People can get into pissing contests about which game is/will be better, I’m just going to enjoy myself.
"You guys are jerking eachother off with some pseudo deep bullshit." - Kid Nate
Yeah...
it is entirely possible for both to be great games. Admitting such is not going to bring the world to an end, put the UFC out of business or kill an orphan
Editor - BloodyElbow.com - SBNation's mixed martial arts headquarters.
MMA Editor - SBNation.com
by Brent Brookhouse on Dec 14, 2009 4:10 PM EST up reply actions
I was a hardcore video game fan before I ever got into MMA fandom, and the Spike VGAs are a complete joke. I could give a rat’s ass what the minds behind Striperella and Manswers have to say about interactive entertainment. They rank somewhere below MTV’s Movie Awards in terms of credibility.
50% more Ultimate than the leading competitor.
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