Ultimate Fighting Championship: Undisputed 2010 is hardly a sequel to one of the best sports games of all time. Following the way of all other sports games, 2010 is more of a roster update than anything. The character models have been improved a little bit and there are a few new features that are cool. The single player career mode resembles that of the old school WWE games. To be honest there are certain point in this game when I’d prefer a real punch to the dome from Rampage Jackson than have to deal with it all. UFC 2010 definitely has its mix of good and bad qualities.

Let us get started with the game mechanics, which I must say are pretty similar to 2009’s. I like the idea of actually having to take time to learn how to transition out of all the holds and all that but after a while it’s quite a monotonous thing. The learning curve for the ground game is pretty steep, and if you’re fighting a good wrestler on any difficulty higher than medium you’re going to have a lot of issues winning. I found myself not really understanding or possibly the game just wasn’t working how I though it should have. So resorting to frantic twirling and directional changes of the analog sticks was what I was doing most of the time.

This is UFC 2009.

UFC 2010 is not like the old Fight Night games either, if you’re planning on going on a huge flawless career even on the easiest difficulty, it won’t happen. You must come to terms that at least 3 or 4 times in your career you’re going to get one punched by someone. If you’re not getting dropped with a single shot you will get over powered in a submission, these are the inevitable fates of your dream champions. If you’re not a good ground fighter, it’s a good idea to pick your punches and keep your distance; I found this to be most useful when trying to win as many matches as possible.

After a few days of playing the single player I self-decided that my skills where honed graciously enough to participate in the online multiplayer. Sike! Turns out UFC 2010 has one of the most pointless and money hungry scams that I have come across for games. For this single reason I have put the title to shame and refuse to ever purchase it or any of its features. After selecting the online feature from the main menu, a little help box pop’s up and asks me to enter the code that is located on the inside of the case. Obviously being a rented game, there is no sheet of paper on the inside. There is hope though, it tells me that I can purchase a new online game code anytime from the PSN, and that I will have to do this every time I install the game. It costs only four dollars but honestly, c’mon guys. I refuse to pay for online games, and anyone who knows me knows that.

In the short period of time playing I managed to find several spelling errors and completely break the game. During the single player you will see all kinds of “Im” where “In” should be and vice versa. The amount of errors I found in this game was enough to make me believe that it was actually developed by the people who are fighting in it. No disrespect but paying full price for this crap is just mockery.

UFC 2010 looks similar, but there are graphical enhancements.

I have only broken one other game so badly that a reset wouldn’t fix it. Aside from one of the very first PS2 games to come out, UFC 2010 is the 2^nd game to be added to my list of “Absolutely broken” and it’s just amazing that a glitch of this caliber can go unnoticed. I managed to make it so that players no longer get knocked down. I mean no matter how hard I beat on my enemy, and put him into the “rocked” mode, he never fell. I’d hear Joe Rogan screaming that he went down and the official steps in between us but my enemy is standing strong and at some points even shaking his fist at me or throwing them in the air as if he has won. It was more annoying than it even sounds as normally when you “rock” someone you can end the fight with one big shot. Well because he was still able to keep his guard up, (normally when rocked your guard drops for like 10 seconds.), I was unable to get the knock out every time and had to just keep throwing punches until the official stepped in. It was humorous hearing Joe and Mike commentate the fight completely wrong, even as I was kicking him in the guts after they announced the fight was over.

Training your fighter is a pain in the butt and is also impossible to make into a science. Your fighter will get inured, even if your rest properly and don’t train to hard. The game kept telling me I need to go easy when I did light cardio training after a rest which resulted in my fighter becoming injured. Aside from how fast you build your character to superstar status, the story mode is pretty intricate. If you remember back in the day when wrestling games used to give you enemies and all that in the story mode, UFC 2010 is much the same way. You can choose to bad mouth people or respect them and it all goes towards whom you’re friends with and who are your rivals.

Speaking only on visuals, Undisputed 2010 is a great game. Most of the fighters look realistic and the developers did a good job capturing the expressions and emotions of the fighters. You can get all types of bloody now as cuts bleed like crazy and if the blood touches you it leaves nice glossy red stains on your characters skin. One of the only things that look bad is some of the shirts that you can wear after the fight. Some of them just look very flat and un-detailed. Joe Rogan doesn’t really look like himself but Dana White sure does.

BJ Penn is a scary man.

The sounds are decent and realistic but they used the same theme song for the title menu, which to me just kind of comes across as lazy or just not really caring about separating this title from last years. Even if it is the soundtrack of the UFC, it would have been nice to hear something else to get me pumped up even more for the actual game. They got real fighters and staff voices for cut scenes and prefight interviews. Also you can choose your voice for created characters which is a great feature in my opinion.

If you really enjoyed UFC 2009 than this wont be much different, other than a few roster updates and some simple graphic enhancements. If your super into the UFC and want to play a game than this is probably the closest you will ever get to experiencing the life of a UFC cage fighter. Inexperienced players should rent before buying because it is a love hate title, you will have to purchase online mode though.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.