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.

The tournament mode is cool and I literally spent as much time as I could to play every match up trying to get every inch of the demo in my head. Each character is based on their personal fighting style; this makes it hard to get comfortable. Just when you think you can defeat every opponent with power punching, you have to fight “Sugar” Rashad Evans who has a dominating ground game. In fact Sugar was the only fighter I was unable to beat on the hardest difficulty.

UFC 2009 was not easy to play if you turn the difficulty to hard and 2010 is no exception. Maintaining a very hard and quite steep learning curve, the ground game is what I always seem to lose to. It’s hard to best your opponent when there are specific ways to get out of certain positions. Especially on a harder difficulty when the computer can react to your moves at a very fast rate.

Great visuals, screenshot not from demo.

The best features of this game are the visuals. I have never seen modeling so good in all my life. These blow Fight Nights fighter models out of the ring. I honestly have played this demo more than 90 percent of the demos I have ever installed. It seems like they used the same knockout animation every time but this could be a demo feature. I would have rather them used a physics rag doll system for knock outs, but the pre-set animations do look realistic and believable.

I was a little creeped out looking at Rampage Jackson and actually believing it was him. The facial expressions on all of the characters are actually done to match how the fighters express victories and losses. There was a large amount of work done to make UFC 2010 much like watching actual UFC.

The cuts still look good and now you can actually get blood on your skin. I was actually quite shocked to see a bunch of blood on my characters chest and arms after a horribly gruesome battle. One issue that is still bugging me to the bitter end is that when a round ends, more often than not, a player’s face is reset to perfect with no cuts or swelling. I know that modern technology and high rates of income can insure the best in medical attention, but honestly this feels more like magic.

Another great screenshot. (not from demo)

There are new fighters that have been added since the last version of UFC, most of which coming from the Ultimate Fighter. You can now fight with people like Kimbo Slice and Big Country. This is probably one of the best updates seeing as that it’s just about the same game as 2009.

For the most part it felt like I was playing the older version with just a few new updates. UFC 2010 does boast new online features like being able to create teams and host online tournaments. These tournaments are hosted with standings on the UFC website.  It never gets old punching and kicking people in the head, and between UFC and Fight Night you can’t go wrong, if you are into realistic fighters than pick up a copy of UFC 2010. Download the demo first if you have never played though.