|
| Article: |
Author |
| THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING GAME? |
James Denton |
"Our first videogame sucked," Dana White told us. "But this will be the best fighting game ever..."
Roaming the endless marble corridors of The Palms, we finally find the right combination of lifts and passages to take us up to the Sky Villas – lavish suites that cater to the super opulent (the Hugh Hefner Villa, at $40,000 a night, is the most expensive hotel room in the world).
As the final elevator arrives to take us up to the swankiest pad in town, the doors open and out strolls Dennis Hopper with a couple of anonymous hangers-on. Aside from remarking, “He’s really little,” and wondering why he lowered himself to appearing in The Crow 4, we barely acknowledge him. We’re here to see someone far more important.
Meeting Dana White is always a refreshing experience. Say what you will about the guy, but there’s no front; he’s exactly the same off-screen as he is on. In person, he greets you with every bit of the paradoxical personality that you see on TV: the quiet humility, the bombastic charisma, the sincere gratitude… and the sheer f**king honesty.
“Everyone knows our first videogame sucked,” he says with that naughty schoolboy grin. “That was a deal we were married into when we bought the company, and I know a lot of the fans were disappointed with our old game. So hooking up with THQ, we were looking for a partner who was gonna help us squash the stigma of the old game.”
BYGONES BE GONE
Of course, it wasn’t just the first videogame that sucked. From the first one in 2000 (on the DreamCast, PlayStation and GameBoy Colour) to the last one in 2004 (on the PlayStation2), all five of the UFC’s previous videogames were half-hearted, half-assed and only worth about half an hour of play.
But we understand what Dana was saying – Zuffa inherited some bad deals when it purchased the Ultimate Fighting Championship and back then – when the company was still on life support financially – being picky about a good videogame partner wasn’t exactly a high priority.
Of course, 2008 is a very different matter. The UFC is one of the most powerful brands on pay-per-view, television and DVD, with fans falling over themselves to consume the product in its every shape and form. Yet it has been four long years since the company’s last videogame – and fans really haven’t had anywhere else to get their gaming fix.
The problem is that there has never been a good MMA game. The previous UFC titles were pretty bad, as noted, and the two Pride games didn’t fare much better. In fact, the only decent representation of mixed martial arts in digital form was a component of Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (the Japanese remix of WWE No Mercy) on the Nintendo 64 – and that was back in 2000.
MMA fans have been starved of gaming goodness for almost half a decade, percolating with ideas about what the next one should be like when it finally materialises – and they have a genuine fear that they’ll be let down yet again. But this time it’s different. This isn’t the wretched remnant of some leftover agreement, nor a case of blindly slapping the initials on a product because the battered brand can’t do any better.
Now that the UFC is a billion-dollar company, it calls its own shots. The reigns of UFC 2009: Undisputed have been handed to a juggernaut of the games industry, and hopes for it are as high as a Sky Villa. “I’m not a big sit-at-home-and-play-videogames guy – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do,” noted Dana. “But Rampage is, and he’s blown away by this game. He loves it… This is gonna be the best fighting game ever.”
THEM’S FIGHTING WORDS
That’s exactly the kind of comment that tends to get the internet in a tizzy (like a lot of other things Dana says). After all, ‘fighting games’ encompass everything from Street Fighter to Soul Calibur, Fight Night to King Of Fighters and SmackDown to Super Smash Brothers Brawl. And after five shitty UFC games, this guy comes out and says the next one is going to be “the best fighting game ever?” Outrageous. But the thing is, he may actually be right.
Look at it this way: the UFC itself is the ultimate combination of fighting disciplines. Once upon a time, Ju Jitsu, wrestling, boxing and Muay Thai all existed completely independently of each other and never crossed paths. But when the UFC brought every kind of discipline together, whether standing, striking, grappling or grounded, the result was utterly gestalt – more than just the sum of its individual parts.
Again, there have been no MMA games in the past four years. There have, however, been boxing games (Don King Presents: Prizefighter), kickboxing games (K-1 Dynamite 2005), arcade beat-em-‘ups (Virtua Fighter 5), fighting simulations (Fight Night 3), and even games with some basic submission work (SmackDown VS Raw). But none of them together.
So couldn’t the same, gestalt outcome be produced in a videogame as it is on a PPV? Dana clearly thinks so, but he’s not a big gamer (or a current one – “I’m old school, I’m Pac-Man”), so a lot of people will be quick to dismiss him. However, at FSM we have decades of gaming experience under our belts – and we just so happen to agree with him.
Sure, it won’t have Bushido Blade’s weapons, Battle Fantasia’s projectile attacks or Power Stone’s melee combat. But what it will have are the pinpoint strikes that make 2D beat-em-‘ups so great, the realism and fluidity that made Fight Night 3 so outstanding and the tactile submissions that add so much depth to SmackDown VS Raw. In short, UFC 2009 is going to bring ultimate fighting to fighting games. And it will be a revelation.
FUTURE MEDIA CREATORS
Any game, fighting or otherwise, lives and dies by its gameplay. When THQ announced that it had acquired the UFC licence, it was inundated with pitches and resumes from the most respected development teams in the business. The guys behind Fight Night, Call Of Duty, Spider-Man, NBA Live, Tony Hawk’s – literally everyone wanted to work on the game.
THQ chose a team much closer to its heart, one with a proven track record and a proud history of experience highly relevant to the project – but it was almost comically careful not to mention what that experience actually was. In discussing the assignment of Yuke’s to the project, THQ’s vice president of production Keith Kirby described the studio as “one of the best fighting game developers in the world,” and noted that “unlike the other game they do for us, this is going to be created from scratch.”
The “other game” is, of course, SmackDown VS Raw. Yuke’s has been developing professional wrestling titles since 1996, starting with the original Toukon Retsuden and SmackDown! games on the PlayStation, right through to the modern era with Rumble Roses and Wrestle Kingdom – the official game of New Japan Pro Wrestling, which is owned by Yuke’s.
As ever, the UFC is keen to distance itself from public associations with pro wrestling. Just as it doesn’t want the television public to confuse MMA with “that rasslin’ stuff”, it’s keen that the gaming public not think of UFC 2009 as “that SmackDown game” – particularly as the WWE franchise has polarised gamers in recent years.
Fortunately, as Kirby noted, the UFC title is in no way a port or adaptation of SmackDown; everything in Undisputed has been built completely from the ground up. “From the very first line of code, it’s been created just for this specific game. That means that we don’t have to carry over any previous code, or anything that was necessarily negative from before.”
Translation? Bye-bye canned animation routines and clunky controls; hello silky smooth, free-form fighting from a team of repressed MMA fans who have waited years to unleash a revolutionary combat engine.
ALL ACCESS
One of the biggest pluses of the THQ/Yuke’s production muscle is the phenomenal presentation. Using the same mobile scanning and imaging equipment employed in the WWE franchise (courtesy of Californian visual wizards, Gentle Giant Studios), the THQ team tailgated fighters after every UFC event and conducted full, ultra-high resolution facial and body scans.
The results are photo-realistic fighter likenesses, some of which are eerily authentic. Over on page 22 you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the real-life BJ Penn and his rendered character model; in motion it can be almost impossible to tell the in-game visuals from broadcast footage. There’s such attention to detail that THQ even scanned the handwriting on the tape securing the fighters’ gloves to their wrists.
The level of presentation extends to the authentic camera angles, fighter information cards and introductory bumper animations that you see on every UFC pay-per-view. When the ‘Tale Of The Tape’ stats appears on-screen, you’ll hear the familiar Gladiator-esque strands of Optimus Bellum Domitor. Your ring announcer is, indeed, Bruce Buffer, and when the action begins your referee is Mario Yamazaki – at least, it was in the version we were shown.
In the finished game, it’s likely to be anyone from Steve Mazzagatti to Yves Lavigne (though hopefully not Dan Miragliotta), as THQ not only conducted full scans of the 80 UFC fighters that appear in the game, it also scanned the referees, ring girls, cut men, corner men, coaches and even commentators Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg.
So when you take Rampage into battle, Juanito Ibarra will be in your corner, giving you advice between rounds while Jacon “Stitch” Duran fixes up your face and Arianny circles the Octagon, carrying a ring card and blowing kisses to the crowd. And of course, Rogan and Goldberg call the action throughout the fight, exchanging banter and hitting all their signature calls.
If you thought the broadcast-quality presentation in SmackDown VS Raw or the NBA 2K series was good, you really are in for a treat. Between rounds, Joe and Goldie will dissect the action thus far while presenting replays of the fight’s biggest hits and most pivotal moments. Sure, Kenny Smith giving you a halftime thumbs-up for your three-point shooting is pretty cool; getting your Ju Jitsu bigged up by Joe Rogan is something else.
FINISH HIM!
The biggest moment of any fight is invariably the finish, and UFC 2009 truly shines in capturing the end of your battles. Whether you crush your opponent with a knockout blow, tap him with a sick submission or batter him until the ref steps in, the announcers will get open (prepare to hear lots of Rogan’s patented, “Oh!” and Goldberg’s “Aaaare yoooou kidding me!”).
At this point, your digital destroyer will perform his signature victory pose – Rampage cocks his head back and howls like a wolf, Chuck Liddell spreads his wings and runs round the cage like a madman, and Forrest Griffin hurls his mouthpiece into the crowd and talks trash to himself – and you’ll be treated to intricate, slow-mo celebrations of your dominance.
These are set to become a key feature of the game, as THQ wants you to be able to really boast and brag about your highlight reel finishes. Although nothing was confirmed in this direction, don’t be too surprised if some sort of online replay trading system is incorporated before long.
Even after the finish, the presentation continues to amaze. The referee will convene both fighters in the centre of the Octagon, holding their wrists for Bruce Buffer’s official announcement. While the loser stands stoic and despondent, the winner will be bouncing on his toes, pumping his fist and mouthing to the camera before Buffer squawks his name. This is your moment, your hard-earned reward for winning the fight, and the most is made of it.
The only downside to the presentation at the moment is that the female characters (and, presumably, Clay Guida) suffer from “SmackDown hair” – if you’ve ever played the WWE game, you know what we mean. The other slight concern is that entrances are not yet present in the game – and the extent to which they’ll be employed is uncertain.
MAKING AN ENTRANCE
Unlike WWE wrestlers, UFC fighters don’t use any in-house compositions for their entrance music. Paying for the licensed tracks increasingly being used by wrestlers has caused no end of headaches in WWE products over the years and, with over 80 fighters in Undisputed all using commercial songs as their theme tunes, it’s going to be prohibitively expensive for everyone to have their signature music.
And talking to the game’s producers, we got the impression that entrances as a whole aren’t really at the top of the priorities list – at least, not in this first generation of development. Unlike WWE, where the elaborate entrance routines are almost as important as the bouts themselves, in the UFC there’s no pyro and minimal pomp – just guys in ugly t-shirts walking down a short aisle and getting some Vaseline rubbed on their faces.
So not only are the entrances themselves fairly unspectacular and (as evidenced by their frequent omission from UFC DVDs) perhaps not that important to the overall gaming experience, but there is also the question of whether or not players would actually sit through them. In fact, during focus testing, users were breezing through the entire front-end, skipping through the menus and all the bells and whistles – they just wanted to get into the action. Doesn’t bold well for fancy entrances being included.
As a result, the likelihood is that we won’t be seeing Sokoudjou wearing his Predator mask, Heath Herring’s Sergio Leone/Undertaker gimmick or Akihiro Gono dressed as “DJ Gozmo”, in the Saturday Night Fever suit and red afro. And there’s a chance that, rather than DMX’s Intro and Blur’s Song 2, we might hear The Iceman and Michael Bisping entering the ring to the famous UFC theme, as was the case in the early UFC shows.
However, in our conversation with the THQ honchos, we suggested that it didn’t matter if these commercial songs aren’t licensed and included in the game – so long as the provision is made for players to import their own custom soundtracks. While we almost got them to admit that this is what they actually have planned, they stopped short at smiling coyly and saying, “That’s a very good idea”.
It would certainly be a little bit disappointing if we don’t get the full-blown fighter entrances, but this is only the first iteration of the game – the most important thing is to build the core mechanics and to get the playability right. Taking unnecessary time away from that process would negatively impact the engine that is going to power this franchise for years to come, so we’d rather THQ got the actual gameplay spot-on this year, then all the extra stuff can be worked on for UFC 2010.
ULTIMATE PLAY THE GAME
So then, those “core play mechanics” – how are they shaping up? Pretty damn nicely, from what we got to see. As noted, there are over 80 UFC fighters in the game. The only names that have been publicly confirmed are Chuck Liddell, Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson, Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva, Welterweight Champion BJ Penn and the original ultimate fighter, Forrest Griffin.
Of course, while they haven’t been announced, you only have to watch the recent UFC DVD releases to see who’s been invited into the Gentle Giant scanning booth, so you can expect the likes of Wanderlei Silva, Brock Lesnar and Heavyweight Champ Minotauro Nogueira, to be among those appearing on Xbox 360s and PlayStation3s next spring.
Each character has a broad knowledge of combat, but every fighter also has one specialist grappling discipline (such as wrestling, Brazilian Ju Jitsu or Judo) and one specific striking skill (boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai and so on). So you can expect Chuck’s wrestling- and kickboxing-based style to play very differently to Wanderlei’s BJJ- and Muay Thai-oriented offence.
The resulting combat is going to be far and away the most advanced, diverse and complex ever seen in a videogame; this is a deep, sophisticated fighting simulation, not a button-bashing brawler. In fact, project manager Neven Dravinski specifically told us: “Button bashing will make you lose.” By contrast, just like in a real fight, what will make you win isn’t just the crispest boxing or the best BJJ; it’s the best strategy. And to this end, you’ll need to employ realistic gameplans in order prevail.
Sure, you can go in there with Brock and start shooting and pounding – but if your plan doesn’t involve anything more than that, you’re liable to get snagged with a submission by someone whose strategy is to weather your storm and catch one of your limbs for a tap (much as happened in Lesnar’s UFC debut).
So how will you go about winning? Will you work exclusively for that Lesnar-like ground and pound, and hope to overwhelm your opponent, or will you try the Minotauro approach and eat a faceful of punishment for two rounds before locking on a choke? Will you go in there looking to jab and counter-punch like Chuck, or do like BJ and take it to the ground, inflicting damage until you clamp on a sleek submission?
And who’s to say that you even have to finish the fight in order to win – perhaps you’ll find more success with Sean Sherk’s lay and pray routine, working for position and dominating your man on the ground for three rounds, or even Lyoto Machida’s hit and run approach, craftily scoring points for the duration of the fight and picking
up a decision at the end.
CAUSING GREAT OFFENCE
The offensive options available to you are truly staggering. Much as the guys behind Fight Night 3 actually underwent boxing training in order to understand what the combat should “feel” like, members of the THQ team trained with BJJ guru (and master of the Rubber Guard) Eddie Bravo, and spent time with MMA legend Bas Rutten in order to make the fighting as authentic and expansive as possible.
Standing, you can throw kicks and knees to the legs, body and head, while punches and elbows can be thrown to the waist up. The striking is incredibly diverse; with your feet you can unload everything from stabbing front kicks and simple leg kicks to flashy spinning back kicks. With your hands, you can let rip with quick crosses and rapid-fire jabs, or open up with gigantic wind-up haymakers and Chuck Liddell’s looping Sunday best.
But if all you want is a stand-up fight, you’d better go and buy a K-1 game; if all you can do is bang on your feet then you won’t last long, because almost half of Undisputed’s combat will take place in the clinch and on the ground. So as soon as you get up close and personal with your foe it becomes a whole different ballgame.
Lock him in a Muay Thai clinch and pick which poison to administer: rough him up with some dirty boxing; knock him silly with short elbows to the head; tenderise his ribs with hooks to the body; numb his legs with some shots to the thigh; drive his nose through his brain with a knee to the face; or sweep his leg and take him to the ground, where (from this position) you’ll land on top – but right in his full or half-guard.
And this is where it really starts to open up because, for the first time in a fighting game, you find out that sometimes the best form of offence really is a good defence. After all, ground-based submission grappling isn’t just about technique and getting position, it’s about how you get it and what you end up doing with it.
But defence is multifaceted even on the feet, as you can block and guard in different ways. Shell up and you’ll cover your head from strikes, but you leave your neck open to a clinch and your legs open to a shot; hold your hands further out and you can shrug off clinch attempts, but your face is open to punches. Your opponent will look for and target the holes in your hull, so you’ll have to constantly adjust.
CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN
Once the action hits the ground, the line between offence and defence completely blurs. When you’re on your back with your opponent in full guard, you’re far from helpless – in fact, if your fighter’s strength is an active guard, this is exactly where you want to be. Of course, if the other guy is a ground and pound specialist, things might not always go according to plan.
If he starts raining shots on you, you can grab his head and pull it towards you in an inverted clinch/can opener to restrict his movement. He might fire off some shots to your midsection to rattle himself free, but from here you can work back to a butterfly guard and try to buck or leg-press him off – however, if you’re unsuccessful, he can scoot right between your legs and into a more dominant position.
You might want him to advance his position, though, because UFC 2009’s grappling is a lot like catch wrestling; sometimes you give something up to get something else in return. So you might allow him to pass your guard and take side control, where you’re open to heavy knee strikes, but from here you can get a better reach on his arm and try for a Kimura. And even if he’s blocking effectively and you can’t secure it, he’s now off-balance and his legs are vulnerable, so you can sweep and transition to the top!
There really are unlimited defensive options – it’s not like other games where “defence” constitutes holding the block button and getting battered until your opponent gets bored or your energy bar expires. This is intricate, intelligent combat where, as long as you know what you’re doing, you’re only in trouble when you make a mistake – not when you find yourself in a position where the designers haven’t given you any way of getting out.
Indeed, this ‘Constant Control’ as THQ calls it ensures that you have endless options from any position, anywhere inside the Octagon. Even if your back is against the cage with nowhere to go, you can lower your guard and goad your opponent into bombing your chin, which leaves him open to a takedown. It’s so sophisticated, yet so subtle…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 30 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
Back to Articles Menu |
 |
|
