UFC Undisputed 2009 is easily the most anticipated game of the year for me, and the excitement builds as more and more information is released about the title.
ESPN interviewed Nevan Dravinski, the producer of the game, and he reveals some information regarding the career mode on the game that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The entire piece is worth a read, but here’s a few select snippets for those of you who are too lazy to click and read the whole article.
On the length of the average fight:
It really just depends. If I’m fighting my lead designer in the office, there is a lot of back and forth. There are a lot of tension-filled fights where you feel the fight can end at any moment. You get him in a submission, but then he pulls out and tries to knock you out. Then again, there are fights that end really quickly. We have a lot of attributes that differentiate each fighter from striking offense and defense to grappling offense and defense, so there are a lot of variables involved. As a result, you can get a flash knockout. Typical fighting games can be rigid, where you’re health is down, then you get hit one more time and you die. But with us, it’s a lot more loose, like a real fight. If a guy slips a punch, then I come in and catch him, that may result in a flash knockout. Just like the real UFC, if you get caught, you get caught. But at the same time, if you’re fighting someone really good, and you both understand the control scheme, the fight could go the distance.
On the finer points of career mode:
In career mode, you’re basically working your way up through the system of UFC. So, you’re going to create your character, you’ll assign yourself a striking and grappling technique, then you train those skills. You won’t have as much power, energy or ability as the typical UFC fighter when you start out, but as you progress through career you’ll get better. And we don’t have any cheesy mini-games where you mash the buttons to push a weight bar up. The training you do in the career mode is fighting like you would in a real fight. So if you have a fight coming up, and you’re a boxing/wrestler guy and you’re next opponent is a Muay Thai guy, then your training partner will be a Muay Thai fighter, so you can train against those moves. There’s a whole interactive calendar system where you know your fight is in a couple of weeks and you’ll need to pick where you’ll train, where you’ll spar and where you should rest in order to build up your stamina. It’s like a game within the game where you might want to risk training right before a fight, losing out on some of your stamina, but at the same time gaining valuable points on your standing game. The choices are all up to you on how you shape your career. And once you start building up his skill, you can take your created fighter online, so it’s a cool way to get invested in your character and his abilities. It also lets you replay the game multiple ways because you can start one career as a boxer/wrestler, then when that career is done, you can play as a fighter who is into kickboxing and judo and have a completely different experience.
The game is released in May. This will be one of the few times in my life where I actually try to find a copy of the game at midnight on release day.
Tip of the hat to Bloody Elbow for finding the ESPN interview.
