UFC 2010 - Undisputed

[Lantien]

(Putting on the angry face, because it's about punching people in the face)

As UFC Undisputed 2010 comes out tomorrow and we had a topic for 2009, thought I'd put out a new topic for this year's offering.  They've made a lot of changes to the game, the menus on the demo seem faster, there's southpaw, there's more fighters, and there's more cage-using animations, for starters.

In addition, it looks like they're following the EA model of one time use codes to stave off the rental/used game market: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/109/1091294p1.html  Sounds like it only is in relation for online multiplayer; offline/local multiplayer is unchanged from most accounts.

The demo's been out a few weeks, and it's not bad; they introduced Fight Night-esque swaying, which seems to somewhat work.  Although you'd imagine someone who's too focused on swaying would get leg kicked or taken down non-stop. Definitely had to change up my tactics vs the CPU, I was getting embarrassed on Beginner/Experienced until I did some research.  Still having problems with Advanced though...

EDIT: Oops, subject wrong. 

[NiX]

Advanced for me is instant tap out. It's frustrating as all hell.

[Rendakor]

Going to pick this up later tonite for PS3. As long as the menus and load screens aren't absurdly long I'll be pleased.

[NiX]

Going to pick this up later tonite for PS3. As long as the menus and load screens aren't absurdly long I'll be pleased.

Actually pretty damn fast. Now the only annoyance is all the pre-fight screens.

[Rendakor]

Loading times in the character editor are still kind of annoying; other than that everything is pretty good.

Grappling on the ground feels much more difficult now. Transitions are almost always blocked, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to posture up. I wanted to play a ground & pounder, but I've had to win all my fights with a head kick since I can't get anything better than half guard top, down.

[NiX]

Loading times in the character editor are still kind of annoying; other than that everything is pretty good.

Grappling on the ground feels much more difficult now. Transitions are almost always blocked, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to posture up. I wanted to play a ground & pounder, but I've had to win all my fights with a head kick since I can't get anything better than half guard top, down.

I've given up on ground anything. The skill decay in career is frustrating because there's no indicator for why it's decaying. My guy is entirely standup and his standup offense still decays.

[Rendakor]

I think they decay if you don't put points into them. Which makes the sparring shit frustrating, as you have to periodically dump one point into random shit just to stop it from dropping.

[Lantien]

Been playing a little, pretty difficult for me even on Experienced.  Don't know if I'm missing something obvious, or what.

Stat decay works where you lose points if you don't constantly re-up your points, unless you get them into stable plateaus (30, 50, and 70, I think).  So you can leave your points at 30, and then focus on something else instead.

Posturing up is hadouken + left (?) bumper (quarter circle).  The key is to do an even smaller qcturn motion than what you think would work, sometimes it interprets the 6 to 3 motion as 8 to 3 instead.

[Rendakor]

Oh you have to hold the left bumper (L1 on PS3)? Either it wasn't that way in the first game, or I forgot. Thanks.

I think I'm playing on experienced too; doing pretty good (9-2). My only losses have been to submission, by the same guy. I've always been bad at ZOMGROTATECONTROLSTICKFAST shit though.

[NiX]

Stevenson has chemora'd my guy in 30 seconds every time I've fought him. I avoid fighting him now because I have high takendown defense and submission defense for that very reason, which is sad because from the moment he put me in the submission to my guy tapping out was probably 2 seconds despite rotating the stick. Maybe I rotated it the wrong way and helped him.

[Rendakor]

That describes my encounters with Matt Hughes pretty well. My submission defense is one of my three highest skills and yet I still tap to his goddamn kimura almost immediately.

[Lantien]

I'm now 29-2 (there's been a LOT of frustration restarts though), and swapped weight classes.  I've been lucky and I've avoided the hell out of submission specialists whenever I can.

Some thoughts:

1) If you're a standup guy, do invite camps to unlock Muy Thai Elbows for up close standing.  High damage, very spammable versus Experienced which is great for Sparring points.  Speaking of which....

2) If you're doing standup for Sparring, when you rock a guy to the point that he's on the ground, do NOT go over his prone body and rain down blows.  It turns out that each blow on that person when they're down like that counts as a blocked punch, and actually goes against your sparring score.  Instead, just kick him on the shin once to "wake" him up, then wait for him to get back up and resume landing elbows/punches.  The difference in points is staggering.

3) So this is one way to go through career:
   A) get Cardio, Speed, and Strength to the plateaus as soon as possible where they can't decay, which early on is 30. I also picked up a few gotta have moves that my fighter didn't have.

   B) Get the level 2 Cardio/Speed/Strength Training upgrades, to be able to push your stats to 50/70.

   C)  Once you get all 3 stats to 70, get Sparring partner upgrades.  As I did standup, I would suggest pumping Standing Strikes Offense (Punch and Kick) to 70 as soon as possible. If you're a submission guy, obviously different story.  Then slowly fill out the other stats, getting them to plateaued levels.  I would put points into Takedown/Ground Defense/Submission defense if you're getting demolished by ground specialists instead of going pure striking.  YMMV, based with how comfortable you are vs the CPU/restarting the game.

   D) Right around that time, I got the level 3 training upgrades, and I maxed out my scores there.

   E) I'm on year 8, and now my career is pretty much Fight, Train to stave off Cardio/Speed/Strength decay, Rest, Focused Sparring, Rest, and then alternating between Training/Sparring to keep from decaying/maybe put a point or two into new stats.  The Decay is pretty aggressive though.  If things look balanced, I'll do a Camp Invite to bring skills up from level 1.

4) Oh yeah, if you're having problems with being taken down, you might want to invest in getting the Omaplata (requires 60 Submission Offense).  I haven't used it yet, but if the Demo was any indicator, it's a submission hold that you use when you're in down position/Full guard, which you initiate and then let go immediately.  It ends with you standing, and your opponent on his back. 

Anyone find any "gotta have moves" via Camp Invites, btw?  10th Planet JJ has a nice Mount Down to Full guard top move, The Omaplata I think is also taught at 10th Planet (and some of the other camps as well).  I didn't see a Rubber Guard to mount top, so that cheese may be gone now...

[Lantien]

Oh yeah, something I just found out:

So there's an option buried in one of the menus that has an unlock shop.  Including in the unlocks are some pretty awful generic shirt patterns, CAF victory poses, fighter callouts, and new nicknames (including The Natural, the Pitbull, the Sandman).

To get unlock points, the fastest way I've seen is to play Title mode with Brock, then do Title Defense mode with Brock.  Doing both on Experienced gave me enough points to unlock all the CAF victory poses/callouts, and most of the nicknames.

[Azazel]

So is this fun to pick up and play? Or does it require large amounts of deep thought?

Also, how's the multiplayer? (local or online)

[Lantien]

I'd grab the demo first.  The gameplay is moderately different from 2009.  You might find some of your old tricks not working at all in 2010.  The demo, with 4 LHW fighters, is a pretty decent representation of how the fights will go.

You can spam punch/kicks, but if your opponent is dodging, you'll probably end up on the canvas.  Ditto if he starts to clinch, as the clinch game is the same quarter circle/more than quarter circle mechanics that the ground game used in 2009.

Haven't tried either multiplayer.  Heard that online multiplayer is a total wreck atm.  This is especially bad because Undisputed 2010 is doing the EA Project 10 system, with used copies needing to buy a code for MP.  The mental perception of attaching a specific dollar value to Online Multiplayer, and then have Online Multiplayer be full of lag, and rage-disconnections not applying to scores... there's a lot of ill will right now.

For what I do (mostly Single Player vs CPU), the game's fun.  I'd try out the demo to get a feel for how the game is though.

[Azazel]

Any updates on this game (and it's MP)? I had a play around with the demo and it was okay, then found out my Raiden Fighters pre-order had been pushed back (again) until Q1 2011 with an offer of refund instead, so I asked them to send me this instead...