At one time I was a big fan of the UFC. I'm talking about the days when there were no rules or weight classes. Just two dudes beating the shit out of each other until one submitted or was beaten unconscious. Those were the days when there were maybe one or two guys who were actually skilled fighters. The rest were bar room brawlers, fake kick boxers, American Bruce Lee wannabes, 400lb monsters trying to last a minute of fighting, etc... That was then when I first saw and heard of Royce Gracie and he would dismantle the entire fucking tournament. Here was this small guy (6'1 170lbs, small compared to who he'd go up against) who would get pounded by these huge men yet come up victorious due to submission. I remember being pissed because I had started to like this one guy Pat Smith, but he never won. Royce Gracie would win. He dominated the first three or four UFC tournaments if I recall correctly. I've always respected Royce Gracie but I never liked him. Probably because he'd always beat anyone I'd be rooting for. Yeah it's childish I know.
After a few years however my interest in UFC petered out. For one I was a teenager at the time and once they started transforming UFC into a legit sport instead of the Running Man entertainment, I didn't care because I wanted to see the original no-holds-barred, sloppy blood fests. Then of course Dana White didn't help. I've never liked him, I just don't like his attitude. Hooray for him for ultimately putting MMA on the map. I admire his love of the sport and his will to make it popular but, he's just too arrogant for me. Then PRIDE FC rolled around. I wasn't on board at the beginning but definitely was when the 2000s came. By then I had already had my favorite fighter: Kazushi Sakuraba. When Sakuraba faced Royce Gracie in the Pride Grand Prix 2000 Finals, it was the first time I had seen Royce Gracie since those early UFC days. What better way to see him again when my current favorite fighter beat the shit out of him for an hour and a half? It was great! Pride was great. You can't beat soccer kicks to the face of a helpless opponent. Those are a no-no in UFC. Then... due to things going on in my life my interest for Pride petered out. I didn't have time to keep up with it unfortunately.
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| I've always loved Don Frye... |
So yes... if you guessed that I bought this for no other reason than Pride, you guess correctly. Did I waste my money. Hell no. I love it. I thought the previous UFC games sucked by the way. By now you've read how great the game-play and graphics and presentation are so I won't waste your time other than saying the aforementioned are fucking awesome. I want into detail about the Create-a-Fighter, something every review that I've read failed to even mention let alone go into detail. Don't expect to create Asians. Doesn't work. I consider myself to be pretty good at creating characters in sports games but god damn if I can't recreate an accurate looking Sakuraba. From the neck down it may be close sure but he doesn't look Asian. The developers really skimped on options with the Create-a-Fighter (CAF). With a very limited amount of hair option, which are all weak by the way, it really narrows down who you can create accurately. My Sakuraba looks like he has this huge bunch of hair combed into the middle of his forehead. From a distance it's almost similar but, once you can make it out it looks nothing like him. What pisses me off more is Sakuraba doesn't have some type of exotic or strange haircut, it's a normal looking head of hair. Nothing fancy, so why the fuck isn't there something close to it? There are a ton of fighters not in the game with the same haircut. Aggravating. Then there are knees. Sakuraba wore a knee-brace on his right leg, but we only get ONE option for a knee brace. One. I don't even think you can change the color of the tape on your gloves, not a big loss but I'd at least like the option to be there. The preset list of spoken first and last names as well as the nicknames are a joke. Isn't there recognition technology available by now that knows what I'm spelling? Maybe not but hey... who knows?
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| Dan 'The Beast' Severn... Old school right there! Love it! |
We do however get lots of options with the face which is good but, like I said, creating Asian eyes just doesn't work. I've tried presets and fucked around with the sliders for hours. Nothing. My Sakuraba looks like some wannabe guy from South Philly or something with cauliflower ear. If I this game's Asian eyes were just Asian looking I'd be on easy street. It's too bad because during a fight CAFs look pretty good. I mean, I'm not going to knock the game just because you can't make an accurate Sakuraba. Overall the CAF is a big improvement but, still the developers get lazy when it comes to it, I don't know why. Anyways. The only other CAF gripe I have is that if I want to make a guy who has stats maxed out, why can't I? Why make me take the guy through the career mode? Not that I make dudes with maxed stats but once again a simple option is taken away. While on the bitching subject, same shit in Fight Night too, if I want to pummel a Bantamweight to death with a Heavyweight such as Bob Sapp, why not let me??? It's unfair as shit but who cares. It can be funny as shit with friends, especially if the bantamweight wins! Just give the option man, if anything, give the option to do so offline, god forbid you don't cater to the online players.
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| Rampage. |
They're basically my biggest gripes with the game. And just because I'm more of a Pride fan than UFC doesn't mean much. I still use the UFC fighters. One thing I noticed that's cool is that the Pride fighters that transferred to UFC, you'll notice that their Pride stats are better. Why? Because they were in their prime in Pride. Wanderlei Silva is an 88 under Pride, but in UFC he's an 86 I think. The developers really put a lot of effort into the Pride portion of the game I just wish they'd put slightly more effort into it. Why no option to go through a Pride only career? Oh well. It's still bad ass. I'm having a lot of fun with this game, something I can't say about the previous ones.
Fan-Gasm Score:
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| The game is fun as hell. And Pride mode owns. You can't beat soccer kicking someone in the face. |
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