It must be tricky to recreate the complex brutality of mixed martial arts in game form; boxing is difficult enough as it is, but throw in the wildly diverse disciplines that make up your average bout of MMA and things get really complicated really quickly. Brazilian Jiujitsu, Taekwando, Judo, these sports bring so many different moves and styles into the cage that programming it all into one seamless fighting game must be like trying to reconstruct the Eiffel Tower out of sausages. In the dark. THQ and developer Yuke's came damn close with the UFC Undisputed franchise - they surprised us all with the first one, and got progressively better until the third iteration in 2012. And then THQ imploded in a cloud of financial ruin and unpaid bills. Fight fans got quite excited (and a little skeptical) when EA picked up the suddenly-homeless UFC license, and all were thrilled and amazed throughout the development process as EA Canada teased us with the awesomeness that was in production. After all, EA Sports MMA, their first attempt at the genre, was an impressive debut - and fans expected good things. When EA Sports UFC finally showed up on store shelves in June this year it came charging out of its corner looking bloody fantastic. Muscles rippling and flexing under the skin, flesh compounding under the pressure of countless powerful blows, the blood and agony spattered across fighters' faces - hell yes, this is what next generation gaming was meant to be like. But after the beauty pageant was over, things turned out to be less spectacular than first impressions had led us to believe. It wasn't bad, not like Fighter Within bad - in fact there is a lot to love about it - but EA Canada had promised so much and let fans down in a number of ways. Critical ratings reflected our disappointment, and it wasn't long before sales figures began to stall. Make no mistake, EA still pulled in the cash with EA Sports UFC, but you can't help but feel that EA Canada could have done better. Instead of just spitting out negative sentiment though, lets take a look at where they went wrong and what they can do to turn things around for a potential sequel. Oh, and this is EA Sports - you can be sure there'll be a sequel.
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
