EA Sports UFC 2: 10 Essential Fixes That Must Be Made

10. Fine-Tune The Stand-Up Game

Let's start off with a tricky one. The stand-up aspect of EA Sports UFC is something of a paradox - it's somehow both too fast and frustratingly sluggish at the same time. A lot of real MMA fights decay into an all-out brawl, a blur of reckless bar-fight swings, but in EA Sports UFC when things go thermonuclear in the octagon, something about it just feels a little... odd. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem is, though; perhaps it's the dynamic skeletal animation system not working exactly as it should; could be the unnaturally similar trajectory of spammed strikes; either way, when you see two fighters firing off sets of ten consecutive left hooks without a pause, you're quickly reminded that this is a video game, not an actual fight. Watching these men trading blows in the middle of the octagon with the crowd cheering and the lights flashing, it's easy to overlook the inaccuracies of the animation system and strike mechanic. But that's because you're so busy wrestling with the controls that your brain has begun to melt. It's when you take your tattooed bruiser off to the gym to go through the stand-up training drills that you first notice the crippling lag that handicaps the striking. The issue carries through to the fights themselves, once you're aware of it - there's a discernible disconnect between button inputs and actual strikes. If EA Canada hopes to turn EA Sports UFC into a long term contender for the fight crown, they're going to have to rework that for the sequel.