UFC 4 Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs
4. Career Mode
After becoming rather stale at an alarming rate in UFC 3, you'll be pleased to hear that the latest edition's Career Mode is a marked improvement on what came before.
As always, players are given the choice to create a fighter who excels in one specific part of MMA (I chose kickboxing, but boxing, balanced, wrestler and jiu-jitsu are also available). Yet, once you've got the early customisation stage out of the way, the real fun begins.
Things get off to an engaging start as you meet Coach Davis and lose your first fight. Davis then takes you under his wing and proceeds to teach and guide you through a series of tutorials with amateur fights dotted in-between. It doesn't take long to get Dana White's attention and before you know it you've graduated from the Dana White Contender Series with a sparkly new UFC contract to show for it.
Sure, post-UFC call-up the mode becomes a bit more repetitive and feels like a very slightly altered version of the UFC 3 career path. Yet, the chance to now bring outside fighters into your training camp to learn their signature moves felt like an ambitious step forward, and sparring has now become a rather fulfilling way to hone and improve your skills.
Social media also plays a bigger role in UFC 4's Career Mode, as the tool is used again to promote fights.
However, this time around the platform can be used to start beef with other rival combatants. Sadly, it's rare anything ever really comes of this keyboard feuding apart from your relationship with another contender deteriorating to the point where they won't come and train with you anymore. What a shame.
Lastly, Fighter Evolution Points have been brought in as a way of upgrading your contender's attributes. These can be earned through the aforementioned sparring and fighting as your career progresses, and feels like a fresh way of crafting a performer that is personal to you. Also, your fighter's moves will improve the more you use them in a fight or while training, rewarding players for becoming more comfortable with a strike or way of grappling as time goes by.
UFC 4's Career Mode doesn't completely change the campaign game by any means, but the new additions and attempts to improve on the training camp of the past help give the mode more longevity than ever before.