For months now I’ve been itching to get my hands on with EA Sports entry into the MMA ring. With amazing screenshots and great looking trailers streaming into my inbox, I was excited to finally get some time with the game last week at E3. The team that has brought us the great boxing series Fight Night is poised to take it to the MMA competition with EA Sports MMA.
Overall EA MMA is great. From gameplay to graphics any fan of the Fight Night series itching for some new fighting action will just love EA MMA. I’ll break down my impressions below.
Controls
Any gamer who has played Fight Night will be right at home, you have a choice either face button controls for punches and kicks or the ever popular right thumbstick total punch control. Once on the ground you’ll be using similar controls with the addition of the position progression button, which makes ground fighting quite easy. Unlike UFC UNdisputed which requires you to learn different thumbstick movements to change positions, EA MMA uses a button to advance and a button to block advances. WHile this make the games learning curve much easier, it does take away from learning ground skills. I actually enjoyed the simpler controls as it puts more focus on the fighting and action then learning various thumbstick rotations.
Gameplay
The gameplay is also very solid, and will offer MMA fans some varying match types. Instead of just sticking to the Strikeforce cage that we see monthly on Showtime, you’ll also be traveling the world fighting in Japan, Brazil and other nations. Each of these locations have different rules and regulations and really change up the games action.
Graphically
The game looks amazing. Fighters are identical to their real life counterparts, and the damage system is out of this world. Just like in Fight Night Round 4 the fighter models really come to life with full skeletal and muscle structures that you’ll see shift in move with each blow given or taken. While overall the fighters and game looks great, one thing I noticed is the fighters seemed to lack facial expressions in the ring, they all just seemed to have blank stares, granted this is still an early build. And what would MMA be without blood? EA MMA delivers an amazing damage system. Cuts to the face will progress over time and as your fighter start to sweat the blood will smear and drip off their bodies. Words really can’t explain how great this game looks.
EA Sports looks ready to take it to the competition and while they might not have the big names of the UFC on their roster, who cares about names? It’s all about fighting, and EA MMA is a great fighting game. EA MMA hits stores 10/19/10.
