With the incredible surge in popularity that mixed martial arts has experienced over the last two years or so (some would argue it’s been a steady increase, but few would argue it’s truly taken off recently), it should come as little surprise that the fine folks at EA Sports would want to get involved and put their stamp on the product. Truth be told, it’s actually more surprising that it’s taken this long. With the UFC already putting out two top notch games in the last year and a half, is EA too late to the party? The short answer is: sort of.
The game is comprised of a few key elements, consisting of single and multiplayer options. The single player mode lets players either partake in a career mode with a created fighter of their choosing, allowing progress throughout the mode to mold said created fighter into a perfect superstar. The other single player mode is a standard quick fight, allowing players to pick two fighters from compatible weight classes to go at it using a variety of rule sets, such as Vale Tudo, Japanese, Unified or Strike Force. With over 60 fighters to choose from as well as many arenas, the options are plentiful.
In regards to multiplayer, the game offers up several online modes giving players the options to create their own fight cards for online events with friends, create hype videos to get invited specifically to EA sponsored online events, and competing in one on one events to move up the virtual leaderboards in hopes of obtaining championship belts. One of the unique features in the online play is the ability to watch previous fights from other players, or watch events live via PC or console streaming. We’ll talk more about the core gameplay in a moment, but our overall impression of the online component was that it suffered from EA’s notoriously suspect online servers, and that early low sales of the game have really hurt what could have been a shining star for EA. We found it hard to find opponents at what we would perceive to be normal hours, and when we did were treated to copious amounts of lag, followed by our faces getting pounded in by an opponent who was seemingly unaffected by said lag. The whole online component left a sour taste in our mouth, for what was otherwise a fairly pleasant experience.
For those who haven’t played an MMA game before, they might be unfamiliar with a lot of the terminology of the world of MMA or even for those who are just new to fighting/wrestling style games in general, EA MMA is extremely forgiving and educational. Almost all of the terminology contained within was familiar to this reviewer but I do follow the sport of MMA semi seriously. That being said, with terms like full mount, clinch, rear guard and many others, without an explanation for newbies it would be very easy for players to quickly feel overwhelmed and out of their comfort zone. EA does an incredible job through it’s career mode of explaining the sport, the terminology and introducing players to the games controls step by step in a way that made us feel involved, whereas most tutorials simply make us jam on the ‘skip’ button. For anyone getting into the game for the first time, we cannot recommend the career tutorial enough, and if that doesn’t provide enough information the MMA 101 mode touches base on everything else.
The core gameplay of EA MMA is fairly easy for gamers of all skill levels to pick up quickly. In the UFC series, one of our complaints was that the controls were overly complicated and this diminished much of the fun that could be had in the game. Occasionally with EA MMA though, we found that the controls sometimes felt a bit too simplified. While we appreciate the ease of use that comes along with this, towards the end of our careers (spoiler alert: get to 40 wins and career mode is over) we were literally forcing fighters to tap out within 10-15 seconds of the opening bell. The reason for this is that outside of stand up fighting which handles just like EA’s Fight Night series, submission moves are essentially executed by any number of mini game like situations, whether it be pressing a button in a specific pattern or rhythm to lock in an arm bar, or rotating the joystick at just the right angle to lock in a choke. Ground fighting and clinch fighting handle remarkably well, and both stress a balance between strength and stamina. Players looking to go into a fight spamming upper cuts and round house kicks will find themselves hitting the mat quickly. The game handled extremely well and it’s hard to find fault with the way any of it plays as far as the gameplay itself. The problem lies in that with easy accessibility comes a game that sometimes seems almost too easy and that we felt at times was almost ‘MMA Lite.’
Graphically the game is gorgeous, which comes as no shock since the game runs off of the Fight Night engine. Players will see blood flowing regularly and sweat flying from hard connected punches and kicks. Player models are stunningly created right down to the startling accuracy of the tattoos on the fighters. As far as in game sound goes, the commentary is some of the best we’ve heard to date in a sports game as Mauro Ranallo and Frank Shamrock provide play by play for each fight. They hit the high notes of each fight very well, react appropriately when a fight takes a sudden and dramatic turn and overall do a very nice job. The games soundtrack isn’t particularly strong, but it’s also not terrible. The ability to give fighters entrance music is a nice touch we’d like to see more games provide.
As a complete package, the same things that we feel make EA MMA a title we’d be remiss if we didn’t recommend, also hold it back. The game handles extremely well and feels balanced throughout. The problem is that without much depth, players will quickly find what works and what doesn’t and matches quickly devolve into slug fests until one person misses a beat. While the UFC franchise may be a tad bit on the complicated side to newcomers, the EA entry just doesn’t have the depth necessary to establish a long term connection for us. Combine this with the games unforgivably poor online support, and we’re left with a game that shows immense promise but falters on one too many levels. One of those two issues being shored up would be enough to keep us coming back for more, unfortunately it doesn’t look as though that will ever happen. With UFC and THQ agreeing to a contract extension recently through 2018, any hopes EA had of establishing a foothold in the MMA market took a serious hit. Coupled with a debut entry that falters in two major areas, and we’re left with a lot of doubt going forward as the future of the EA MMA franchise. Our hope is that EA Sports is patient enough to give the team for EA MMA at least one more cycle to shore some things up and make improvements for another entry as the series is just too good not to continue, but not good enough to be crowned king just yet.
Overall: 7.5 out 10
**Review copies of EA Sports MMA were furnished to Gameseyeview by EA Sports. We thank them for their time and consideration.**
