10:51 AM - December 15, 2015 by aholbert32
OK, so I'm back after almost a week of nothing but UFC events (UFC 2, TUF Finale, UFC 194). Here are a few quick impressions. Some of them are vague because I cant speak specifically about a few things that haven't been discussed (cant go into great depth about the striking yet):
- Roster: The roster is about final and it's the largest MMA game roster ever. There are some BIG surprises that I cant talk about yet but I think everyone will be excited about them.
- Grappling System - I've played every MMA game ever created (back to the Dreamcast days) and this is the most natural system I've seen. Past systems have always felt turn based. For example, I'm in half guard, I try to move to Side Control but you block it...now its your turn and you try to move me back into full guard.
This system feels like grappling. There are more positions, more sweeps and more escapes. Now before you flip out these moves aren't available to everyone. For example, I primarily used Welterweights when I was playing the game because that division was the only one with some of the AI fully installed and the complete move-sets implemented.
In one of my first fights I used a non- top 10 WW who is primarily a striker vs an unranked WW who is primarily a grappler. In the 2nd and 3rd rounds, the grappler was successful in taking me down by using trips in the clinch. Both times, he proceeded to keep top control for over 2 minutes. I didn't feel cheated at all because my opponent had a much better move-set and ratings on the ground than I did. This sort of thing would've happened in a real fight.
In round 3, I started sick of being held down and managed to get my opponent back into half guard. I started spamming trying to get out from under him and that worked to my detriment. He passed to full mount and submitted me with an arm-bar. That seemed perfect to me. I spammed, it cost me a ton of stamina and my opponent was able to move into a dominant position and finish me.
This never happened in UFC 1.
Bottom line: I love the new system and the devs are still working with the GC's on ways to continue to improve it. There were some small issues that I brought to the Dev's attention (AI fighters were aggressive with position advances on top but not mixing enough strikes; CPU would sometimes randomly stand up from half guard) but even with those issues the system looked great.
AI and Movesets: I have to be a bit vague here because its not fully installed but I like what I see so far. My biggest frustration with UFC 1's striking AI was everyone was a kick-boxer. EVERYONE. Guys who rarely throw kicks would throw kicks constantly.
There were only 10-15 guys who had their full AI and movesets installed but you could see a difference. I played against one boxing HW who rarely throws kicks in real life and in the game...he rarely threw any kicks. Hopefully, Skynet will talk a little about the work he's done on the AI because it deserves some attention and praise.
With that said, I've only seen a small bit of it and I'll really be able to dig into it closer to release. If its stays consistent with what I saw Wednesday, the AI will be in good shape.
Regarding move-sets, the dev team has taken a more intelligent approach. The move-sets for the most part are still works in progress but I was satisfied with the completed ones I saw. There will likely still be discussions about whether fighter X should have a spinning back fist or not. But I don't think there will be any similar to UFC 1 where HWs had Capoeira kicks and Showtime kicks.
I'll answer some of the questions from last week's thread a little later.
Working...