I can’t stand the new EA Sports UFC game. I bought it, excited as could get and it turned out to be dog shit. The game is a FRACTION as good as UFC Undisputed 3, and even 2010. I’ll tell you some reasons why before thinking about it gets my blood pressure up again.

If you’ve even played UFC Undisputed 3, you will hate this game unless you’re an idiot. That is a fact, even though it’s really just an opinion. This game has a smaller roster, by far. It has poorly animated moves and punches. Sometimes, the fighter’s arm or leg will twist or twirl in the air or on the ground. The punches are slow-nightmare punches. The ones you throw that don’t hurt the guy who ends up kicking your ass (or in my dream’s case, gets his eyeballs gouged with a hooked-thumb).

The game lags MAJORLY BAD online. I don’t know what the netcode is for this, but I assume its a 10 MB file for every hit, since I seemed to experience delays of a second or more for every swing in some matches. At one point, I stopped swinging, mentioned it (since I was Twitching, a phrase that would have sounded like I was on speed in 1990), and my character took two more swings before stopping.

Bruce Buffer, who in the previous game, did his signature, lively voice-work, delivers a completely unrealistic lackluster performance here. He almost just casually says the line, while his character in the game mimics someone screaming their guts out. This is poor, lazy voice-recording by people who should be fired or who should get a crash course in quality.

Electronic Arts also displayed its cheap nature by removing at least one fighter’s tattoos, making the guy a vanilla version of his real-life counterpart. Read more on that here.

I don’t know where to begin with the submission system but here is the best example I can offer. Do you remember the game “Simon”?

Imagine having two of these, one under each hand, and attempting to play simultaneously. THAT is how the submission system in this game is!

What you actually must do is use the right joystick to block your opponent as he presses UP, DOWN, LEFT or RIGHT to escape. Then, a few seconds in, a light blue bar will appear in a direction, UP DOWN LEFT OR RIGHT, and you must press in that direction with the left joystick – all the while, still countering your opponent with the right joystick. You have around one second to press the direction with the left joystick and then your opponent will escape.

In previous games, you would rotate the joystick around in a circle to avoid your opponent who was doing the same and the submission move either advanced or was slowed and countered depending on who progressed. In this title, it actually functions like the fighters are slow, turn-based robots. Reality-wise, it’s terrible. Game-wise, it’s also terrible because it’s incredibly difficult to do a submission vs. relatively easy to escape one. Add that you must advance the move, for some insane reason, and it makes it look like you’re studying a frame-by-frame account of a fight. If you hear or see someone defending this submission system as better over previous UFC games, you know they are an idiot.

The blocking in this game could have been a redeeming quality but unfortunately, it is nothing of the sort. For some dipshitted reason, EA chose to use the right TRIGGER button in the blocking process. That’s right – I said IN the process, because you can’t just block by pressing R2. You now must press R2 and Triangle, Square, X, or Circle (or whatever the XBOX One’s stupid buttons are). Doing so will allow you to block either high or low. If you miraculously hit the button combination at the right moment, you might even parry a punch giving you a chance to throw a slow-molasses punch back at your foe.

Trigger buttons are the WORST choice for block in wrestling and fighting games. They take a second to press, vs. a button that presses instantaneously. Why is this a problem, some moron may ask? Because all of the punch or grabble buttons are INSTANT buttons and this one takes time to press! So for that reason, in itself, it’s a flaw. But in this game’s case, you have to press an instantaneous button AND a trigger button and somehow, do it at the same time. Stupid stupid stupid.

I hate the menus in EA games. This one is awful too. You have 4 or 5 windows you must move side-by-side through to do whatever you want. It isn’t organized very well and it takes a month to get to options if you want to do something.

The commentary is pretty good but it always has been in UFC games. However, it’s not as good as the previous games.

The graphics in this game, for the fighters, look insanely good. Too good, in fact, because not enough time was spent on punch animations, falling animations and other movements. So, even though it looks like two real guys are standing there, it also looks like they are 90 year old men in a play fight when one punches the other, the collission doesn’t have the glove even touching the face, and the man lays down (not falls down, lays down comfortably) to simulate the effect of being knocked out. You can’t even punch your opponent while they are DOWN after knocking them out! That’s something you could always do previously.

The training modes are not very good, either. For starters, the “intro” training you do when you first play the game will not be enough. You will get your ass destroyed if that is all you know and go online (trust me). So you must go through many hours in the training section to learn how to do things in this game that have been changed from previous UFC titles for no reason. You must use R1 to throw some punches, meaning you must have your middle fingers on the triggers. Some punches require you to use L2 + L1! Both triggers on the same side at once. I don’t normally hold my controller that way, so this game is audacious enough to tell me I need to use a trigger with my middle finger. Yeah, not a natural movement guys.

Also, your training partner is an idiot in many instances. I was doing a session where I had to dodge the guys punches and throw hits back, but he would simply stand there for many seconds at a time, without throwing a punch! Then, he would open up on me, somehow hitting the exact opposite spot I was blocking every time. Often with combos that didn’t even make sense. This is supposed to be a training partner – not a jerk head butt face.

This is just lackluster EA Sports trash and for the people out there saying it’s a good game or a “respectable first round” they’re full of major shit. It isn’t worth a damn and I’m going to take it back.

UPDATE: 6/20/2014

i’ve been playing more and I noticed something. The submission system seems to change colors sometimes, and I can’t figure out what it’s for. Maybe which corner you’re in? I don’t know, but this adds another LEVEL of confusion to the already ridiculous submission system. Just as you figure it out, they change the colors for the joysticks. Is EA Sports Canada or whoever made this trying to be as complexed as possible?

Also, on a Playstation 4, it’s unacceptable for your game to lag when it’s offline but this game does. Punches and kicks and movements and button combinations lag so obviously, if someone doesn’t notice it, it’s not because “theirs is working right,” – it’s because they’re not perceptive enough to notice things.

Here is what I thought about UFC Undisputed 2010. Or check out what I thought about UFC Undisputed 3, compared to this!