The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a brutal affair. In any given fight during an event, two supermen enter a ring (or more accurately, a cage, affectionately called ‘The Octagon’) and proceed to punch, kick, pummel, squeeze, twist, slam and throttle one another into submission, using an assortment of mixed martial arts (MMA) techniques to overcome their opponent.

Only one fighter can be deemed the winner (through a tally of points, a knock-out or submission), and by the end of a given fight, the floor of the coveted Octagon may very well be stained with the blood of the competitors, as their mashed faces display streaming open wounds belonging to victor and loser alike.

UFC Undisputed 2010, the videogame from THQ and Yukes, recreates this activity in the virtual realm down to the last blood splat, and includes a host of different gameplay modes in which to test and improve your skills, but like the last entry to the series, you’ll spend a relatively small amount of time in The Octagon as you make your way through a swathe of menus and load screens to get to the fights.

From start-up, UFC Undisputed 2010 tries to impress upon you the epic and ‘prestigious’ nature of the league and tournament, and is partly successful before deflating with the showing of an overwhelming amount of menu options to get into the many singleplayer and multiplayer modes, extras and the tutorial. Naturally, the tutorial is where you should start, and with UFC Undisputed 2010’s comprehensive assortment of included offensive and defensive manoeuvres, it’s definitely necessary to grind through this section first.

And ‘grind’ is right. ‘Featuring’ the same learning procedures as UFC 2009 Undisputed, the tutorial in Undisputed 2010 is an absolute chore to work through, and infuriatingly slow. It would have been a much better idea to get players up and running quickly with, perhaps, a little story segment, requiring the player to learn different moves against a friendly but trash-talking opponent, say, rather than the current situation of linearly progressing from learning one move-set and ability to the next.

In any event (and at a ‘steady’ pace), the tutorial is where you’ll learn about left and right punching and kicking, using the controller’s shoulder buttons to modify high and low attacks, the significance of blocking, dodging and weaving, and the all-important grappling and floor submission manoeuvres. You’ll need to wear your opponent down by focussing on one area (the head, body area or legs) while being sure to protect yourself at all times from incoming high and low attacks, as well as taking opportunities to land more powerful punches and kicks.

Getting your opponent to the floor and dominating him with a range of holds and submission moves is key in the world of UFC, and the ability to initiate these floor attacks and defend against them is crucial to success. If you can’t handle it, skilled wrestling fighters will take you down immediately.

The act of throwing attacks and initiating these special moves is mostly satisfying, but ground moves can end up feeling a little random. When you’re trying to pull off a specific manoeuvre and get into a position of dominance (by flicking the right stick in different directions), your fighter may do a little wriggle and nothing more as your opponent counters that move with a manoeuvre of his own, resulting in no action by either party. Quite frustrating.

Asking for ‘a bit of a story’ in the tutorial shouldn’t have been a problem, because the Career Mode (arguably the main mode in UFC Undisputed 2010) contains a little progression narrative as you move your way up from the guise of an unknown but talented MMA fighter with gusto, into the role of a reputable, respected Ultimate Fighting Championship contender, with the world ranking to prove how far he’s come.

This is where the customisation of your character comes in. You’ll be able to customise your name, face type, facial hair, hair, body and weight type, the appearance of tattoos, skin colour – a whole range of attributes. The chosen visage will then show up during little story vignettes throughout the Career mode. Of course, my character was a giant of a man with pink dreadlocks and green facial hair, but unfortunately during story sequences (and during fights) the dreadlocks distractingly clipped through the character’s own head and neck as he moved and swayed, which was a little disconcerting.

Career Mode is the worst offender when it comes to the overt use of menus and, once again, the calendar system. While an improvement over UFC 2009, Undisputed 2010’s use of the calendar is completely separate from the actual fighting, and even though what you do during a calendar week is extremely important to proceeding scheduled fights (as you assign time to train up your character and assign skill points, rest, attend other fighters’ events and appear on MMA television programmes to gain reputation), doing all of this in a set of menus independent of gameplay is the least enjoyable part of the Career. Surely, this is to simulate the unglamorous part of being a UFC superstar, but gamers play videogames to have fun, and not to fill out other people’s tax forms.

Creeping along the calendar to a scheduled fight will eventually ‘reward’ you with gameplay… but not before going through the rigmarole of the lead-up to the event, with a series of ceremonious hand-offs to announce the commencement of what always seems like the fight of the century. This can all be buttoned through, but there are still load times in-between each proceeding and showing of a ‘UFC’ banner, and when a fight can last less than a few minutes, all of this build-up is largely for nothing.

On TV, this may work well to convey a sense of grandeur and to hype the upcoming fight, but, again, this is a videogame. As long as everything can be skipped through as easily as possible, these cutscenes are fine, but when you’re making players wait for extended periods of time to see these sequences, it’s a little too showy for my liking.

This is alleviated, to some degree, with the inclusion of a few different modes that will allow players to ‘quickly’ jump into a fight with an opponent (sometimes with pomp still included), with modes like Exhibition (where you can choose a fighter, an arena and get straight to it), Title Mode (defeat a list of fighters in a ladder to become champion), Title Defense Mode (defend that ‘champion’ title) Tournament Mode (compete in a tournament) and Event Mode (set up your own tournament), all of which are similar insofar as they allow you to get in the Octagon and pummel an opponent’s face to a pulp.

There’s also an Ultimate Fights mode which adds the extra challenge of recreating classic fights from the history of the UFC, tasking players with ensuring a specific fighter defeats an opponent in a certain way, in a specified round of the fight. While these are quite difficult to complete, it’s definitely a nice addition and provides a different pace from the usual set of gameplay challenges.

Multiplayer is a whole other topic for UFC Undisputed 2010. To begin with, the ‘Multiplayer’ option in the menu is unavailable, and requires a code to access online play (which comes with every original purchase of the game). After going through the bizarrely obtrusive process of entering the provided online code, I was taken to the (in this case) PlayStation Store to download a patch. I wasn’t told if the patch had been downloaded or not, or even if it had been installed, so I went through the process again, making sure not to take my eyes off of it. No prompts. So I exited the Store and I was plopped back into UFC Undisputed 2010 with a fresh restart, and Multiplayer was magically available.

At this point, getting an online multiplayer match in UFC Undisputed 2010 is a bit of a crapshoot, and trying to join a ranked or unranked match will yield mixed results. After buttoning through to join someone else’s match, you may be kicked out before joining, and waiting for someone else to join a match you’ve created would remind some of an unsuccessful fishing trip. Once you do get an online match, it’s very similar to the singleplayer: a lot of build up and hype, followed by a few minutes of gameplay (if you’re lucky – online players are crazy-good), and then back to the lobby to try and catch another match.

Playing against a human opponent is obviously more challenging than your average artificial intelligence, but you’ll probably be bringing the same skill-set and fighting strategies you used in your offline matches into the online realm, which can bare fruit or result in a quick loss depending on the proficiency of your foe.

UFC Undisputed 2010 is still a solid, satisfying fighting title when you’re actually able to work your way through the menus, build up and setup, and get to grips with some real gameplay, but as far as I’m concerned, the developers haven’t learned enough from the last iteration of the game and haven’t improved enough elements from UFC 2009 to confidently say that Undisputed 2010 is a successful follow-up.

It may contain a few more features, an updated roster of athletes, better load times, a superior calendar system, and a snappier feeling fighting system, but these are just iterations over what was a pretty good game in the first place, with several faults that haven’t been addressed, the configuration of menus and strange loading amongst them.

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