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Product summary
Sudden Impact is easily the most unflinchingly halfhearted effort in the series to date, and it only serves to further run the once-promising UFC name into the ground.
Specifications: ESRB: Teen; Genre: Action; Elements: 3D Fighting; See full specs
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 04/21/2004
- Released on: 04/21/2004
One thing that nearly every successful gaming franchise has commonly displayed is an ability to adapt and change. Without the ability to move your franchise in new and exciting directions, it doesn't take long for a franchise to become stale beyond repair. When the first Ultimate Fighting Championship title was released on the Dreamcast four years ago, it showed remarkable promise. Unfortunately, every subsequent entry in the UFC series has simply been one retread after another, with little innovation and few real differences to speak of. UFC: Sudden Impact for the PlayStation 2 is the latest game to bear the UFC license, and just like many of its predecessors, it brings nothing new to the table. In fact, Sudden Impact is easily the most unflinchingly halfhearted effort in the series to date, and it only serves to further run the once-promising UFC name into the ground.
UFC: Sudden Impact features just about the most phoned-in Ultimate Fighting experience in the series to date.
If you've ever played any of the previous entries in the UFC series, you've pretty much played Sudden Impact. Each of the four face buttons on the controller specifically controls one of your fighter's limbs. By hitting two buttons at once, you can perform a takedown, a grappling move, or a submission move or other similar technique, depending on your fighter's personal style. When on the ground, you can move around and attack from a few different mounted positions, as well as go in for various submission moves and counters. The one slight addition made to Sudden Impact's gameplay is an added focus on fence positioning. When backing an opponent into the cage that surrounds the UFC's famous Octagon ring--or when backed up yourself--going in for a grapple or special maneuver will put you into one of several different possible positions, including a standing face-off as well as a special ground-mount, where the bottom fighter's head is literally pressed against the cage. Generally speaking, these added positions don't come into play a whole lot, but they do add a smidgen of variety to what is otherwise the exact same gameplay system that's been done near-to-death at this point. The only other change to speak of is that the fights are a bit faster this time around, though all this does is seemingly rob the game of some of its strategy, since half of the game's countering strategy is rendered practically useless in the process.
UFC: Sudden Impact includes every standard mode you've come to expect from a UFC game, including the progressive championship and arcade modes, as well as a standard versus mode. There are about 40 fighters in the game, nearly all of whom are familiar faces from previous UFC games, including Tito Ortiz, Chuck Lidell, Bas Rutten, Kevin Randleman, Tsuyoshi Kosaka, and Ricco Rodriguez. The only added mode to this year's game is a career mode, which lets you create your own fighter from a fairly lengthy list of prerendered models and lets you train him to become a UFC fighter. This mode seems like a great idea at first, but, unfortunately, it's so poorly executed that you won't want to play through it more than once.
Essentially, the game's career mode tries to give you a bit of backstory to your character by setting him up as a street tough (with nothing to lose) who is recruited by a UFC trainer. The trainer sets you on the path of making it to the UFC within three years. Once you start, you go about choosing a dojo to train at, which essentially dictates what kind of fighting style you'll practice. Every aspect of your training and story is told through barely-coherent-talking-head boxes at the bottom of the screen that are really only useful for gameplay tips and not much else. Additionally, you really don't ever get to actually do anything very interesting in the mode. Each aspect of your training requires you to perform a specific challenge, such as landing three left punches or taking an opponent down twice in a match, and more. Winning challenges earns you stat points and new moves. Unfortunately, the list of actual challenges is fairly short, and they repeat from year to year.
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