EA Sports MMA News Post

EA Sports MMA First Look (MiddleEasy)

11:52 AM - November 11, 2009 by Steve_OS

MiddleEasy has posted their first look at EA Sports MMA.

Quote:


	"With that said...EA Sports MMA is light years ahead of UFC Undisputed. It's hard to even compare the two games, they almost look like they were designed for two completely different consoles. One of the most amazing thing about the game was the sheer character fluidity. As you approach your opponent, your hands go up, your fighter stance is more aggressive and control appears to be vastly more responsive. If you back-off from your opponent, the hands go down, you sort of jump around and get more comfortable with the cage. Also, the one thing that really had everyone salivating was the announcement that each fighter has their own unique stance, strikes, submissions and defense. That means every fighter throws a right hook differently. When you catch your opponent's leg, not every fighter goes for the take-down. Some will spin your leg around and just deck you in the face...others will go for the sweep and slam you to the ground. Someone in the crowd asked 'Well wouldn't this take a lot of time from the developer's standpoint to program different moves for every fighter?'. The lead developer said 'It's worth it, we want to make EA Sports MMA as realistic as possible'. In UFC Undisputed, all fighters were modeled from the skillset of Kickboxing, Boxer, Wrestler, Muay-Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. This essentially meant that all moves looked the same and could be executed by any fighter that had those skillsets. This is not the case with EA Sports MMA. Each fighter has moves that they are historically known for doing. You won't see Fedor going for some flying heel-hook (Imanari style) but you will see him going for his wild overhand right (which we saw land and drop Brett Rogers)."

Game: EA Sports MMAReader Score: 8/10 - Vote Now
Platform: PS3 / Xbox 360Votes for game: 5 - View All

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Member Comments

# 1 TreyIM2 @ 11/11/09 12:44 PM

Sounds good because the first vid of the game wasn't impressive to me. This article and the rest posted here have me a little more eager to see it down the road.

# 2 JkA3 @ 11/12/09 03:37 PM

This article sounds much more impressive than the initial trailor.

# 3 Phobia @ 11/12/09 04:54 PM

Quote:


	In UFC Undisputed when fighters get in the clinch, movements seem very mechanical and only one fighter is allowed to hit at a time (something that we obviously never see in MMA). EA Sports seemed to capture the sporadic nature of being in the clinch, both fighters were struggling to get out while both trade blows simultaneously. Fingers were being extended to try to peel away the other fighter's grip while elbows were being thrown at the same time. Keep in mind, while this was going on sweat was building up on their skin and with each hit you could literally see the sweat come off their face and onto the mat. Speaking of mats, EA Sports MMA has a lot of different venues to fight in. From the demo, we saw Muay-Thai rings, Brazilian grappling dojos, British boxing rings, a circular cage that looks exactly like what they used in YAMMA pit fighting, six-sided cages used in Strikeforce and I believe I remember seeing just an open area in the middle of a jungle. In fact, the locations were so remarkable that someone in the crowd asked if they could them again on the monitor. EA Sports also announced Strikeforce as a premier league within the game which obviously leads us to believe that there will be other leagues (King of the Cage, Sengoku, MFC, DREAM, XFC) that will have their own fighters who each obviously have their own unique stance, movements, strikes...etc. This game is going to be huge. Massive. Bigger than what we speculated when we wrote our 'It's time to get amped up for EA Sports MMA' article in September.

WOW the article sounds AMAZING

The graphics are amazing also.

# 4 boxboy99 @ 11/12/09 07:56 PM

Looks awesome, sure I will be picking up 2 MMA games in 2010. You need to revive the league next year Phobia!

# 5 Phobia @ 11/13/09 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boxboy99


	Looks awesome, sure I will be picking up 2 MMA games in 2010. You need to revive the league next year Phobia!

I am for sure going to be reopening the league. Now the main question is knowing EA's track record I would bet they include some type of online league function. 90% of their games contain it, hopefully MMA gets the same treatment. Even if not though I am going to run it the same way as the UFC 2009 league.

# 6 sb24 @ 11/13/09 10:54 AM

As long as it delivers and does what they claim no one will care its not the ufc. Undisputed did pretty well giving guys options to deal with the cheesy tactics, as long as ea does this as well, they have a great shot at having a very sucessful game. That being said they have been guily of creating great hype over nothing at times as well.

# 7 Pappy Knuckles @ 11/13/09 10:58 AM

Good write up. This is sounding like it has the potential to be a monster of a game.

# 8 aholbert32 @ 11/13/09 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sb24


	As long as it delivers and does what they claim no one will care its not the ufc. .

I dont know about that. Depends on how much Strikeforce grows and whether the top fighters in the game keep winning. If Fedor loses before release that could hurt the game severely. If Couture loses to Vera (3rd in a row) that could hurt it also. People tend to identify MMA with the UFC so EA needs these fighters to continue to raise their profile in order to get people who arent huge MMA fans to watch the fights.

# 9 Phobia @ 11/13/09 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aholbert32


	I dont know about that. Depends on how much Strikeforce grows and whether the top fighters in the game keep winning. If Fedor loses before release that could hurt the game severely. If Couture loses to Vera (3rd in a row) that could hurt it also. People tend to identify MMA with the UFC so EA needs these fighters to continue to raise their profile in order to get people who arent huge MMA fans to watch the fights.

Yea but EA is a marketing power house. I don't think they will have any problem selling it. Put a EA logo on it and people flock to their titles.

# 10 sb24 @ 11/13/09 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aholbert32


	I dont know about that. Depends on how much Strikeforce grows and whether the top fighters in the game keep winning. If Fedor loses before release that could hurt the game severely. If Couture loses to Vera (3rd in a row) that could hurt it also. People tend to identify MMA with the UFC so EA needs these fighters to continue to raise their profile in order to get people who arent huge MMA fans to watch the fights.

I agree and disagree. I think there are plenty who only buy the game solely because of the ufc name. On the otherhand there are plenty of people who just want a good fighting game, kinda the way people want a generic 2k football game. Some will say they need the ufc, and some will say they want the best product. I think stickforce could fold and people would buy it(game not ppv's). Assuming all their claims will be true of course.

Basicly im not an ea guy and i really dont care about strikeforce but i still have an intrest in the game. If the game plays like they are already making us to believe, then it could be all generic fighters and i wouldnt care. All just opinion of course.

# 11 aholbert32 @ 11/13/09 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phobia


	Yea but EA is a marketing power house. I don't think they will have any problem selling it. Put a EA logo on it and people flock to their titles.

Not completely true. Arena Football and College Baseball had the EA brand behind it and flopped. Knockout Kings and Fight Night 1 struggled. The game needs to be much better than UFC in order to outsell it because its hard to market fighters who know one knows. Most people outside of hardcore MMA fans never watched a Fedor fight before this past Saturday. Its hard to sell a game when no one knows who your cover athlete is. In comparison, Fight Night 4 was easy as hell to market with Ali and Tyson on the cover.

# 12 aholbert32 @ 11/13/09 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sb24


	I agree and disagree. I think there are plenty who only buy the game solely because of the ufc name. On the otherhand there are plenty of people who just want a good fighting game, kinda the way people want a generic 2k football game. Some will say they need the ufc, and some will say they want the best product. I think stickforce could fold and people would buy it(game not ppv's). Assuming all their claims will be true of course. Basicly im not an ea guy and i really dont care about strikeforce but i still have an intrest in the game. If the game plays like they are already making us to believe, then it could be all generic fighters and i wouldnt care. All just opinion of course.

Good point. The problem that EA is facing is that they are competing against a good game. UFC Undisputed isnt even close to perfect but most people felt like it was a good game. Add to that the game has the most recognizable brand in MMA and has 80-90% of the fighters that most people want. Thats a tough mountain to climb if you are EA.

I'm a MMA fan so I know pretty much every fighter in Strikeforce/Dream and I'm excited about this game. I just dont see the average consumer being excited about fighting with Scott Smith or Robbie Lawler when you have another game that features GSP and BJ Penn. Especially if both of those games are good games. If they are both good...I thinkmost people will buy the UFC game.

# 13 Bad_Intentions @ 11/15/09 09:02 PM

Wow this article got me hyped up for EA MMA. I actually kinda wrote the game off, thinking that EA was just releasing an MMA game just to say they have one, but they appear to be putting alot of hard work in on it. The details seem amazing. This game may end up being everything I hoped Undisputed would be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Undisputed and think it's a good game, but this seems to be way more fluid and authentic. One of the things that i didn't like about Undisputed is that after a while it got really stale...Fighters all played the same pretty much, not to mention how much i HATE the submission system. I really hope EA delivers on this.

# 14 BlueNGold @ 11/15/09 09:24 PM

About the average consumer not buying it because of the lack of a UFC brand I think if the game is good then word of mouth will pass along to the average consumer that doesn't know Strikeforce/Dream so I don't think it will be much of an issue.

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EA Sports MMA First Look (MiddleEasy)