UFC 2009 Undisputed Preview

UFC is coming

"If you watch a boxing fight the knock outs are few and far between," says Tim Mulligan, senior UFC brand manager for publisher THQ. "Usually they go to a decision. UFC pay-per-view you're going to see somebody get knocked the f$!k out. It's just pure, complete entertainment. It's modern day gladiators."

If, to you, UFC sounds like a KFC knock-off, then Tim's comments go some way to explaining what the Ultimate Fighting Championship is all about. It's brutal, pretty-much no-holds-barred fighting where two hard-as-nails blokes go at mixed martial arts style in an eight sided cage fence. Nice.

The mixed martial arts bit refers to the six styles of martial arts that fighters have access to in the UFC - boxing, kick boxing, Brazilian jujitsu, Muay Thai, Karate and Judo. From what we've seen on Bravo, and, more recently Setanta, most UFC matches end up with a couple of sweaty men rolling around on the ground for a couple of minutes until one of them taps out in desperation. But, when we're lucky, we're treated to a spectacular knock out. And more blood than on your average episode of Casualty.

Tim makes the distinction between UFC and boxing for a good reason - THQ sees UFC 2009 Undisputed, their first officially licensed videogame of the sport, as competing against boxing games like Fight Night, Prizefighter, FaceBreaker and, to an extent fighting games like Tekken. Yes, we said Tekken. And not it's other fighting games like WWE Smackdown VS Raw.

The game features 80 real life fighters and thousands of moves

At Leipzig Games Convention last month we got a chance to see the game in action for the first time, and mightily impressed we were too. The reason? It looks like it might actually have a decent fighting mechanic, and a unique one to boot.

The game's already been in development for three years. By the time it's out - it's on track for release on PS3 and Xbox 360 in Spring 2009 - it'll have been in development for nearly four. And it shows. The graphics are absolutely amazing. We're used to seeing impressive character models in THQ's WWE games (UFC is being made by the same Japanese developer - Yuke's - but by a completely different team) but this is something else. Each of the 80 officially licensed fighters (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson and Jay Dee "B.J." Penn, among many others, have already been confirmed) enjoys around 25,000 polygons. Compare that with the 5,000 or so polygons that make up a footballer in FIFA, and you get an idea of the level of detail we're talking about.

Each fighter takes up a huge amount of the screen. Funnily enough, it looks like a cross between Smackdown VS Raw and Fight Night. We're watching the game being played in high definition on a large wide screen television and it looks almost real. From hair to sweat to veins, it's all there in glorious detail, enhanced by the hundreds of head and body scans of every single real world fighter. You can even see where the fighters shave their chest hair because hair follicles stick out.

The realism, however, wouldn't be what it is without the painstaking motion capturing work that has been undertaken, ensuring that the 3,000 or so moves (there are 200 jujitsu submissions in there somewhere) that are in the game are animated as they should be.

"The game was built specifically for those next-gen systems," Tim explains. "Not one bit of code from any other previous THQ game is in this game. It's been built completely from the ground up. All new fighting mechanics, a completely new fighting engine. Graphics that are specifically designed for the PS3 and Xbox 360."