It’s a very simple game, and as the attackers bar shrinks the longer the hold is applied, it can still be quite hard to get that submission locked in tight especially against a difficult CPU opponent, a bar in the middle of the screen lets you know how close you are to tapping out, or gassing out. The person initiating the hold has to put their bar so as that it overlaps their opponents bar (not the whole of it, just some) meanwhile the opponent has to move out of the way, both are done by spinning the right stick. When the submission is locked in, a large circle appears on the screen with two bars, one inside and one out. So what to do when you’ve kicked someone in the head and they go down? In the past years, the answer for many would be to ground and pound so as to avoid the confusing submission system, but that’s gone this year and instead we have a graphical display to help us along. It’s still not perfect, there are still some jerky movements, but for the most part the game looks and runs how you would want it to. Swaying out of the way of a barrage of punches and countering with a face kick can actually make you feel like Anderson Silva, and not like a robot version of him as we had in years past. The fighting itself feels smoother, whilst you’re still presented with character models that seem to be similar to those of the previous two outings, they move more fluidly now. It should be noted that I was already a fan of the Undisputed series, but it did have it’s flaws, namely an unforgiving submission system which seemed to almost entirely work on luck, this along with many others parts of the game, is where the big improvements have come in to the game.
Opting to miss out on a 2011 title, THQ and Yukes waited nearly two years to release Undisputed 3, and those two years have done the game a world of good.
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It did feel like it was going to go the way of WWE’s games though and become more of a yearly roster update than a new game. 2009’s offering was a great debut for the series, and 2010’s sequel was just as good albeit with more to do.
In 2008, THQ bought the rights to another fighting game which would see an annual release, that being the UFC game which they titled Undisputed.
Whilst I praised aspects of the game that were marginally improved, I was also left with a sour taste that the improvements were just a new wrapping on game that felt otherwise exactly the same. At the end of last year, I reviewed THQ and Yuke’s WWE 12, their annual wrestling release.