Game Reviews

EA Sports UFC

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EA Sports UFC

If you're a fan of mostly naked men rubbing up against each other the App Store has been good to you for the past two weeks.

First we had WWE 2K, which was all right, and now we've got EA Sports UFC. Which is a bit better. It looks nicer, it plays better, and - whisper it - it does free to play pretty well.

Floor punch

The meat of the game lies in career mode. Here you lead a pugilist through the thrills and spills of man-punching to become the best man-puncher in the whole of the world. You also roll around on the floor hugging people a lot.

The controls are gesture based. Tapping performs a light attack, swiping straight a medium attack, and swiping diagonally upwards a strong attack. Chaining these together gives you access to powerful special moves.

You can also block by double-tapping, and dodge incoming attacks by swiping backwards. You can also get your opponent on the ground and wham your fist into their face or try to choke them to death using tappy meter-stopping QTEs.

There's a card-collecting aspect as well. You can buy packs of moves and wrestlers and then absorb them into your being to toughen up and gain better skills. And, perhaps most importantly, there isn't an energy system.

You can boost your fighter with a rechargeable burst of energy, but you're never kept from the violence because you need a sleep.

Knock out blow

And that violence is surprisingly pleasant. There's a decent level of tactical planning, and bobbing and weaving through your opponent's blows before kneeing them in the gut and mashing their face into the floor is wonderfully cathartic.

There's a bit of grind here and there, as you'd expect from a free to play game, but it's never too unpleasant. This is a solid, eminently enjoyable brawler with far more wherewithal than your average mobile scrapper.

EA Sports UFC

A fierce and entertaining brawler that's got a lot more going for it than other examples of the genre
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.