Hands on with MMA for iPhone

It's fairly easy to determine which fighter is the best in a given field - throw two in a ring and watch the carnage unfold.

However, how can you compare two fighters from completely disparate forms of combat and work out who's the best? Well, throw them in a ring of course.

That’s the principal behind tournaments like MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), which bring together different fighting disciplines like Jujutsu, Sambo, Muay Thai, and straight-up boxing.

EA’s latest title for the iPhone is attempting to tie all these wildly different ways of beating the crap out of your opponent into a more approachable game than its more focused competitors by doing away with a virtual joystick and buttons completely.

Rather than traditional ‘punch’ and ‘kick’ button, MMA divides its screen into invisible quadrants relevant to the limb you wish to use in combat. So tapping the top-left initiates a light jab with the left hand, while the bottom right activates a short sharp kick.

Harder moves, such as a nasty left-handed upper-cut, are activated by sweeping across the touchscreen in the direction of the blow. Blocking, meanwhile, is performed by pressing both the ‘hand quadrants’ down – as you would in real-life if your hands were controlled via the medium of the touchscreen.

Should a block be performed just as the enemy swings, the game slows-down briefly, essentially allowing you a free ‘heavy’ attack on the opponent while he looks on in dismay. Get the timing wrong and you can always attempt to jink out of the opponent's reach by tilting the device either to the sides or away from your body.

That’s just the boxing part of the game. At any point during a round, your fighter can attempt to either clinch an opponent by pulling two fingers together on the screen, or try an audacious pin and eventual submission move by sweeping two fingers down.

It’s not quite as easy as ‘grab, put on floor, win’, though, as every attack depletes your fighter’s stamina. Run out at an awkward moment – when you have the other guy in a leg-lock on the canvas, say – and your amazing, match-winning hold could come back to bite you as your man lets go.

Oh, and you’re constantly fighting back against enemy counters, achieved by pressing two thumbprints that appear in random places on the screen. Miss one and your opponent gets a rather heavy hit on an exposed place.

For fans of MMA, EA has brought its typical level of professionalism to the presentation and content of the game, with a large selection of fighters from the likes of Randy Couture and Fedor Emelianenko, to even licensing the world's most famous referee, ‘Big’ John McCarthy.

There’s an RPG element to the Career mode as well, with your young (customisable) fighter able to use one training mini-game between fights to raise his stats.

Interestingly, his stats also raise depending on what kind of moves were performed during a fight, so constantly smacking someone in the chops will lead to more effective ‘striking’ after the dust has settled.

If the Career mode sounds like too much hard work, the Challenge mode works on a fight-by-fight basis, recreating famous brawls in MMA history and charging the player with altering the outcome of the fight.

Disappointingly, no multiplayer is planned for this first edition of the game.

It’ll be interesting to see if this new approach to controlling fights will prove a hit with iPhone gamers and if the more accessible fighting system will have enough depth to sustain a longer period of play.

We’ll find out if this leads to a tap out for the competition when MMA launches (with Retina support included) in October.