Angry Gaming 08.21.06: I Want My MMA
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 08.21.2006
Take your Day of Reckoning and Smackdown VS Raw and shove them up your ass.
Welcome to Angry Gaming, the Ivan Drago to the game industry's Apollo Creed. I'm your host, Damian Sarcuni and you'll be down for the count with one punch from my from my "bull charge". Look out baby it's on like Donkey Kong now!
I Want My MMA
If you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to check out the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Even if you aren't into combat sports such as boxing or wrestling, you can quickly see why promotions that showcase MMA are growing fast and raking in big numbers on TV and at the box office. Organizations such as Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) or Pride FC are entertaining not just for the excitement of their sport, but the way they showcase the diverse personalities of their fighters. Since there are only 3 or 4 truly global MMA organizations at this time, it is actually a pretty easy sport to follow with plenty of frills and great technical aspects and that anyone would find interesting.
MMA has actually been around for quite some time, but has only begun to pick up popularity in recent years. The idea behind it is simple: a 1 on 1 fighting bout in a ring or caged area that utilizes both kickboxing and grappling at the same time, where the goal is to either knockout or force your opponent to submit to a hold. Because the fighting styles of MMA fighters are so varied and the freedom fighters have in ways to beat their opponents, Mixed Martial Arts is often viewed as somewhat of a "controlled street fight". Almost anything can happen within a given set of rules for an MMA match, and this is what makes MMA so entertaining.
It's also made for some pretty crappy video games.
MMA actually has a pretty storied history across multiple gaming platforms, and not one truly good game has been made even after all this time. As a fan of both video games and Mixed Martial Arts, I find this completely unacceptable. Today we challenge the game industry to step up and do something that has thus far been impossible: make a good MMA title!
What Has Come Before
Our quest begins not with the first MMA video games or even with the creation of MMA itself. No, to find a decent fighting engine we must first look somewhere a bit less expected: The Nintendo 64.
The year was 1999 and Aki Corporation was on a roll. Aki, a Japanese counterpart to THQ, was enjoying storied success with their line of N64 wrestling games, with licenses coming from nearly every major promotion in the world. The reason for this was simple: Aki had created the perfect wrestling game engine, period. Take your Day of Reckoning and Smackdown VS Raw and shove them up your ass. You can stick all the bells and whistles you want into a wrestling game, recreate real live entrances, put infinite faces into the create a character modes, make the valets strip naked, whatever. Nothing will ever hold a candle to Aki's wrestling engine on the N64, and if you don't believe me check out games like WCW VS NWO: World Tour and Wrestlemania 2000 to prove it.
In those early days, MMA organizations and pro-wrestling organizations were heavily linked in Japan, and often fighters would become wrestlers and vice versa. So linked were they that pure MMA fighters actually appeared in some of Aki's Japanese wrestling games. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the games and the fact that MMA as we know it was still in its infancy, Aki utterly failed to capture the appeal of a Mixed Martial Arts match.
Jumping forward to the year 2000, Crave Entertainment released a self-titled Ultimate Fighting Championship game for the Playstation, the Dreamcast, and for some reason Game Boy Color. The game met with somewhat mixed reviews but was known for its control scheme (basically Tekken with more grappling involved) as well as graphics and sound. However, the difficulty was well beyond frustrating, and there were only so many bells and whistles put into the game. Yes, there was a create-a-character mode, and various fighting styles, but the characters lacked the personality and depth that fighting/wrestling games have shown off since the first Fire Pro Wrestling. (Yeah, import fans, remember that one?)
In 2002, Crave released a sequel for its first MMA game with UFC: Throwdown. While most reviews continued to claim the actual gameplay as solid, Crave failed to update its graphics work and did not make use of the PS2 and GameCube's hardware. At the same time, the monotony of generic fighters and an organization without much personality left the game dry and tasteless for all players who weren't already hardcore UFC fans. The music wasn't catchy, the environments weren't diverse, and in general, the game was another bone tossed to a starving pack of dogs that were MMA fans.
In 2003 it was Pride's turned, as THQ tried its hand a pure MMA game for the first time with Pride FC for the PS2. For the game's United States release, the back of the box trumpeted loudly that Ken Shamrock, the most popular MMA fighter in the U.S., was in the game. There is a small joke in this as Ken Shamrock had only fought in the Pride organization 3 times, and he lost 2 of those times. Does THQ have a case of desperate marketing tactics? Perhaps, but the game itself was in need of all the help it could get. With nearly all the fighters having almost no discernable differences frustrating difficulty, and more or less random match outcomes, Pride FC fell flat.
Crave was at it again too and they decided to go full circle, but not quite. UFC: Tapout, which was originally scheduled for release on the Dreamcast, was developed on the Xbox to fit with Microsoft's "badass" lineup of games. Both Tapout and its sequel, Tapout 2 were met with low expectations that were pretty much satisfied. By that time, players were expecting rehashed controls, repetitive controls, the usual backgrounds and sounds and relatively decent graphics with absolutely nothing that kept them coming back for more. This is exactly what Xbox fans got in both games.
Lastly, by 2004, UFC had teamed with Global Star Software (the same company that made Airport Tycoon, State of Emergency, and the worst game of all time, Ring II: Twilight of the Gods) to release UFC: Sudden Impact for the PS2. To everyone's surprise, Global Star actually created the best MMA game to date with little nuances that made the game unique. Grappling someone against the outside of the cage (octagon, gee sorry) now resulted in a slightly different available move set and a system of submission counters was also introduced. However, with only average graphics at best, awful sound, little replay value, and relative cookie cutter controls, UFC: Sudden Impact only stood out to those who had already played its crappy predecessors.
What Went Wrong
While no MMA game has ever suffered from an absolutely horrible control scheme, it's the control system that is truly flawed in each of them. One of the reasons we looked at Aki's wrestling games before is that they treated grappling like what it was: grappling. A constant test of strength and desperate grasp for positioning that does not let up. When you grapple in a wrestling game, you mash the buttons until someone comes out on top. In MMA games, dominant position is given to the aggressor and single motion strikes and submissions ensue. In reality, every MMA game has just been a boxing game where fighters happen to wind up on the ground sometimes. There is no flow between the standup game and the ground game. Not one game has ever done ground work the right way. There is no struggle for positioning, just a few lucky transitions and quick submissions that end the fight early and make the game that much more frustrating. This cannot be farther from the truth in a real MMA match, and it is an absolutely dire concept that all developers have failed to understand.
Another common complaint with all MMA games is the difficulty. Because no fighter's style or weight class is truly captured, fights seem all the more random and thrown together. Lightweights aren't fast, heavyweights aren't powerful, and everyone is just kind of the same. This is a pet peeve of all MMA fans. For example, in Pride FC, watching a known kick-boxer like Gary Goodridge get an early submission on Antonio Rodrigo Nogeuiera to win a match is laughable. Knocking someone out with a punch from the bottom while they sit on top of you is just as unlikely. Sure, it could happen, but it's so improbable it's not even worth putting in the game. Yet game designers haven't put anything into the game to make events like this become a rarity, and computer controlled characters excel at pulling off unrealistic victories that make MMA games lose much of their flavor.
What makes MMA games so bland is the lack of diversity. Fighters barely say anything and have little to no individual style or even fashion sense. You can't even pick a fighter who is wearing a cool looking set of trunks. Yes, the games are realistic, but to the untrained fan there is no reason to really appreciate any single fighter. These men are not unlike pro-wrestlers, despite what many MMA fans would have you believe. They have flashy entrances, they get interviewed all the time, and many of them ooze charisma. There is no reason not to put all of this into an MMA game, as it means so much more than outdated stats and fighter likenesses. In fact, there is no reason to have only one type of arena! UFC holds shows all over the country, and Pride changes its background sets from show to show. Yet game after game, both promotions showcase the same droll arenas and music with the same repetitious crowd. Without any of the colorful showmanship we are seeing in today's MMA fights, how can anyone be expected to enjoy these games?
What They Should Be Doing
Finding an improved fighting system for MMA games is not as hard as you might think. Consider for a moment Valve's Rag Doll Kung Fu, or their improved Half Life Source engine, where joints on characters are now fully animated and facial expressions are more accurate than they have ever been. Why can't two animated models be placed together in a grappling situation, where a player can use various button presses to defend a submission using different limbs, or go for a submission by performing certain controller movements ala Jet Set Radio? Hell, if BanDai could come up with a competitive finishing move system, why can't Crave?
A much simpler example of an improved fighting engine is in Tekken 5. Those familiar with the character of Craig Marduk should know what I'm talking about. See, Marduk actually utilizes a Vale Tudo fighting style, which is very similar to MMA. Marduk actually features a takedown maneuver in the game, and once he has his opponent on the ground, a player can use the left and right punch buttons to try to strike their opponent on either side. Their opponent, meanwhile, can use the analog stick to defend to the left or right, trying to anticipate Marduk's actions. This system already exists in Tekken, there is no reason why it could not be made more advanced and copied into an MMA game. Even if that doesn't work, why can't players do a quick round of button mashing on the ground to grapple? It would make for much faster paced and action filled games than what we have now.
Most important in a next gen MMA game are the advances in memory and animation on each console. Rather than have a few blurry video clips and a one paragraph bio on each fighter, games now have enough memory to include entire interviews with the fighters themselves, or flashier entrances, or *gasp* more than one type of crowd! Now is the time to showcase everything that MMA has to offer, to hire some real musicians and put some story and personality into MMA games. Yes, games so far have been great with capturing the realism of MMA matches, but these are video games and you can be absolutely certain that MMA fans won't mind being entertained by a fast paced game featuring all their favorite MMA fighters.
The Anger
It is now 2006. In the past two years, UFC has seen its pay-per-view rates more than double thanks to the success of their hit reality TV show, The Ultimate Fighter. Pride FC is set to begin showcasing live events here in the United States. Media coverage on all Mixed Martial Arts is at an all time high, and state to state individual athletic commissions are lifting the bans on MMA as a now recognized sport. At the same time, video games are undergoing huge advances as the next generation of consoles is set to be released and promoted with all new hardware and software capabilities.
The writing is on the wall: both MMA and video games are hot with the public and any game developer who acquires an MMA license now stands to make a very large sum of money, whether the game is good or not. At the time of this writing, no one has stepped up to the plate or announced any future plans to do so for the past two years. And the worst part is, with the latest advances in software technology, the game itself can be amazing and finally cross the line from mediocre time killer to memorable gaming experience. Why this hasn't happened yet is beyond me, but if anyone ever needed a spur to get things moving, well… I hope someone with some voice in some industry reads my damn column.
