Yet by the 10th fight, the repetition and grind became obvious. There are now long-term goals to check off, rivals to face down and contract bonuses to earn, all good things. Mode, comprises several stages of a fighter’s rise through his or her weight class. On the whole, UFC 3 is an order of magnitude above UFC 2, which offered a spare career experience and a pro forma Ultimate Team adaptation and, even two years later, remains bothered by glitches and stutters.īut for anyone other than a serious fight fan, the honeymoon with UFC 3 is short. The game’s Ultimate Team mode incorporates real fighters, making it a more intriguing proposition for fans of that game type. UFC 3 wants nothing more than to look the part, to appear like a believable facsimile of the real thing. In the career mode, players can round out their emergent narratives with peripheral distractions like social media and training obligations, though it still comes off as anodyne compared to the rowdy real life of the UFC between big events.

This visualization extends beyond the match. Fighters’ expressions are consistent with the moment a luxurious pre-fight presentation communicates that both fighter and fight are now a Big Deal and the sounds of fist to face, foot to midsection, are meatier, thwackier and more connected than 2016’s EA Sports UFC 2. In this way, the meaningful improvements to UFC 3 are mostly surface-level, which is not to say that they’re unnecessary.

Big hits and stunning blows have always been central to the series, but in UFC 3 they look more connected to something determinative - the meeting of skull and tibia, for example. Within the octagon, the striking delivers the fun far more than the grappling or the submissions, which are largely unchanged from the game’s predecessor of two years ago. The fighting action and the visual environment are better than ever, and sell the game far more than any of the other reconditioned features surrounding them. The moment lingers with me because it compactly summarizes UFC 3’s biggest appeal. But that look - I really believed that she was pissed, and that if I hadn’t finished her off right there, I’d be the one regretting it.

In similar situations in most video games, I’ve seen a vacant stare or comically gritted teeth. The blow staggered her, a computer-generated bantamweight. My opponent had leaned the wrong way, connecting my spammed roundhouse kick to her noggin. Going through the replay in an early match of EA Sports UFC 3, I caught a look I’d never seen before in a sports video game: hate.

Ufc 3 video game ps4