At the time of this review, Mixed Martial Arts is the fastest growing sport in the world. It’s a sport that has gone worldwide with several great fighters coming from nations like Japan, the USA, England, Holland, and other places. However, there really hasn’t been a game that has attempted to give an idea of what it’s like for a new professional fighter coming up in the MMA world. One of the biggest goals that EA Sports MMA set for itself was to accurately show what it’s like for a fighter who fights all over the world, and the ways he may become a better modern warrior. Beyond this, EA Sports MMA also attempts to make a realistic, believable MMA video game with compelling online features and a fighting system that does the sport justice. Does it succeed?

As with any game in the EA Sports branding, EA Sports MMA attempts to give the player a solid visual and audio experience with its presentation. From that standpoint, Tiburon delivers some very solid presentation elements in some parts, but unfortunately falls a little short in others. In the case of the arenas, each place you’ll fight has quite a bit of detail and variation depending on location, rule set, and type of arena (whether you fight in cage or ring). Though this is definitely an important high point, the game begins to struggle once it hits the human element.

Arenas for this particular game are very well detailed

Actual human character models are pretty good, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re photorealistic. Whether it is simply an issue of some of the lighting issues or maybe being texture problems, the fighters look a little bit off. It almost seems like many of these fighters are pre-rendered action figures rather than real people. Beyond this, when a bout starts you’ll notice the lip-synch of the ring announcer is worse than a dub of a Godzilla movie. Create-a-fighter is also underwhelming, with most fighters sitting directly in the uncanny valley, and many of your options for creating fighters is lackluster. The Photo Game Face feature also doesn’t give strong results and overall seems too basic, especially coming from the team behind the Madden games. However, this is partially rectified by crazy nicknames like Killer Turtle being available.

Another issue with the presentation is that it seems many of the fighters suffer from Ben Reilly syndrome, meaning that many of them feel like clones of one another. Though there are many shared techniques among fighters of similar styles, you can’t really convince me that a brawler like Brett Rogers throws a head kick at all, let alone the same way that 2010 K-1 Grand Prix champ Alistair Overeem does. It makes many of the fighters seem like palette swaps with minor changes in stats. Beyond that, fighter AI has many issues, with fighters like Bob Sapp fighting using Muay Thai technique when they’re prone to brawling, and the AI generally being non-adaptive. When I’ve stuffed Bobby Lashley’s takedown attempts seven times, you’d think he’d figure to set up the takedown with punches, right? Wrong.

A FIGHTER LIKE BRETT ROGERS (LEFT) WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO THROW A BODY KICK LIKE ALISTAIR OVEREEM (RIGHT) WHO IS A K-1 CHAMPION

There are also some minor issues in the looks of some of the submissions. The Americana lock, the gogoplata, and omoplata don’t really seem as mean as they are in real life. These are locks that can break limbs like twigs, or choke you unconscious before you know what happened. However, the other holds in the game look brutal. The armbar deserves special mention, because as your opponent taps, you can see their shoulder and arm joint hyperextend. Beyond that, the blood effects in the game are fantastic. Though a fighter will never get a doctor stoppage (highly unrealistic), blood will smear across the ring, on the fighters and their shorts and so forth. It really captures how brutal the sport can get once cuts get opened.

Truthfully, EA Sports MMA does a solid job with its sound design. Starting from the main menu, you’ll notice that there is a decent amount of songs from hip hop and hard rock to hear (and the ability to turn off certain tracks is wonderful if you’re not a Linkin Park fan).  Another neat presentation point is the buildup to the match itself, with awesome fighter entrances. I got chills when Dan Henderson would enter to the song “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider. Each arena also has different announcers, with Jimmy Lennon Jr. announcing Strikeforce bouts, and the old Pride FC announcer will announce your entry in Japan (which was very nostalgic for me). Also, the Strikeforce commentary team of Frank Shamrock and Mauro Ranallo is present and do a surprisingly good and timely commentary job. Beyond that, the punch and kick sound effects are very visceral sounding, and add a nice little sprinkle of brutality to the presentation that compliments the blood and bone breaking.