Seeing the massive success of MMA and UFC in particular, EA Sports shifted the team behind the fan-favorite Fight Night series over to create their take on UFC back in 2014. In the following years, they consistently released a new game every two years up through 2020 with EA Sports UFC 4. Now after the longest gap between entries thus far, the series finally returns to the Octagon once again in EA Sports UFC 5.

Rise to the Occasion

Regardless of the sport, EA Sports typically manages to provide players with a very authentic experience, and UFC 5 is no different. The visuals found in the game are top-notch, which is to be expected by this series. Each fighter’s facial animation is incredibly detailed, from the character model down to the actual blood and sweat found upon them. The likeness of real-life fighters is also very realistic and pairs with exciting fighter walkouts that use lifelike animations based on the fighters to bring them to life. This is not even to mention the overall presentation surrounding each fight, which captures the feeling of excitement surrounding the Octagon.

The new Real Impact System in UFC 5 manages to elevate the realism of the series even higher than in the past. This focuses on emulating true-to-life damage on the fighters during a bout, with each fighter’s face now having eight different regions that can be affected by cuts, swelling, and bruising. In fact, the developer stated that there are more than 64,000 different facial injury combinations in the game, which is very impressive. These facial and other body injuries aren’t just superficial injuries either, as they can cause ill effects like blurry vision or limited mobility depending on the injury. Fights can once again be stopped due to certain injuries as well, so you have to be very careful with what you are doing in a fight.

The controls have been switched up a bit, now allowing for easier access to moves such as uppercuts and spin attacks. One of my favorite things to do in the game was dominate the opponent with strong uppercuts and then knock them out with a strong roundhouse kick right to the head, and this felt easier than ever to execute in UFC 5. New animations have also been added in certain moves, along with upgraded facial animations that really show the impact of strong attacks like the uppercuts. The punishing nature of these moves really took me back to the Fight Night series, which was one of the first games I ever remember pulling this off at this level.

While EA Sports’ UFC series has typically been praised over the years, one of the areas that has been criticized quite often has been the overly convoluted ground game. This area is still a work in progress without question, but this entry in the series has managed to improve on it and make it feel like you have a little more control than in the past. Gone are the mini-games found in UFC 4, and now players instead have a submission meter that shows the different submission effects. When the bar is low, you have a better chance of your opponent tapping out, so you have to work towards getting there. This does still feel like a crapshoot sometimes, but it is a decent improvement over the last entry in this area. The good news is that the game’s Grapple Assist does make it a little better for beginners to get the hang of it, at least.

EA Sports UFC 5 continues offering multiple game styles to choose from to best tailor the experience to each individual player, including Competitive, Simulation, Knockout, and Stand and Bang. While Competitive and Simulation are the best for the typical UFC experience, I did find myself playing a good bit with Stand and Bang for a style akin to the aforementioned Fight Night series that we as gamers are sorely lacking with the long hiatus that series has seen.

Become the Greatest

Career mode lets you create your own fighter or just import an existing UFC-licensed fighter. When creating your fighter, you get to choose between the five play styles and then customize your fighter. This includes the look of your fighter, their gear, and even their post-fight animation and taunts. The game gives you 339 different options for walkout music as well, though it felt like the number of licensed music tracks here was lacking compared to many other EA Sports games in the past. The majority of these songs are just EA Bonus tracks they created, which do not bring the same level of energy.

The story found in Career mode is very basic, as you take your created fighter from just fighting at the local gym Davis MMA and building your career from there forward. This includes the return of Coach Davis from the past, as well as the introduction of the real-life former UFC Flyweight champion Valentina Shevchenko as well. Some of these story modes feature phoned-in performances, but they actually work quite well here, and I found myself enjoying watching most of the cutscenes even if nothing too exciting happens outside of the matches. The game mode starts to open up much more once you get through the early tutorials and reach the UFC Performance Institute. At this point, you can get to start accepting contract fights that come your way. By setting the weeks until the fight, you can also alter the gym fee percentage for the total fight payout as well.

In the lead-up to each fight, you will be given a certain amount of weekly points that can be spent on certain activities during what is known as Training Camp. One of the most important activities is the ability to take part in sparring sessions, as it allows you to earn more Evolution Points that you can use to upgrade your attributes and buy new perks. You do have to be careful, though, as you can suffer injuries like cuts while sparring that you will then need to spend in-game money or expend weekly points you have available to recover and avoid attributes being reduced. Upgrading your attributes is vital to your long-term success, as you will start facing more difficult opponents and need to keep up with them stats-wise.

Your fighter has stats that can be upgraded in the three categories of Stand-Up, Grappling, and Health, each of which has multiple attributes to choose from. By getting the Evolution Points from sparring, you can upgrade these different abilities in whichever order you choose, at least to a certain degree. You cannot level just a few attributes up to five stars right away, as the game will limit you from upgrading further on abilities without leveling up other attributes within that category to a certain benchmark as well to keep your fighter more balanced. Performing certain moves well in fights will also allow you to improve your moves over time, which is very helpful for bettering your fighter.

Evolution Points can also be used to unlock different perks that can be equipped for your fighter. To start, you only have a couple of slots available to set perks, but you can gain up to three more by becoming a UFC fighter, becoming a UFC-ranked fighter, and becoming a UFC champion. Pairing these with the upgradeable attributes and moves allows for a natural progression of your fighter in their career, which could have felt very unbalanced if not handled correctly.

Another really cool feature is the ability to invite a fighter to train for the week that you can learn some additional moves from to then equip and use. You do have to pay money on top of the weekly points cost as well, though. This allows for a lot more versatility in your fighter by mixing in some different move sets that would have otherwise not been possible. You can even build relationships through the hype section with fighters to lower the costs required to get new moves as well.

Watching tape allows you to learn additional information about your opponent in advance of the fight, such as their top moves and tendencies, to where you can better prepare yourself. You can also hype up the fight in a few different ways, starting by selecting promotions such as radio interviews or social media posts. From there, you can eventually sign sponsorship deals to unlock additional promotions. This can also lead to building connections with other fighters, which can help to reduce the cost of learning their moves in the future.

Reaching the status of champion in the game’s Career mode is only the beginning, as the game also keeps track of your performance records under what is known as G.O.A.T. Status. This page tracks the number of submissions, knockouts, wins, and much more that you get over time. For instance, the list has 0/15 knockouts and 0/26 UFC wins, so it gives you some career numbers to strive for to become the greatest of all time.

Career mode is definitely the meat of the experience in EA Sports UFC 5, as there aren’t many other options to choose from. You have the typical Fight Now option against AI or a friend locally, as well as the ability to take fights online as well. Event Creator mode lets you create a UFC event or a tournament bracket, but they are essentially just longer extensions of Fight Now.

Place Your Bets

The only other big mode found in UFC 5 is where the series dives headfirst into the live service setting with the Fight Week game mode. Fight Week is connected to real-life UFC cards for upcoming events and allows you to make in-game predictions on the winners, victory methods, and which round each fight ends. This will reward you with UFC coins that you can then spend within the game while also ranking you on leaderboards based on your picks. In fact, the top scorers in each group will even be able to obtain special rewards like customizable fighter assets. Unfortunately, the majority of this mode was not available for us to try out as it won’t launch until a week or two after launch in the lead-up to UFC 295.

What was available, though, was the other element of Fight Week, where you can take part in daily AI battles with preset settings for in-game currency. There will be more of these tied to the actual event, but we were able to take part in these matches for the time being. The current battles go up daily and seem to last one week from the time they were first added and range in difficulty and other settings. There will be additional challenges associated with these in the future as well, allowing players to earn many better rewards that even include what are known as Alter Egos.

Alter Egos are a new feature in the UFC series that allows you to play as variations of fighters during specific phases of their career, such as their debut or big wins. These are not just cosmetic variations either but rather feature varied attributes, moves, and perks on top of the visual difference. The Deluxe Version of the game even includes Alter Egos for Bruce Lee, which is quite cool. This is a really cool addition to the series that will be paired with the Fight Week mode and can be obtained through either challenges or the in-game store. The only real downside here is that it appears these will be rotating, so you may miss some fighters as a result. Hopefully, they will keep new additions in the store perpetually, but we won’t know until Fight Week actually launches soon.

One of my personal favorite features in games like this is the ability to create your own fighter to use in the game. The level of detail is once again really impressive here by letting you create your own male or female fighter. However, one major disappointment once again in this iteration is the inability to share your own creations online and download other people’s creations. This was something that the Fight Night series included and the WWE series still thrives on today, but for some reason, the UFC series still continues to avoid allowing this. There are so many possibilities for fighters out there with the creativity that people have and not tapping into that is a big mistake from EA Sports yet again.

It certainly wouldn’t be an EA Sports game without microtransactions and they are still found here, but they do not feel quite as scummy as some other series like EA Sports FC and Madden. Thankfully, UFC 5 did not bring back the controversial Ultimate Team mode that was also missing in UFC 4, so the UFC coins in the game are instead reserved for cosmetics for your fighters or to get additional fighters. The disappointing thing is that the currency found in Career mode does not carry over here, so those who focus on that mode will find themselves with hardly any in-game money to spend in the store. The game really should have rewarded some UFC coins from Career as well as a way to fix this issue, as it otherwise makes you feel like you need to avoid Career when grinding for certain items as a result.

Verdict

The EA Sports UFC series has certainly been one of their most consistent quality-wise, and EA Sports UFC 5 continues that trend. Career mode is still the core of the experience as you climb the ladder to the top, and Fight Week has a lot of potential once it launches, though how good that actually is remains to be seen. Where the series continues to shine best, though is the stellar presentation and the well-executed and authentic gameplay, which even made some improvements to the often maligned ground game, to where EA Sports can add yet another victory to the win-loss record with EA Sports UFC 5.

Score: 8.5/10

Pros:

• Authentic gameplay and presentation
• Real Impact System brings more brutality than ever
• Career mode keeps you invested
• Potential of Fight Week

Cons:

• Ground game can still be frustrating
• Inability to share or download created fighters
• Microtransactions