Although UFC 5 It's been out for over a year now, I'm still playing it and having fun with it. As one of the only good recent combat sports games released (cough, I'm looking at you Indisputable), managed to scratch the combat sports game itch I get as a boxing and MMA fan. With the disappearance of Fight Night franchise and seemingly no other development team willing to enter the arena, at the moment, genre-wise, all I have is UFC 5.
And while I've explored just about everything the game has to offer, from trying to gather enough stats for my woeful online career to betting on every upcoming UFC event, for the most part, I've stayed away from tournament mode. I don't usually play Xbox games with friends, so I usually stick to the weekly challenges, career, and ranked online modes – but tournament mode was calling my name, and I'm glad it did because it resulted in one of the most horrible and unintentional things I've done in the game so far.
Tournament mode in UFC 5 is brutal
Take UFC 5's realistic damage to the limit
UFC 5 There's a tournament mode in Event Creator that's great for in-person round-robin sessions when playing with a group of people, but it's also generally fun to take a break from ranked online mode and take out my frustrations on some legendary games. AI. While many may know that there is a tournament mode in UFC 5they probably wouldn't be alone in never touching it. After all, online career and ranking modes are typically more appealing to most.
With the right settings, UFC 5 tournament mode becomes a brutal examination of the advancements EA has made with the damage system. To achieve the desired effect, “Continuous Damage” must be enabled in Settings and “Medical Stops” must be disabled in Playstyle. Essentially this creates an old style Kumite Iron Man tournament where the finals can see the full extent of damage to players with destroyed bodies and deep facial cuts similar to a horror movie like Event Horizon.
Keep in mind that damage settings also apply to stamina, so in tournament finals there is a high probability that fighters will be completely exhausted.
Another cool but not completely necessary setting to swap is the Weight Class Type for “match” and Weight Class for “open”, which allows the UFC's biggest stars on the roster and across all weight classes to fight in a winner-take-all style tournament. One thing I've discovered is that heavyweight fighters are actually worse than lower weight fighters (aside from the reach advantage) because weight and power don't seem to matter at all. It's pretty funny to see a Demetrious Johnson completely destroy a Tom Aspinall, considering the differences in physical size.
PRIDE FC and the original UFC actually had real-life tournaments
It's not all fantasy, that used to happen
Modern MMA tournaments now typically take place over at least a few months, allowing fighters to recover and recuperate between fights – but this wasn't always the case. Some newer MMA fans may not know that the The original UFC 1 featured this one-night tournament-style setup since 1993. The iconic Jiu-Jitsu legend, Royce Gracie, defeated Art Jimmerson, Gerard Gordeau and Ken Shamrock, all in the same night, and all by submission, showing the strength of the then unknown martial art from Brazil through Japan.
Hopefully the developers at EA or UFC 5 don't see this post because I hope they don't fix this one.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship's Japanese rival Pride Fighting Championship was also interested in one-night tournaments, with its Pride FC – Grand Prix 2000 taking place on January 30 and May 1, with the latter date featuring an elimination-style tournament with Mark Coleman destroying Akira Shoji, Kazuyuki Fujita and Igor Vovchanchyn all in the same night. While these names may not seem familiar to younger MMA fans, they were all quite iconic when they fought in Pride.
Another interesting thing that the Japanese promotion did (as well as the first UFC events) was also hold open weight fights. Some of these battles, like Ikuhisa Minowa vs. Giant Silva, were fought primarily for the spectacle of the big versus small aspect.
A bug actually shows the improved damage capabilities
Get cut everywhere, at least in the face
One of the most interesting things that happened when I discovered this tournament damage setting was a bug that carries damage to the player's face for the highlighted character and character select screens. The only way to really fix this is to play another match, as even switching to online career mode just transplanted all the facial damage to my custom character, which was also a really funny effect.
While this gruesome face is quite brutal to look at, it's also a good demonstration of the effects of damage in the game. There are different areas where fighters can be cut, be it the forehead, eyebrow or cheek. Additionally, there is a growing mechanic in the game that shows the attention to detail when it comes to the effects of damage. At the end of a tournament, my favorite fighter looked like some of the crazy fighters I encountered during my online career journey.
I hope they don't fix or change this
I'm not sure if this is what the developers intended
Hopefully EA or UFC 5 developers don't see this post because I hope they don't fix this one. Hosting a 16-person MMA tournament with friends in the living room with these settings turned on can be amazing. In addition to the tournament being fun in general for couch PvP play, the added challenge of having to keep fighters at high enough health and stamina to make it to the next fight also adds a unique twist to what is typically a fairly vanilla 1v1. confrontation. Medic's stops would make this impossible after a few rounds, but disabling it allows for this chaos.
It's not really a bug, per se, so there's not much to fix here other than select characters retaining damage, but it's a fun loophole you can discover in the settings to really push the damage limits. For those who really want to go further, use the ground and pound style, as the accumulated damage does not necessarily result in a knockout, just a lot of swelling and bleeding. Although UFC 5 It's been over a year (time doesn't go by quickly), I'm still having a lot of fun discovering these cool things.
Source: GameRant
- Platform(s)
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PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Released
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October 27, 2023
- Developer(s)
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Electronic Arts
- Editor(s)
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Electronic Arts