The ground game is an entirely different experience from stand-up fighting, and skill and timing are most definitely the biggest deciders in a match when it's on the mat. The whole thing is framed in this pyramid-like system where the fighter in the dominant position is trying to improve his situation, and the one in the disadvantageous spot is trying to either reverse his opponent's moves, transition him away from the better positions, or force the fighters back on their feet (either by kicking the opponent off or having the referee step in and stand you up). The whole thing revolves around using quarter-circle motions on the right stick to transition, or holding a direction on the right stick to block the opponent's transitions (but that leaves you open to strikes while you hold it). While most every fighter's dream position is the open mount - kneeling on top of the opponent with his legs out of the way, raining down power punches - it never lasts very long against a good player or smart AI opponent, so you'll have to take advantage of it for the short while it's available to you.
The Classic Fights mode includes 12 of the best fights in recent UFC years - but only the recent ones, as the developers wanted the game to be a snapshot of what's happening today. (That's why you won't see fighters like the Gracie family included in UFC 2009.) In each of these classic fights you can take on each side either against the AI or in a local two-player match, and if you control the historic winner of the match against the opponent AI and win in the same basic way that the real fight happened (like, say, a TKO in the first round) then you unlock a video clip showing off the real-life result of the fight. Unfortunately, that's about it; I'd have loved to be able to unlock these fighters for career mode or something similar.
While the career mode will likely eat up many hours of any willing player, the real star power in the UFC comes from the big names in the sport, and the best way to pit them against each other is in the exhibition and online modes. Going head-to-head locally is fun and very crazy (and can make you some enemies if you keep landing Kimuras), and taking your fighters into Xbox Live and PSN play is generally fun, but there can be some real mismatches online and the game's instant knockouts can turn decent players into gibbering piles of expletives if you score one on accident. And that's the one big disappointment I've found during the action: the instant knockouts that can happen seemingly at any moment and result from a weak strike just as often as they will happen after a really powerful hit. It adds a level of unpredictability to the fight, which is fine in the real-world UFC, but in a video game it's just a dice roll. It's not really satisfying to win this way, and it's infuriating to lose instantly like this - especially if you're beating your opponent when he slips some weak hit in and gets a magic win. There's no option to disable these knockouts in any mode, so they're just something we have to live with.
UFC 2009 does have a fantastic presentation that really feeds the authentic feel of the whole experience. From the menus to the introductions to each fight, it looks and sounds like a real pay-per-view broadcast. Three of the sport's best referees are included, Bruce Buffer does the announcing, and both Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan are in there doing the commentary. And the commentating is absolutely wonderful, as there are hours and hours of speech by these guys that not only yell out when someone goes down, but talk about the pluses and minuses of certain styles and moves - and have no problem barking out a wealth of knowledge on each of the game's 80 roster fighters, too. But there's a technical aspect of it all that's great, as well - Rogan might be giving us a history lesson about a fighting style when you land a head kick that sends the opponent reeling backwards, and just like in a real broadcast, Goldberg will interrupt him and they'll start screaming about how the fight's about to go south for the guy that just got rocked. And yes, Goldberg will often yell "AND IT'S ALL OVER!" at the end of every fight, and you'll get an earful of this catchphrase as the game replays audio clips of big knockouts of UFC's past in the menus.
In a game like this, all of the authentic looks and sounds will do you no good if there's no fun to be had in the actual fighting, and luckily UFC 2009 has done a great job. It's easy to start picking out the game's shortcomings - minor bugs in the career mode, no southpaw stances, instant knockouts ending matches before their time, cuts and blood looking great but being only cosmetic, unwieldy menus and way too many dialog boxes confirming the goofiest of things, and other relatively small issues - but in the end, this puts 80 of the sport's top guys into the Octagon and has them fight it out in a very convincing fashion. Sometimes it's easy to get hung up on its failings, but if you're like me you'll keep coming back because this game is chock full of great action and deep fighting for both casual fight fans and the purists out there. THQ and Yuke's have already confirmed that another UFC game is being started almost immediately and that they have a pretty good idea of what to work on for the next game, but that's no reason to wait. I am having a blast with UFC 2009 Undisputed right now and plan to keep at it during the weeks to come.
