Pure fluidity and true motion at the tip of your controller, UFC allows you to feel every blow, from strategic strikes to dynamic submissions, in its newest MMA fighter using the impressive Ignite Engine.

Stepping into the Octagon and feeling the destruction of a tactical roundhouse has never felt so real or unique. EA has pushed the meaning of real-time exertion to a new level. Every movement, thrown punch, kick or clinch feels real and exhausting, giving the player the feel of a solid mixed martial arts game and adding a new depth to what is already a truly exciting, destructive sport.

Other games similar to MMA fighting can’t come close to the movement you experience in UFC. Every move you make is strategic and essential to your win. Whether it be a knockout, takedown or submission, every move you make changes the way your opponent acts and determines how quickly you will fail if you’re not properly versed in the controls and the opportunities at your fingertips.

Your opponent will opt for whichever style you cannot defend or effectively reverse, forcing you to adapt and overcome. This often challenges you to think about how you can quickly end the round. If you learn to turn a choke-hold into an arm-bar, the AI will implement a Plan B to take the upper hand away from you and your ‘A game’ and knock you onto your ass. This intelligent and progressive way of thinking is what makes UFC unique. The opponent ‘thinks’ like a human and is just as cunning, thus pushing you to up your game with each progressive move until exertion takes hold and the next serious blow ends the fight. Much like a real match of MMA, they really do play out that way.

With the humanesque AI functionality of a real MMA fighter, you need them to feel real and act physically in a fight, and again this is something quite different. With Full Body Deformation, every hit anywhere on the body is felt and the fighters behave naturally with each strike. At times in the past it did feel like two superhuman characters barely flinching while going at each other, but now the fighters will stumble and flinch with each blow. This can very much make you think twice when you receive a shot to the head and momentarily start to stumble to the floor, your stamina stops replenishing and you start to lose control. You know the hit you just took was brutal.

There are five main core values to the gameplay in UFC. First is striking. Offensive high and low strikes to the body will wear down your opponent, making them slow and causing them to slip up under the barrage of hits they take. This consumes stamina, which shows realistically on your character through the power and speed of your blows. Next up is clinching. This allows you to regain stamina, close the gap and offensively transition into a takedown or throw. This puts you in a dominant position and gives you the upper hand while on the ground.

Third there is wrestling. Based on the ground game again, this allows you to hammer the opponent and makes it easier to move into the fourth core, submission. This is a reinvented way to make the opponent submit. You struggle to move into position and then begin the first of three to five stages depending on position. You are then given UI gates that the opponent will try to move away from, and you must keep them in place. After time you move to the next, and so on, until either the submission has been countered or the opponent submits and you win the match.

All of these core elements affect the fifth: health and stamina. This affects the whole match and can shift when specific damage is dealt. You can be stunned and wobble, leading to a KO if the next blow is precise. The liver shot is another factor, which can lower defence, with the last being ‘limping’. This can slow you down and weaken your kicks, forcing you to rely on other means. It also means you can be taken down more easily.

During a battle with incredible hit detection and real damage, the controller is your hero, making full use of the versatility of both sticks and every possible combination so you can switch from kickboxer to judo in a pinch. No cumbersome, menu-based style switching, it’s all on the controller, mapped out and easy to access. At first this is hard to master, mainly because of the sheer number of possibilities, but after a few matches and finding what works for you the controls feel almost intuitive. Without thinking, you will be focusing on low hits and tapping away at the opponent’s knees, or trying to pin them to the floor to regain stamina before following up with a submission hold to finish the job.

The great thing about this is there is no wrong way to play. Where you may not be too strong in defence, you can clinch to gain stamina and work on cutting an opponent’s reach right down to move in for some head punishment. Anyone can pick this up, learn the ropes and get stuck in, yet another difference from other MMA games you may have experienced.

EA Sports UFC has certainly shown its true potential. Throwing all of the above into an exciting and addictive campaign to become the champion of a specific weight class extends the gameplay and possibilities. Allowing you to build and give attributes to your very own fighter, then train and earn the respect of known, realistically rendered fighters. With an octagon full of authentic ring voices and refs, this gives the game some amazing depth, making it very hard to put down.