The biggest mixed martial arts organisation in the world is back again as the Ultimate Fighting Championship and EA Sports bring sports fans UFC 5. Expected to be the start of the next generation of MMA games, UFC 5 feels very much the same as its predecessor, leaving us feeling like we’re paying full price for the same product that graced our consoles and PCs three years ago. The game’s visual components still leave a bit to be desired and its career mode lacks any real substance to draw you in. It wouldn’t be considered a backward step from UFC 4 per se, but it certainly doesn’t feel like a significant step forward, either.
UFC 5 is the latest annual release from the MMA giant that features an updated cast of the company’s best stars and some new features, such as Doctor’s Stoppages, that add an additional element of realism to the title. The game modes have expanded to offer more challenges to players, such as Fight Contracts, which challenge you to win randomly generated fights across all of the game’s difficulties for prizes. As expected, there is a career mode, both offline and online, that enables you to begin your own journey towards UFC immortality with a player-created character. Speaking of online mode, there are also a multitude of different game modes to choose from to suit different play styles and offer some variety in online combat opportunities.
Something that UFC 5 does particularly well is promote a greater realism to give players a more in-depth sense of what it’s like to be locked in the cage with another athlete looking to beat the living daylights out of them. While it can be a little frustrating, stamina management is one of the facets of the game that saw the most noticeable improvement, as it deters you from being able to throw a barrage of heavy strikes without any consequences. You have to fight smart and pick your shots or risk being punished for poor energy management or a sloppy stand-up strategy.
The biggest improvement that UFC made to their latest title was the submission mechanics. Since the first UFC game, taking a fight to the ground has been a significant thorn in the side of players, particularly those who are defending. While it is still not a completely polished system, it’s far more user-friendly than its predecessors and at least gives you a fighting chance of making an escape or picking up the win with a tap. It’s a stark contrast to older games that essentially signed your death warrant the moment the fight was taken to the ground. While it’s a vast improvement, UFC 5 is still going to be played as a kickboxing game by the majority of its player base except for those who have the Midas Touch with the game’s grappling.
While on the surface, UFC 5 could be considered fairly impressive visually, a closer look at the game has us scratching our heads. While it’s not overly bad and there’s a genuine attempt to make the game as realistic as possible, something about the fighter appearances just feels off. Even in the Create a Fighter section, many of the head templates look unnatural. Of course, this isn’t a beauty contest and you’ll generally not be in the punch-in-the-face business if you want to keep your dashing looks, but some of the warped head proportions are a bit much.
On top of the created fighter options, some of the basic graphics simply fail to hit the target, particularly championship belts and body movement in clothes. Belts continue to look disproportionately big and sit on the shoulders of the champions with an odd stiffness. Additionally, the movement of muscles under shirts often looks strange and generally does not reflect the body shape of the fighter wearing it. It results in some of the fighters having unusually shaped chests when wearing a shirt.
The career mode is pretty predictable and doesn’t feel particularly different from the one before. You create your fighter, have an impressive debut, get yourself on the Contender Series, then boom - you’re in the UFC in a heartbeat working your way toward a title. While this is pretty much how you’d expect the journey to go, EA could have easily done a captivating career mode that had your fighter earn their UFC contract by winning the Ultimate Fighter. A house full of rivals to contend with and a couple of UFC pros as coaches? That would have the potential to really kick off with rivalries, drama, and a genuine story you could get engrossed in.
While the new features in UFC 5 increase the game’s depth to make it the best title in the franchise’s short history, the Doctor’s Stoppage inclusion is excessive. UFC fans are acutely aware of how rare it is for doctors to get involved in fights - some events will have no involvement at all, and yet I found myself interrupted by doctors four times in the space of five fights. While it adds a new way to win or lose a fight, doctors won’t be involved in every strike-heavy fight, so EA could definitely benefit from toning that down.
UFC 5 manages to tick all the boxes of a decent fighting simulation game, but given the size of EA and the UFC brands, expectations were far higher that this game would take MMA to a whole new level digitally. Instead, we’ve been presented with a product that feels like a system update with a hefty price tag. It’s good fun to play with friends and beat up your least-favourite fighters, but won’t be a memorable title from 2023.
UFC 5 was reviewed on PlayStation 5 with a code provided by the developer.