Xbox Game Pass threw UFC 5 up for a free play weekend and I grabbed it after watching Longlegs, thinking I’d just spend a few minutes checking out the career mode.
I ended up playing for five and half hours (thanks, Microsoft, for the break reminders that serve more as “time wasted” reminders these days) and going to sleep far too late for a six A.M. wake up call.
That doesn’t mean this game is good. Cocaine and methamphetamine have had the same effect on me in the past and neither of those things are good, no matter how much fun one might have while on them. I got trapped in the smooth-brainedness of the game loop. A baboon could figure out how to become a G.O.A.T. and derive the same level of pleasure from pressing the buttons that I did.
As I closed out my career at age 61 in 2044, surrounded by ring girls, announcers, refs, a coaching team, and the same five try-hard opponents that all never visibly aged, I was struck by the low-effort presentation of the mode. Brian Hayes and Nate McDonald, the two guys responsible for this game, could have done so much to make it feel like the player was advancing through the decades on the long march to UFC 500. But the arenas and everyone who filled them stayed precisely the same as they were from the first match to the last.
Never mind that the training camps responsible for leveling up your avatar devolve into the same seven button presses every time, with zero need to deviate from a solved path toward five-star excellence; ignore the little progression accoutrements that accompany every win with a slew of “number got incrementally bigger” counters; do you ready best to ignore the total lack of fanfare when it comes time to at last retire your fighter. I can politely look to the side at all of those things, but I just can't believe that over the course of thirty years in-game that presentation technology and fashion wouldn’t change one bit. Nor would anyone on my team develop so much as a single wrinkle or grey hair.
This all came smashing into a horrific immersion-breaking brick wall when an immortal Daniel Cormier called my 61-year-old heavyweight champion a “young contender”. But I guess at this stage of the game it would be asking far too much from Electronic Arts to produce something that challenged the expectations of the veteran gamer.
At least it was “free”.
2024.09.13 – 2024.09.14
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