It’s widely agreed upon that the last, truly outstanding professional boxing game was 2011’s Fight Night Champion – a game that was initially released for the now-ancient Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Granted, if you’ve poked your head into a virtual reality headset any time in the last five years, you may have gotten a chance to throw a few swings at The Thrill of the Fight or Creed: Rise to Glory, both of which are decent boxing simulators. But now, over twelve years after Fight Night disappeared, developer Steel City Interactive may be reaching for the title belt with Undisputed, a new professional boxing game that seemingly represents a return to form for the boxing genre. I’ve spent several hours in its single-player skirmish mode and I’m pleasantly surprised by the fluidity of the fighters’ movements which, while still not perfectly comparable to their real-life counterparts, are already more dynamic and realistic-looking than those of the classic fighting game Undisputed will undoubtedly be compared against.
Undisputed immediately asks you to spar against a basic opponent while you get the controls down, and this is a tutorial you absolutely should not skip – especially if you’re unfamiliar with boxing games – given the incredible amount of control Undisputed gives you over your hooks, jabs, slips, blocks, weaves, power punches, uppercuts, and so forth. There are far more button combinations to memorize here than in your average fighting game, but these controls affect the fluidity of your boxer’s motions in a way that mimics how a professional fighter might actually move in a fight. It’s not quite intuitive, but once you get into a groove, it does gradually become easier to predict your opponent’s rhythm and evade, counter, or at least return their punches.
Fortunately, former flyweight champion Charlie Edwards is a great teacher. Once you beat him in a simple K.O. match, you get the run of Undisputed’s full roster of over 50 boxers, ranging from Muhammed Ali to Jessica McCaskill. Granted, fighters are locked to their respective weight classes – for example, Welterweight fighters can only face off against other Welterweight fighters, and this is the setup for each of the available weight classes. Simplifying the 17 professional boxing weight classes down to a far cleaner eight divisions for men and two divisions for women, Undisputed’s fights do have a notably different pace to them when you pit two Heavyweight class fighters against one another versus, for instance, two Bantamweight class fighters. Heavier fighters punch harder but tend to have more health, whereas lighter classes have more agility.
Boxer attributes differentiate each of these fighters, and Undisputed is remarkably granular about what each of its six core stats does.
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Boxer attributes differentiate each of these fighters, and Undisputed is remarkably granular about what each of its six core stats does. Vitality governs everything about the number and frequency of punches a fighter’s head and body can take, but then you’ll need to worry about managing your heart rate (where a lower BPM allows you to keep your hands up longer) and you’ll also need to manage your stamina to continue effectively throwing punches. This is realistic, but it can be a lot to manage if you’re not used to it. Once your stamina is depleted, you’ll need to back into your corner long enough to regenerate it, but like your head health and body health, your maximum stamina pool will wear down over the course of a fight, creating an incentive to fight tactically rather than wail on your opponent.
Strength, speed, and defense attributes each contribute to your fighter’s effectiveness as well, and there are so many sub-attributes here that can individually affect your fighter’s performance that you’d think you were playing an RPG. There’s even a perk system that shakes up the dynamics of the ring. For example, the Second Wind perk makes you punch 25% harder and use 25% less stamina for 30 seconds after being knocked down, and this can rapidly change the course of a fight in your favor. This feels especially good when you hit hard enough to daze your opponent and activate your own fighter’s adrenalin mode, rewarding you with a satisfying jolt of controller vibration and a sound effect, but you’ll have to quickly execute your winning combo to secure the knockout punch before your adrenalin runs out, leaving you winded, and this might be difficult if your opponent has the speed and skill to dodge and weave through each of your punches. This means fights feel constantly tense, especially if you’re up against an opponent who knows how to play to their strengths.
There are so many sub-attributes here that can individually affect your fighter’s performance that you’d think you were playing an RPG.
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Once you get into the main menu following your first fight, you can set up unlimited custom fights against the computer or against one friend in local head-to-head combat. You can also create your own boxer, but this option – along with the Career mode which is slated to release at some point in Undisputed’s early access release schedule – was grayed out for me during my demo. I was left curious about how deep its customization systems might go, especially given how much detail and depth went into each official UFC fighter.
When you’re ready to test your skills against other players, you can head into Undisputed’s ranked matchmaking mode. I didn’t get a chance to experience live multiplayer in the pre-early access press build either, but it’s reasonable to assume that Undisputed’s longevity will hinge on the quality of its online service and the fidelity of its fights between online players.
