UFC: Throwdown [GC]

No gloves. No holds barred action. No sissies. Crave is bringing its hardcore fighting title UFC: Throwdown to Nintendo GameCube. The publisher recently stopped by our offices to show us how development is progressing, and according to the company Throwdown is about 98% complete. Featuring stunning attention to realism, bloodshed, hard-impact fighting, and faithful presentation, we were lucky to walk away unscathed from our hands-on with the title. Following are our impressions from our brief time with the game.

Features

• Choose from of 28 of the real-life UFC fighters
• Includes current UFC Champions and second referee Mario Yamazaki
• Four exclusive UFC fighters including newcomers Dave Menne and Ricco Rodriguez
• Pound the competition to a pulp under three detailed UFC arenas
• In-depth Career Mode where you fight and train on the way to the championship
• Upgraded tournament mode includes a 6-8 player round robin tournament setup
• Detailed create-a-fighter mode lets you customize face, body, skin color, clothes, hair style, and much more
• Additional weight classes not available in any other UFC title
• Stunning graphics, featuring 9000 polygon fighter models and detailed textures
• Uses five blocks of memory, even with several created fighters
• Available June 2002

First Look
Ultimate Fighting Championship, a popular form of fighting entertainment, is a little taste of street brawling mixed in with a rules system. Fighters from around the world, well trained in styles ranging from wrestling to JuJutsu, to Kung Fu, to blends of many others, gather in the steel octagon throw down. The basic idea is simple -- deal blows and submission holds to see who will tap out of the fight before a bone is broken, or something worse. There are lots of high-impact hits; there are no gloves or padding; and, there's certainly plenty of bloodshed. UFC: Throwdown for GameCube, based on the real life live action/TV series, is the latest evolution of this in videogame form. So, if you're looking for a middle ground between fantasy fighters like Tekken and wrestling games like WWE WrestleMania X8, this is it.

Throwdown brings several modes to the table including Arcade mode for quick fights, UFC and Champion modes for more sustained campaigns, a Tournament mode for round-robin competition between six to eight human players, and finally a Career Mode where you can develop a created fighter through a series of fights and tournaments. The create-a-fighter tool is flexible and expansive, letting you choose from a vast number of face, body, clothing, and skin types. After you get past appearance, the fighting style can be customized to reflect your preferences for striking or grappling. Depending on the style you choose in combination with the way you customize your attributes, your fighter will have a different move set. As you progress through the career, you'll learn more moves and garner more attribute points to level-up your fighter. It's pretty extensive, and offers up a solid base for single-player.

The way the control scheme works is fairly simple. You use all four face buttons -- A, B, X, and Y -- to kick and punch your opponent. Combinations of either A and B or X and Y will perform grapples. The moves are further diversified by pressing a particular direction on the analog stick in combination with the buttons. There's something on the order of 25+ moves apiece for the wrestlers, though it varies depending on style. The whole system is based around the idea of a fighter's stamina. In both dealing out blows and receiving them you will lose points on your health bar. It can and will drop very fast when you're using a fledgling fighter. Matches can end in seconds, not minutes if you're not careful. This adds a lot of strategy into fights, where defense is just as important as offense. Of course, as you get better, a lot more blood will fall and matches will be longer.

Visually, Throwdown spares nothing for graphical effects. Thanks to a powerful rendering engine, fighters are composed of 9000 polygons, highly detailed textures, and smooth animations. Combined with impressive skinning technology, it makes for a very pretty game. In fact, these are some of the best character models we've seen in any game. You can see the detail up close with the fantastic fighter entrances, which are faithful to the television broadcasts. The developer has made significant efforts to keep the presentation clean, blending full-motion video crowds and the real-time character model. There's nothing cheap about it. With robust lighting, top-notch presentation, and cinematic camera angles, Throwdown is stacking up to be graphically pleasing.

Finally, UFC: Throwdown is stocked with an arcade mode for exhibition fights with friends. You step up into the ring with your created fighter and prove who's best. With all these features, Throwdown will definitely be one to watch for when it releases next month. However, it varies from the PS2 version in that you cannot quest through career mode and blend fighting styles. Instead, you can only choose one style and learn it completely. This is due to the fact that the GCN Throwdown is being worked on by a separate developer than the PS2 version. According to Crave, they didn't choose to allow this flexibility with the GameCube iteration -- too bad, because it would have definitely upped the replay value.

Look for our full review next month.

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