In the Octagon the game really shines, but the presentation keeps the game from being top notch.
User Rating: 8.5 | UFC Undisputed 2009 X360
If you love MMA and video games, then you should buy this game. End of Story. However, if your on the fence you may want to hold off til next years title comes out. The fighting is very complicated. If you don't go in with at least a little knowledge of MMA basic, your likely to get KO quite a bit. The tutorial is helpful, but it would have been nice to be more streamlined and integrated with the career mode. While it is a ton of fun to win a belt with your created character, career mode still leaves a good bit to be desired. You can train your major attributes (strength, speed, cardio) just by clicking on them on the schedule. It would have been nice to incorporate some kind of mini game into this. The really problem comes when you spar to increase individual skills (ground grapple, ground striking, standing kicks, etc.) They the throw you in the ring/cage for two minutes and if you are not able to land two minutes worth of strikes then you wasted you time. I played through the career mode on expert and there will come times when you fighter will simply be so overmatched that you cannot do much of anything. My final problem with the game is the amount of menus that you have to navigate through. THQ has never really gotten this down even with there past WWE games. Every time you click on a menu you wait a few second then you greeted with another menu. To put a sponsor on your shorts requires you to go through at least 10-12 menu screen before the sponsor is saved on your shorts. Online works pretty well, but not great. I have had too many laggy matches. They do have a pretty cool ranking system and they will give you three lines of information about how you fight and how your opponent fights (good ground game, exciting fighter, etc.) The game is really at its best when you have a friend (who has played the game as much as you), and the two of you go toe to toe. While many parts of this game seem like just couldn't get the high levels of polish, it is a great start for what should be a great franchise. 
