Undisputed Review - Boxing Game Worth Owning if Post-Launch Support Holds Up

The long anticipated full release of Undisputed is here. The press conferences and media events have concluded, and it’s time for the game to make that long walk into the ring. How does Undisputed measure up? Well let’s look at the tale of the tape as we’ve been playing this game in various forms for well over a year now.

What I Like

Roster

I’ve seen rumblings across Reddit and Twitter criticizing Interactive’s current roster for some notable omissions such as Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, and so on, but I think the criticism is a little much. While the roster isn’t quite as robust as EA’s UFC 5 it’s certainly more impressive than EA’s last boxing game, Fight Night Champion.

When you consider the landscape of boxing and how hard it is to negotiate with fighters for them to actually fight top class opponents, it’s impressive that a relatively small company like Steel City Interactive was able to pull this many fighters, on both the women’s and men’s sides. Furthermore, the likenesses and unique fighting stances and styles are extremely well done, adding to the immersion and fun factor.

Graphics

If the roster size is the setup/throwaway jab, setting the table for what’s to come, the graphics are the cross that comes next. Whether it’s down to the details of the fighters or the arena(s) in which you’re fighting in, both are extremely impressive and help to build the spectacle that can only be achieved in combat sports.

Faces are highly accurate and recognizable with body scans very representative of the size and stature of fighters across the various weight divisions. Even the damage system, while not perfect in terms of execution, looks good, especially with cuts and bruises.

When it comes to the venues, they are impressive no matter the scale. Fighting with your created boxer in career mode and starting off at the local bar scene looks authentic, as does making your way to the big time of the WBC arena or this lovely ballroom.

More Fluid Action

One of my main issues with the early betas on the PC was how static the action could be at times. Too often fights would feel like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots with both fighters standing in the middle of the ring exchanging haymakers. Thankfully, the pain that us PC players endured in the early days has been refined for the official console release and it’s no small feat.

Undisputed, just as boxing is in real life, is largely determinant on what goes on with your feet. That static nature of the footwork, and some of this is fighter dependent, would result in punches being thrown from too many stationary positions and not the various angles/positions they should be thrown from.

The pace of the fights is at a good place now, one in which it’s largely defined by the type of fighter you have (weight classes matter), the traits of that fighter, and your preferred style (boxer, counter-puncher, slugger, and so on). Because the movement downstairs is better, the upper body movement looks and feels better with all of the tools left at your disposal (feints, bobs, weaves, and so on). As a result, you can really pull off some beautiful combinations or conversely get hit with some lovely shots.

AI Improvements

The improvements in difficulty as it pertains to the CPU AI is night and day from previous PC betas. Adaptive AI is usually a catchphrase we’ve seen with various EA games over the years but one that never truly delivers. In Undisputed, it’s a completely different case, especially as you go up in difficulty.

The early days of spamming pull+power straights are long gone in the sense that you can still try them, but eventually your AI opponent will catch-on and render that attack useless by blocking them and even countering them.

A subtle side-step by the AI-controlled Leonard is shown here before he then counters my shot with a jab to the head followed by one to the body before finishing up with a straight right upstairs as he then escapes the pocket to reset. It’s a subtle move, and while none of these shots had real power on them, they help to score points with the judges — for fighters like Sugar Ray Leonard they’re invaluable shots that accumulate over time as opposed to those boxers that have one-hit knockout power.

I found myself dominating most, if not all fights on the PC, but I’m back to the drawing board on the PS5 as I hone my skills and try to erase some bad habits.

What I Don’t Like

Career Mode Gets Stale

At the heart of every successful combat game there are two chambers, career mode and online. While the online aspect is relatively simple, albeit still suffering from a bit of desync (punches not landing on your screen but landing on your opponent’s) the career mode in Undisputed already suffers from being too monotonous and stale. Simply put, there isn’t enough to do inside of it to keep you engaged. The rundown pretty much goes like this:

Hire a Team –> Enter Fight Negotiations –> Training Camp –> Fight –> Rinse and Repeat

Even inside of these actions there’s massive room for improvement, especially in the Training Camp department. Give me some mini-games like hitting the heavy bag or some mitt-work with my coach. Little skill games like they have in EA FC would go a long way towards breaking up some of the boredom that can creep in between fights. Actual press conferences or weigh-ins would bring some more immersion beyond just “doing a social media post.” Even navigating the balance between making weight and staying sharp is relatively easy to figure out fairly quickly.

Speaking of making weight, a large complaint of mine and the community in general centered around not being able to change weight classes during career mode. It’s very common in boxing to move divisions, especially as you get older and it’s easier to gain weight (move up) than to lose weight and move down a division. Catch weights would make negotiations a little more interesting as it would be cool to look back over your career and see you’ve cleaned up in multiple weight classes. We know the ability to gain weight is there, now Steel City just needs to let us roll with it and face some new challenges.

Career mode also falls shorts when it comes to the number of AI fighters. Most weight divisions have ~50 fighters in the ranking and over time you find yourself fighting the same top guys, only they’ve aged 10 years and have accumulated many more losses. As fighters get up there in age, why not auto-generate some new ones and retire out a few of the older guys/gals?

Pushing Is OP

Before the push (R3) was implemented, the input was reserved for clinching, which after some updates was punishable by the ref if it was deemed excessive. Now that folks online have complained about clinching (a very useful and common tactic in real life), the push mechanic has been implemented and abused online by fighters who want a cheap tactic to use when they’ve been dazed and are in danger of being dropped.

As an option and/or gameplay mechanic, it’s vital to have the push input in the game. However, in order for it to be balanced, you have to be able to hit or get hit by an opponent while doing so.

Stamina Still An Issue

For over a year and some change, the Undisputed community has been raising concerns over the issues surrounding stamina and arm fatigue (spamming punching with the same arm/hand). Simply put, the balance between stamina drain for the AI and the human is heavily skewed towards the AI, and when fighting online versus another human power punches thrown (and missed) don’t have enough of an effect on stamina.

Case in point, here’s a fight I was watching on YouTube. Sugar Ray Leonard (boxer-puncher) vs. Canelo (slugger). As you can tell, Canelo finishes the fight with 61% stamina whereas Leonard is on 46%. A quick glance will show you that Sugar Ray threw ~180 more punches, landing at a very solid clip of 61%. Knowing that body shots tend to slow fighters down (in both real-life and in Undisputed) I usually chalk up the stamina disparity to them, but the stats here are relatively close (90-73 in favor of Sugar Ray).

Now the huge disparity in punches thrown can be attributed to one area, Power Punches, where Canelo lands them at a 53% clip connecting on 125 of them compared to Sugar Ray’s modest output (46% with 25 power shots landing). In an ideal world, stamina is a result of conditioning (fighter traits and stamina ratings) + punches absorbed + punches thrown — because in theory and practicality a punch thrown and missed is more draining than a punch connected, and that’s even more true if that missed punch is a power shot.

The Canelo fighter here throws and misses over 100 power shots and is hit with over 100 more punches from a fighter (Sugar Ray) known for being in great shape when going deep into fights (15 rounds vs. Duran, 14 vs. Hearns). There’s no logical explanation for why Canelo is +15% when it comes to stamina, and unfortunately this kind of things plays out a lot online where it’s often power shot after power shot after power shot. Hopefully now that the console release is here and more gamers play the game, we’ll see more feedback from the community regarding balancing stamina.

Dazed/Stunned Fighters

For some unknown reason, Steel City has made it so that stunned AI fighters are harder to hit than non-stunned fighters. Whereas you can get to an AI fighter and knock them into a dazed state, all of the punches they seem to let in now get blocked as they go into an impenetrable shell, channeling their inner Floyd Mayweather by cutting off openings to both their head and body no matter if you mix it up and attack the body to open up the head or vice versa. It’s already frustrating to have to run and chase them down as they retreat once dazed, but they too frequently get out of trouble once they’ve been rocked.

Bottom Line

The frequent tuning and updates that us beta players were used to seemed to slow down ahead of the Undisputed console release. While this was logical on the part of Steel City as they ramped up their efforts to bring the game to consoles, the expectation is for them to now get to work and incorporate some balancing at the behest of the boxing community.

Once the freshness of having a new boxing game for the first time in years wears off, the community will start to pick apart the game in such a way that would make Bud Crawford proud. By exponentially increasing the number of players, the usual online exploits will be exposed, so it’s up to the developers to continue to tune the gameplay, add more fighters to the roster, and flesh out their career mode. For now, it’s an excellent start and a must-have for any die-hard boxing fan or casual that enjoys the sweet science.