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Product summary
The additional gameplay depth and loving attention given to the details of the license make Pride the best mixed-martial-arts game on the market.
Specifications: ESRB: Mature ; Genre: Sports ; Elements: 3D Fighting ; See full specs
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 02/07/2003
- Released on: 02/11/2003
Pride FC is a no-holds-barred fighting organization based in Japan. Its rules are similar to those of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a more well-known mixed-martial-arts tournament. The games based on these events are also quite similar, as THQ's new Pride game was developed by Japan-based Anchor, the company that developed the first UFC game for the Dreamcast. While the similarities between the two games are nearly endless, Pride FC delivers deeper, more fluid gameplay than any mixed-martial-arts game to date, making for an especially exciting two-player game.
Pride is easily at its best in its multiplayer modes.
Pride contains 25 real-world fighters, including Kazushi Sakuraba, Ken Shamrock, Don Frye, Wanderlei Silva, Renzo and Royce Gracie, Gary Goodridge, Carlos Newton, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. The game's fighters handle roughly the same as one another, giving the game a good "pick up and play" feel, but once you've mastered the controls, the characters' differences really start to shine through. For example, Silva is a savage striking machine, while Sakuraba is more of a well-rounded fighter. The different fighters aren't exactly balanced so that one isn't any better than another, but there aren't any "impossible" matchups to be found, either.
Like previous games of this type, Pride FC maps one of the controller's four face buttons to each of your fighter's four limbs. When combined with movement on the D pad, you can use these buttons to perform several different strikes. Combining button presses lets you attempt to grab your opponent and bring him down to the mat, counter strikes, and put your opponent in a submission hold, among other things. The game features a few positions and situations that haven't been represented in any of the UFC games, such as some standing sprawl and clinch animations, which can even result in a match-ending guillotine choke. You'll also find that some strikes can knock a fighter down without rendering him unconscious, setting up a situation in which one player is standing while the other scoots around on his back, snapping kicks up at the standing player's knees. The additional situations, combined with the much-improved submission-move dynamics, really make Pride FC feel far more fluid than any of the other games in the genre. Simply put, Pride feels less like a series of canned animations and more like a real fight.
Pride FC also contains a create-a-fighter mode. The visual options for your created characters are pretty standard, letting you choose tattoos, ring attire, facial hair, and so on. What really sets the mode apart from the pack is that it lets you configure all your fighter's moves and combos for each of the game's different fighting positions. You can create multiple branching combos for each position, and the game gives you some good statistics on each move, helping you create more-damaging sets of strikes. The only thing missing here is a way to jump directly into the ring from the create section to test your character out. Instead, you have to jump all the way out to the training mode and load your fighter. Even then, there's no way to get a look at your list of combos.
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