It’s been a while since I really dove into a new EA Sports UFC game. The last one I reviewed was UFC 3 back in 2018. It’s been eight years and we now have EA Sports UFC 6, and my expectations are pretty high. For this entry we have two cover athletes, depending on what edition you get. Standard Edition is sporting Alex Pereira and the Ultimate Edition is showcasing Max Holloway. Definitely awesome seeing Max on the cover; the dude is a rockstar. There have been some interesting changes and additions to this one, so let’s get into it.

I’m not going to bother getting into the fine details of the combat, for the most part the general combat is the same. I’ll just talk about the new things I’ve noticed coming from UFC 3. The biggest addition is that it now has a Story Mode. You play as Chris Carter, a decorated collegiate wrestler living in his fathers shadow. His goal is to break out of that and join the UFC to make his own legacy. Starting from the bottom, Chris joins Believe MMA ran by his father long time friend, Coach Thompson. It is a story about the rise into getting to the UFC with fellow Believe MMA partner Danny Lopez.

During the story you will have a couple of unique fights.

Lopez and Carter have two different backgrounds in fighting. Lopez is a striker and obviously Carter is a great wrestler. Using each other’s strengths in training, they bond and help each other rise up and get better. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, as you will go through story missions outside of the ring that will hurt your UFC chances and strain your friendship.

Overall, the Story Mode is fine; it’s a bit cheesy and some of the dialogue is just not quite organic. The actors do a good job with the script given, but the writing itself is a bit silly. It also loses a bit of steam when you realize that the training aspects and general setup is exactly like the regular Career Mode. The only difference is there will be some cutscenes in between and a couple unique fighting locations during the story mode. But it just isn’t quite intriguing or different enough to want to continue the Chris Carter story after I got the UFC contract. Especially since it just becomes the Career Mode after you get the UFC contract anyway.

Once you get past the Lopez story line, it just becomes like a regular Career Mode.

One of the coolest additions to EA Sports UFC 6 is the Hall of Fame. This is a full mode where you walk your created character through a massive museum as it showcases a Hall of Fame fighter. Showing their personal life, their beginnings, and their rise to being the best. Not only that, but you will get to interact with the museum and even jump into their highlight fights and play the section that it’s showcasing.

Unfortunately, performance can be a bit rocky in these environments as it’s trying to load video clips of the fight it’s showcasing. My only other issue is that when you do want to job in and play those highlight moments, it does take a while to load. Other than that, I really liked this idea to highlight some great fighters in a unique way. Right now they only have Max Holloway, Alex Pereira, and Zhang Weili, but if they can add more fighters and hammer out the performance issue, this is something I’d love to see continued.

The Hall of Fame setups are unique and a really cool way to celebrate these legends.

Career Mode is your classic create a fighter mode and bring them through the ranks of the UFC. It’s pretty standard, but I wanted to talk about some of the changes I noticed. For whatever reason, EA Sports loves to include these fake social media aspects of the game. They try and integrate with making fans and starting rivalries. However, I just find this whole aspect boring and a waste of time. It already takes too long to get in and out of training to get to the next fight, now I have to deal with responding to fake tweets and try to get a social media following?

I truly think it hurts the pacing and pulls me out of the experience more than it does immerse me. Training also can be a bit boring after sinking in a lot of hours, and it wouldn’t be too bad if the simulate training didn’t give such a decline in rest and points. You only get about half the conditioning points if you simulate, so it never felt worth it if I wanted to be on top of my fitness. It makes sense, but after playing hours of this, the gameplay loop got boring especially when my fights were finishing in the first round. I get five minutes of actual fighting and then the next thirty is doing all my daily training and social media crap.

You’re able to interact with kiosks to watch highlights or even play a portion of the fight.

Thankfully, the character customization is pretty solid. Earning points from training you can allocate those to base stats, or to unlock moves to specifically train and use. There is also a Perk system to buy and equip where it gives perks to how you want to fight. Equipping Perks is also directly related to the Flow State system as well. Flow State is built up as you fight, and doing the action that your Perk is will grant a boost in your Flow State meter. Activating Flow State also activates your Perks. You can equip up to four and they are all difference. Some will enhance your timing, stamina efficiency, amplified strengths of certain attacks, and even your recovery between rounds.

The last major inclusion is The Gym, this is a mode similar to MUT or FUT, but without the terrible microtransactions. You’re essentially the coach to your gym and you’re recruiting fighters. You become the manager and coach as you build up your gym by building a roster of great fighters. You can track Gym progression, recruit fighters, train them, help them hit milestones and goals. You’re their manager and you can take them into any game mode to earn them XP and unlock cosmetics for them. You can’t increase their stats, which was done to keep the balance of online play, but you can express your gym with different customization.

For some quick events you can complete weekly contracts which feature famous fights through the years.

General gameplay seems to have received a nice upgrade, as it does feel more natural in a lot of ways. Better animations for various attacks and far more accurate recreation of fighting styles from various UFC fighters. That all adds to the realism of the fighting. However, there are still plenty of silly moments where you’ll clash and a leg or arm gets stuck and it looks tweaked out. Or the physics will look off as a body ragdolls to the ground. But for the most part, they have done well with upgrading that aspect in this iteration.

Visually, EA Sports UFC 6 looks great. Character models are better than ever and the small details are extremely well done. The recreation of the likeness is superb and the details of damage, cuts, and bruises are all believable. The only visual aspect of the combat damage that still looks a bit weird is the blood that comes out of the fighters during the slow motion replays, but other than that it looks fantastic.

The only time you get to see Daniel and Jon are during the Chris Carter story mode. I wanted more of this kind of presentation through the rest of the game.

My main issue with the game though isn’t the visuals itself, but the presentation. Something just feels a bit lacking in its overall presentation and pre-fight work. It would have been nice to get Daniel Cormier and Jon Anik to do some mocap with their commentary so you can pan to them for some pre or mid-fight commentary stuff. The Career menu also feels a bit boring, and cluttered. I would have also liked to see more crowd work other than just the little bit during the walk outs. Have the Picture-In-Picture showing the crowd going crazy between rounds and have the commentators featured here. It would add to the overall look like an actual broadcast.

Audio design is well done with punchy sound effects for contact. There is a satisfying audio feedback when you rock someone with a great attack. General ambient audio from the crowd and the mat as the fighters move around are realistic as well. Daniel Cormier and Jon Anik doing a good job with their commentary, Daniel is a bit stiff and sounds like he is reading from a script, but overall they get the job done. Soundtrack is actually pretty good and plays into my mid 30’s dad rock love. There is a good mix of rock, rap, and hip hop featuring Disturbed, The Offspring, Metallica, Trick Daddy, Eminem, and Bad Bunny. 

There is great audio feedback when you just about knock a fighters head off.

EA Sports UFC 6 was a really nice surprise that I felt had a good amount of new content and core upgrades to the formula. Perhaps that’s because I went through a long gap, but I honestly think the core elements that they added here were for the better. Flow State, The Gym, Perks, the Hall of Fame, and general gameplay improvements all felt like great additions. I’d like to see a bit more effort go into the storytelling and writing for the story mode, but it offered a few hours of something a little bit different.

EA SPORTS UFC 6 is available now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S .

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.

A copy of EA SPORTS UFC 6 was provided by the publisher.