Undisputed: Early Access Hands-On Preview

ign.com:

It’s widely agreed upon that the last, truly outstanding professional boxing game was 2011’s Fight Night Champion – a game that was initially released for the now-ancient Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Granted, if you’ve poked your head into a virtual reality headset any time in the last five years, you may have gotten a chance to throw a few swings at The Thrill of the Fight or Creed: Rise to Glory, both of which are decent boxing simulators albeit far removed from the official ruleset or roster of the UFC. But now, over twelve years after Fight Night disappeared, developer Steel City Interactive may be reaching for the title belt with Undisputed, a new professional boxing game that seemingly represents a return to form for the boxing genre. I’ve spent several hours in its single-player skirmish mode and I’m pleasantly surprised by the fluidity of the fighters’ movements which, while still not perfectly comparable to their real-life counterparts, are already more dynamic and realistic-looking than those of the classic fighting game Undisputed will undoubtedly be compared against.

Undisputed immediately asks you to spar against a basic opponent while you get the controls down, and this is a tutorial you absolutely should not skip – especially if you’re unfamiliar with boxing games – given the incredible amount of control Undisputed gives you over your hooks, jabs, slips, blocks, weaves, power punches, uppercuts, and so forth. There are far more button combinations to memorize here than in your average fighting game, but these controls affect the fluidity of your boxer’s motions in a way that mimics how a professional fighter might actually move in a fight. It’s not quite intuitive, but once you get into a groove, it does