EA Sports UFC 6 - PlayStation 5 Review

 

EA Sports UFC 6 by developer EA Sports and publisher Electronic Arts—PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

EA Sports UFC 6 is one of those titles that felt almost immediately comfortable and familiar in my hands, but with enough updates and nuanced changes to make it interest after having taking a few years off from the series. 

The last UFC title released back in 2023 (and you can read our review of it here), so as such it doesn’t quite carry the same stigma as a lot of sports titles that receive annual releases. I think the slower release cadence not only makes sense based on the sport (that doesn’t have a cycle of annual championships the way football or hockey do), but it gives the development team more time to breathe as they flesh the title out. 

As a result, EA Sports UFC 6 benefits from the extra time marinating. The core engine was already quite strong, but there’s been more hooks that have kept me glued to my screen for longer stretches of time than the last couple of iterations. Everything in this game lives and dies off of the combat, so we’ll talk about that first. If this core part of the action didn’t work, none of the other modes and features would matter much, but simply put: EA Sports UFC 6 is a lot of fun to play.

At its core, the combat found in EA Sports UFC 6 is brutal. Punches and kicks feel fluid and impactful when they connect, and appropriately muted when blocked or evaded. Grappling and throws have weight and the ground game has a sort of puzzle element to it as you try to one-up your opponent and anticipate what they will try to do next. It’s a complete combat package that has more depth than a typical boxing game and feels more rewarding than a typical wrestling title. One new addition to the combat is called ‘Flow State’. Think of it as a boosted condition that can help tilt the odds in your favor during a match, triggered by performing in-ring actions that align with your fighter’s style. It’s flashy-looking as the visuals and sound change to mimic being in the zone, so to speak, and it helped me clinch some of my matches where the outcome had previously been in doubt. 

 

There’s a ton of options in the game, which allows you to tailor the single player experience to your liking. Do you want a more arcade-like punching and kicking experience? Create or use a striker and tweak the difficulty and rule settings to reflect stand and swing style of gameplay. Prefer something with a bit more challenge and technical depth? Focus on your defensive abilities in the striking game or play a character who likes to take combat to the mat. Either way, there’s a great deal of flexibility in how you can play, which really helps the longevity of EA Sports UFC 6. I created both a stand-up striker with flashy kicks and a female wrestler with submission skills as well as using a wide variety of existing fighters from the roster, and the different styles certainly show through during the gameplay. The difficulty settings range from incredibly easy (you’ll get one round KO’s pretty quickly) to maddeningly challenging (you’ll get KO’d in the first round pretty quickly) and everything in between.

So the core engine of EA Sports UFC 6 is really quite good, but where this year’s iteration has grown is in its variety of modes. My favorite by far is the Career Mode, which is quite similar to that found in UFC 5, but with a bit more polish in places. The general premise is you are an up-and-coming UFC combatant that signs contracts that provide a combination of objectives such as trying to get three wins in a row, or win a set number of matches as well as your opponents. You can interact with social media to gain boosts or increase match hype (garnering you better money earnings and more fans). You also spend your weeks leading up to the fight training to improve your skills and conditioning, learning new skills, gaining info on your opponent and more. It’s a nice blend of simulation and action that kept me coming back for more.

One new twist on that formula is an attempt at a story mode, called The Legacy. You take on the role of a wrestler named Chris Carter and his road to UFC superstardom. Once you complete the narrative notes, it shifts into being a more traditional Career Mode. It’s similar to what we’ve seen in other sports games, especially the EA Sports ones, and the extra effort here is a great way to learn the basics of career mode with a narrative hook.

A few of the other features worth calling out is crossplay, a first for the franchise. There’s also the promise of continued content, though obviously some people have mixed feelings on Live Services, which this definitely is. The Hall of Legends is a cool way to highlight some of the UFC’s biggest stars. Zhang Weili, Max Halloway and Alex Pereira all get a combination of real footage, interesting facts and recreated matches to help highlight some of the biggest moments of their career. It’s not a big time sink, and I thought it was pretty well done. 

Last but not least, there’s The Gym. This feels like a slightly underbaked feature that I didn’t quite grasp the connective tissue of it throughout the game right at first. You get (and recruit) some fighters to your gym (it would be nice to personalize your gym more – maybe with areas of focus or just theming it). These fighters can passively earn progression through your time spent playing the game in general (just about any mode), and earning experience. A nice tie-in is how The Gym can be represented in quick fights, giving your gym fighters more experience and allowing you to use them in the mode. I’m not sure how exactly, but it would be neat to see these fighters somehow show up in other modes (like Career?). It might be nice to see some quality of life improvements (like perhaps tagging favorite fighters) to make the process of finding and assigning trainers to them more streamlined, as it can be a little clunky. 

It’s still a neat idea, and given that this is year one of it, I think there’s plenty of room to grow this into something more down the road in future iterations. I thought it was cool, but came away feeling like it could have been something more as well.

 
The presentation is excellent. It compliments the action in the ring with detailed fighter models, visible signs of damage (blood, bruising) as fights progress and a fantastic soundtrack. Movements look fluid, both when striking or jockeying for position in the ground game and the arenas do a nice job of representing the zany atmosphere of the octagon. You still get the occasional janky animation (there were a handful of fights where characters hit the ground in near-hilarious fashion with limbs at angles that shouldn’t be entirely possible, but these moments were the exception and not the rule.

EA Sports UFC 6 should appeal to those who simply like combat games, but also those who enjoy the authentic UFC sport. A healthy roster, lots of customization options, a really good presentation and enjoyable combat wrapped up in a variety of modes gives this title a lot of replay value, especially if you play on higher difficulty settings that force you to fight more strategically and take some lumps along the way. Is this a monumental improvement over UFC 5? Not, but it’s moving in the right direction with enough small wins that it’s worth giving the update a go.

Score: 8.25 / 10