The standup in this game is very good. Now that I'm more used to the controls I really like the striking. It feels much more fluid than FNR4 did and I don't find myself not throwing punches I meant to throw. Another good thing about the standup is range. I think EA did a fantastic job with range, a key aspect to striking. There will be fights where I feel like I can throw good strikes and stay out of my opponents' range while there are other fights where I feel like I can't get close enough to get my strikes going yet my opponent is all over me.
The ground game is very good as well. I love how they tied stamina into every movement you make. You can't just spam transitions or blocks without seriously putting your fighter in jeopardy. The ground game is very much a chess match between trying to improve position while on top and preventing your fighter from being moved further into guard while also landing effective strikes to prevent the fight from being stood up. Remaining calm and collected really helps on the ground just like it does in real life.
Subs are handles cool as well. I like the little stamina mini game for armbars and leg locks. I also like how chokes are handled.
The weakest part of the game is the presentation. The soundtrack is pretty cool but the play-by-play and color commentary is bad and the overall presentation is choppy. The career mode has FPS dips in the cutscenes and the transition from one to another is choppy at times. The presentation of the UFC games is some of the best out there though, so that doesn't help EA's game by comparison at all.
The only other complaint I have is the fact that it seems too easy to knock a guy out once you gain full mount and posture up. The cpu doesn't do a good job of getting out or preventing damage in that position. The good news is it's not the easiest position to get into on Hard difficulty or above but on Medium or below you can routinely get into that position and win the fight.
I haven't fought online so I can't really talk about that but there is one supremely awesome thing you can do online and that is watch full fight replays of people on the leaderboards, including friends. It won't keep every fight but the last couple of fights for each person is available to view. I watched the replay of the top guy on the leaderboards most recent fight and it was very cool.
Okay, now that I've at least gotten that out of my system cue the crickets.
