Electronic Arts and UFC have announced that the cover athlete for EA Sports UFC 2 is none other than Ronda Rousey. It's an expected choice that goes well with all of the media attention she's been receiving, both in the world of sports and in the world of broader media entertainment.
To accompany the news EA released a teaser trailer featuring the UFC champion making her way to the octagon.
Over on the official EA website they roll out the details on the announcement, even grabbing a quote from the champ herself, where “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey states...
EA Sports is a cultural barometer to know what’s going on in sports at the moment, [...] As a gamer myself, it's pretty surreal to be on the cover of the game and to have a woman on the cover of a UFC game shows a lot of progress. I’m really happy to be involved with it.
There are a ton of new features added to the sequel of EA Sports UFC, including all new octagon entrances and music, as well as improved grappling and controls. They've added a new knockout physics system to the game, and improved on the one thing that people criticized the original game for the most: game modes.
In this newest outing of EA Sports UFC there will be five brand new and different game modes to play around with. Some of the new modes includes the KO Mode, and the UFC Ultimate Team mode; there's also a new tutorial to help players train and master their moves, and the return of the career mode.
There weren't a whole lot of problems with the original EA Sports UFC, but it's nice to know that EA is taking the feedback seriously and improving on the shortcomings of the first game.
Hopefully they only add to the experience and they don't take anything away. There's a nasty habit in the FIFA and Madden NFL games to add in some cool new feature and then take out five more.
The only thing they really needed to add to the sequel of EA Sports UFC is the ability to create female fighters – and given that Ronda Rousey is the cover athlete, I imagine that feature will be implemented – and a few more game modes to switch up the variety and replayability of the game. They already have one of those things added in there, so now they just need the other and it'll be complete.
The original EA Sports UFC was a well made game with great control mechanics, physics and graphics. The fighter movements and hit detection was pretty spot-on and knockouts were often hard and satisfying to watch. If they can bring back that formula for EA Sports UFC 2 they'll have a real winner on their hands.
You can look for “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey to grace the covers of EA Sports UFC 2 on store shelves starting spring of 2016 for the Xbox One and PS4. Sorry, no PC port this time around.
