Pride FC: Fighting Championships

As a big fan of fighting games, I've never quite understood how to tackle these more 'realistic' fighting games. They usually promise a fun, realistic, brutal experience, just as the actual real life competitions on which they're based. Pride Fighting Championships, also a real life competition, throws its bits in the console arena with this title. It's got a whole crapton of real fighters to choose from with a variety of different fighting styles, any of which can specialize in different attacks, from the standing kicks and punches to the mount punching or submission moves. The fighting is the single most unusual and difficult part of this game, as while each character has a style, and a variety of moves to choose from, it is very difficult to learn how to fight naturally using their attacks and grappling moves. Additionally, while the game references a 'stamina' bar, it really only performs like the health bar of games past, and doesn't have any effect on your character's stamina, like previous titles such as Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Graphically, this game is quite beautiful. In particular, each of the characters has a well-detailed model that actually looks like the fighter. Additionally, they manage, quite well, not to look like repetitions of the same model.

The movements of each fighter are animated nigh perfectly, with realistic movements that help provide a suspension of disbelief. If there were more in the way of moves and combo abilities, I'm sure it'd look even better. As is requisite for any sport title, Pride FC features a large soundtrack of modern bands, and the sound effects are suitably meaty, especially when you've gotten an opponent into a mount position, and are busy pounding the living crap out of him.

Price FC is a decent fighting title that not only gives you a realistic fighting challenge, but also manages to make it look really good while doing so. However, it does suffer from some setbacks, like a poor selection of moves, and a very steep learning curve.

As an addendum, Price FC does provide a robust fighter creation system, that'll let you easily and fairly quickly create your own badass, which could be based on one of the many fighters not currently included.