I Accidentally Made UFC 5 Into A Horror Game In This Underappreciated Game Mode

Even though UFC 5 has now been out for over a year, I'm still playing the game and having fun with it. As one of the only good recent combat sports games that has come out (cough, I'm looking at you Undisputed), it's managed to scratch the combat-sports gaming itch that I have as both a boxing and MMA fan. With the demise of the Fight Night franchise and seemingly no other development team willing to enter the arena, right now, in terms of the genre, all I have is UFC 5.

And while I've explored nearly everything the game has to offer, from trying to muster enough stats for my pitiful online career to betting on every upcoming UFC event, I've, for the most part, stayed away from the tournament mode. I don't tend to play Xbox games with friends, so typically, I stick to the weekly challenges, career, and ranked online modes — but tournament mode was calling my name, and I'm happy it did because it resulted in one of the most gruesome and unintentional things I've done in the game so far.

Tournament Mode In UFC 5 Is Brutal

Push UFC 5's Realistic Damage To The Limit

Close

UFC 5 has a tournament mode in Event Creator that's great for in-person round-robin sessions when playing the game with a group of people, but it also is generally fun to take a break from Ranked online mode and take out my frustrations on a few Legendary AI. While many might know that there is a tournament mode in UFC 5, they'd probably not be alone in never touching it. After all, career and online ranked modes are typically more alluring to most.

With the right settings, UFC 5 tournament mode becomes a brutal examination of the strides that EA has made with the damage system. To achieve the desired effect, "Continued Damage" must be toggled on under Settings, and "Doctor Stoppages" must be turned off under Game Style. Essentially, this creates an old-school-style Kumite Iron Man tournament where the finals can see the full extent of player damage with destroyed bodies and deep facial cuts akin to a horror movie like Event Horizon.

Keep in mind the damage settings also apply to stamina, so by the finals of the tournament, there's a pretty high likelihood that fighters will be totally gassed out.

Another cool but not totally necessary setting to swap is the Weight Class Type to "combine" and Weight Class to "open," which enables the biggest UFC stars on the roster & across weight classes to duke it out in a winner-take-all style tournament. One thing I found out is that heavyweight fighters are actually worse than the lower weights (beyond the reach advantage) because weight and power don't seem to matter at all. It's pretty funny to watch a Demetrious Johnson completely obliterate a Tom Aspinall, considering the physical size differences.

PRIDE FC & The Original UFC Actually Had Real-Life Tournaments

It's Not All Fantasy, This Used To Happen

Modern MMA tournaments now typically take place over a few months at the least, allowing fighters to heal and recuperate in between bouts — but this wasn't always the case. Some more recent MMA fans might not know that the original UFC 1 featured this single-night tournament-style setup all the way back in 1993. Iconic BJJ legend Royce Gracie actually went on to defeat Art Jimmerson, Gerard Gordeau, and Ken Shamrock all in the same night, and all via submission, showing the strength of the then-unknown martial art from Brazil via Japan.

Hopefully, EA or UFC 5 devs don't see this post because I hope they don't patch this one.

Pride Fighting Championship, the Japanese rival to Ultimate Fighting Championship, was also keen on single-night tournaments, with its Pride FC - Grand Prix 2000 taking place on January 30 and May 1, with the latter date featuring an elimination-style tournament with Mark Coleman shredding through Akira Shoji, Kazuyuki Fujita, and Igor Vovchanchyn all in the same night. Although those names might not sound familiar to younger MMA fans, they were all pretty iconic in their own right when fighting in Pride.

Related There's One Big Name Still Missing From Fighting Games Releasing In 2025 The Soul Calibur franchise has been a staple fighting game series for many years, and yet is is still absent from the list of future 2025 releases.

Another interesting thing that the Japanese promotion did (much like the first few UFC events) was also hold open-weight fights. Some of these battles, like Ikuhisa Minowa vs Giant Silva, were put on mainly for the spectacle of the whole big vs small aspect.

A Bug Really Shows Off The Improved Damage Features

Get Cut Everywhere, In The Face At Least

One of the more interesting things that happened when I figured out this tournament damage setting is a bug that carries the damage on the player's face over to the featured character and character select screens. The only way to actually fix this is by playing another match, as even switching to online career mode just transplanted all the facial damage to my custom-created character, which was also a pretty funny effect.

Related "Presentation That Has Set A Bloody New Bar": EA Sports UFC 5 Review After an epic training arc, UFC 5 has far surpassed previous installments with jaw-dropping presentation and incredibly satisfying gameplay.

While this horrifying visage is pretty brutal to look at, it's also a good demonstration of the damage effects in the game. There are different zones where fighters can get cut, whether that be on the forehead, over the brow, or on the cheek. Furthermore, there are swelling mechanics in the game that show off the attention to detail when it comes to the damage effects. By the end of a tournament, my favorite fighter looked like some of the wacky create-a-fighters I came across during my online career journey.

I Hope They Don't Patch Or Change This One

I'm Not Sure This Is What The Devs Intended

Hopefully, EA or UFC 5 devs don't see this post because I hope they don't patch this one. Having a 16-person MMA tournament with friends in the living room with these settings on could be a blast. On top of the tournament being fun just in general for couch PvP play, the added challenge of having to keep fighters at a high enough health and stamina to make it to the next bout also adds a unique spin on what is typically a pretty vanilla 1v1 matchup. Doctor stoppages would make this impossible after a few rounds, but disabling it allows for this chaos.

According to an industry insider (via GameRant), a new Fight Night game may be in the works.

It isn't really a bug, per se, so there's really not much to patch here outside of the character select characters retaining the damage, but it is a fun loophole you can figure out in the settings to really push the limits of damage. For those really looking to push the envelope, use a ground-and-pound style, as that accumulated damage doesn't necessarily result in a knockout, just a lot of swelling and bleeding. Even though UFC 5 is over a year old at this point (doesn't time go by fast), I'm still having a blast with it by discovering these cool things.

Source: GameRant