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To be fair, the developer’s put in some serious legwork to try and make the ground game more appealing. While the complicated legacy controls are available to those who want them, a new assisted grapple system enables you to wrestle by simply pushing in different directions. For example, if you want to blitz your sparring partner with a flurry of punches while you’ve got them pinned, you just need to push to the right and your fighter will automatically assume the optimal position. The same is true of submissions, except you push to the left to perform that.

While it’s a much improved format for those simply looking to pick-up-and-play, we found it difficult to predict defensive manoeuvres without assists on – and these are disabled by default when you play online. Moreover, ground and pound still doesn’t feel quite as brutal as it should, despite the sound effects being cranked up to compensate for the slightly slack animations. To be fair, the new submission mechanics work well, as you chase your opponent’s coloured bar in a minigame that tests your tactical nous – but it’s the on-foot striking gameplay that still undeniably takes centre stage.Buy the EA Sports UFC 4 Best price online from The Clickstore,Nairobi

This allows you to make a character that’s very much a reflection of your own style; if you use a lot of upper-cuts, for example, then over time they’ll become the deadliest attack in your arsenal. Other parts of your performance, like your chin strength and kick speed, can be upgraded using training points that you accrue over the course of your campaign. But you need to be smart about building hype around your bouts and also ensuring that you’re in the best possible shape before you fight.

There are some very minor storylines that emerge as part of the single player, allowing you to partner with some fighters and convert others into rivals, but we found this element to be undercooked. The onboarding process, however, which sees you lose your first amateur fight before being trained up by a fictional former UFC fighter serves as a satisfying tutorial for the gameplay systems, which can be obtuse if you’ve never played one of these titles before.

The online play is actually very well executed, with a ranked option that sees you attempt to earn a championship belt and the more fast-paced Blitz Battles, which rotate objectives throughout the day. In these you’ll need to win five back-to-back matches with varying rule-sets, with our favourite being the one minute bouts that seriously up the tension; one wrong move and you’ll find yourself starting from scratch.