Electronic Arts announced that their cover athlete for EA Sports UFC 3 will be none other than the loud-mouthed Irishman, Conor McGregor. The MMA fighter who recently came off an explosive showing against Floyd Mayweather will headline next year’s mixed martial arts outing for Xbox One and PS4.

UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor briefly mentioned in the press release…

Two belts, two covers – EA SPORTS got it right again,” “It’s an honor to be on the cover and I can’t wait to play the game.”

There’s a trailer that showcases the game’s graphics and gameplay, but it looks identical to EA Sports UFC 2. Check it out below.

I don’t mind if the graphics and gameplay are similar, but they really need to spruce up some of the surrounding career mode mechanics instead of constantly trying to force people to buy microtransactions. The biggest turnoff was constantly having the Ultimate Team ads constantly pop up trying to get you buy the card packs.

All the meanwhile the career mode was slimmer than Jon Jones before he aced himself up on Turinabol.

The press release mentions that EA has revamped the career mode with a new G.O.A.T. Career Mode that now has players engaged in more WWE-style decisions that will affect the trajectory of their career, including how your fighter behaves during press conferences, and what sort of stuff they engage in outside the octagon that could affect their performance on the mat. You might even think twice about taking pecker pills otherwise you could end up getting stripped of your title. If your performance is a bit lacking you’ve always got your fingers… and a fist.

According to the press release they’ve revamped the Real Player Motion, adding 5,000 new animations, new moves, new movements, and new transitions all recaptured from the ground up.

EA Sports UFC 3 creative director, Brian Hayes mentioned in the press release that the new animations isn’t just for show, but they’re also for how players control the pugilists while in the octagon, saying…

“The new animation technology has allowed us to take a massive leap forward in motion and responsiveness. The result is a complete overhaul to gameplay where every move is more strategic and looks more authentic and beautiful.”

One of my biggest gripes was that the game’s 30fps sim-time with motion blur between frames actually really hurt the input latency for the game, because while the engine sim time could support up to 60fps, the game sim time’s 30fps meant that your button presses were always registering several ticks slower than what the game could actually handle.

I would be completely okay with the graphics taking a step down if we could get a proper 60fps game sim time to match the engine sim time. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was pressing buttons as fast as you could see the A.I., reacting but the registry of the reaction time for the player-character was just always a touch slow. It basically meant that you had to react before the A.I., lobbed their attacks at you, creating a sort of necessary predictive nature to the fights instead of a natural ebb and flow based on the actual execution of the moves from the opponent and the player-character happening in real-time.

Anyway, you can look for EA Sports UFC 3 to launch on the Xbox One and PS4 starting February 2nd in 2018 for $59.99. Pre-orders will net you three days early access to the game, and you can learn more about the title by visiting the official website.