Rumble Roses XX

Apr 3, 2006

Upon its release in late 2004 on the PS2, Rumble Roses was an ambitious endeavor and a game that no self-respecting man would play in front of a significant other. Essentially, Yukes took the elements of their legendary Toukon Retsuden wrestling engine and applied them to something a little different from their top-selling SmackDown! series. Oh, and they had silicone-enhanced fantasy girls beating the unholiness out of one another in the most Sapphically suggestive ways possible. In essence, they delivered a spiritual sister game to Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball with a wrestling-based edge. While it did moderately well in Japan, it didn't exactly reach SmackDown! sales numbers in the States. Nevertheless, Yukes has been hard at work producing a sequel for next-gen. And now, Konami and Yukes have the bragging rights of saying that they have created the first wrestling game for Xbox 360. But it's not a completely boast-worthy effort.

As mentioned in my preview, it's nearly impossible to discuss and describe Rumble Roses XX without accidentally delving into the occasional double entendre. It's that kind of game. However, once one divorces themself from the overt sexism and the awkwardness that accompanies playing this title, they will find that RR XX is a highly functional title with a relatively simple learning curve, and one that pulls off some amazing feats with the Xbox 360 hardware in its own right.

Visually, there's no doubt that the title looks absolutely next-gen. While detractors might say that it's just the last game with a face-lift, it's a Beverly Hills-quality job. One can look at each character and see exactly how much visual detail has been pumped into each one. For example, in the last game, the buxom Texan Dixie Clemets had a nice degree of visual detail to her. Now, however, she looks almost real...well, outside of her fairly unrealistic physical proportions. You can see her dark roots showing underneath her bleached blonde hair. You can see a vein on her left breast. And she's far from the only one with that degree of added detail.

Besides the girls, the arena looks incredible. If RR XX is demonstrating a first taste of how next-gen wrestling games will render arenas and environments, then count me in as optimistic about how other wrestling titles will render on Xbox 360. The detail that goes into small things, like the ring and rope physics, lighting on the walk way, and rendered Jumbotron imagery, are all really quite the sight to see. If you can focus on them, that is; usually, they're background fodder for a gratuitous shot of a wrestler's thrusting pelvis. Other areas, like the rooftop, demonstrate the Xbox 360's ability to render effective weather elements, like wind, on a match. The girls' hair flows wonderfully with the wind, and adds a really nice effect that couldn't have been done quite as successfully on PS2. Although the box boasts that the game is more than a pretty face, it's a bold claim that quite honestly rings hollow.

Yukes has also incorporated a new customization that allows players to tweak each girl. Since it doesn't feel like there's a real career mode to speak of, the goal of the game seems to be that players should battle until their girl has enough points to, ahem, enhance themselves. There are also unlockable outfits, poses, and humiliation tactics. Unfortunately, none of this is enough to make up for the lack of the one important thing that most wrestling game fans want out of a wrestling game: a plot. Accumulating skimpy outfits and humiliation tactics that make a girl have to crawl on all fours do not make up for the lack of anything tangible enough to give this game much replay value. In spite of the set-ups for feuds and heel turns, it's really quite a shallow experience.

Gameplay feels largely similar to the last title, with a few additional moves thrown in for good measure, but not many. Overall, though, the gameplay eventually thins out and leaves much to be desired. The wrestlers' repertoires feel rather one-dimensional after extended play. There isn't much variety in the way of both striking and grappling attacks, and ground moves, especially submission holds, just feel weak, especially in light of other wrestling games, like the SmackDown series, which also has roots in Yukes' Toukon Retsuden engine. Also, the game's reaction timing feels a bit off, which is unfortunate, considering that its source material is both highly fast-paced and heavy on counter-attacks. All in all, players who tried out Rumble Roses on PS2 and felt as though they had the game down pat after a few minutes will find more of the same here.

The shallowness of the gameplay experience really manifests itself in some of the modes, like Queen's Match, in which the loser must engage in a demeaning activity, but especially in the Street Fight, which, in spite of the jokes that were made at the expense of Dead or Alive 4 at the Konami press conference, feels a lot like a rip-off of DoA 4 rather than a satirical spoof at the expense of Team Ninja. Two girls face off in what almost looks like a basketball court and use the same controls as those in the ring, but there are walls that cause injury. One could say that it's merely a mini-game that enhances the experience of what is otherwise a wrestling title, but it plays more like an afterthought than anything tangible or important.

Xbox Live boasts a few modes, but is so laggy that it's almost an embarrassment that they tried to implement online with this game. Coupled with the low numbers of people playing, it makes for an utterly mediocre multiplayer experience. Players can take pictures of their characters and post them online for others to see, which is a quirky feature that personalizes the experience. However, it's one of the only things that feels like it works well online, since the framerate feels like a slideshow once gamers start getting into the action. The Live experience is one that is not recommended, unless players really want to hop online, wait a few minutes to find an opponent, and then deal with choppy, laggy gameplay, which is already coupled with fairly unresponsive countering.

I once joked that Rumble Roses was the only game that made me want to put, um, protection on my thumbs to play. It's a fantastic looking game that really shows off what the Xbox 360 can do in regard to environments and character models. Even if those character models are 30% silicone. There's no doubt that the arenas look amazing, and the presentation is great. Unfortunately, this is a game and not a tech demo, and the gameplay and modes are severely lacking. Unless you're the sort of wrestling fan that would like to aimlessly wrestle matches with no real sense of accomplishment just to put skimpy outfits on virtual girls, look elsewhere. At least in SmackDown, the camera's not zooming in on Ric Flair's crotch.