Rumble Roses [PS2]

OK, we admit it: Rumble Roses isn't the deepest thing going, even for a fighting game. But it's an entertaining and eye-catching spectacle of male-oinker-oriented wrestling fun. Plus, it's populated by some of the best-looking, most meticulously modeled virtual girls ever designed.

You have questions: "Who are these women, and why exactly are they fighting?" And Konami has answers: "Shut up." Story-wise, you seriously don't want to know, and it doesn't matter a jot. What matters is that the 22 femme fatales of Rumble Roses -- 11 wrestlers, each with her own doppelganger -- all have unusually distinct fighting moves, looks, and personas, from undeniably sexy (in a computer-graphics, pervo kind of way), to flat-out strange.

Every girl here is some permutation of fetish-oriented stereotype: There's the buxom blonde Texas girl, cow-spotted outfit and all; the glitzy American pop star with flashy dance moves; the spunky punk-band lead singer (out to save her old childhood orphanage, of course); no less than four distinct varieties of the Asian-hottie-who-could-kick-your-ass-and-you'd-like-it; the obligatory "masked fighter" with extra-human reflexes; and there's even "Anesthesia," a Latina in white nurse garb.

To glean all the details of the original 10 girls' goofy backstories -- and they are goofy -- you play through the game's story mode, unlocking additional characters, color schemes, and other goodies. Of the 10 characters, eight start out as "face" (good) wrestlers, and two as "heel" (bad). Through certain actions, they can all be nudged to the opposite behavioral pole. This is where the vow system comes in.

Prior to matches in exhibition mode, players can "promise" to complete certain objectives in each fight, such as humiliating a certain foe or resisting using certain strikes. Whichever you choose, each particular vow earns the character a number of points tagged to the face or heel categories. Get all the good points, and it's time for the championship. Rack up enough points on the opposite alignment, and you unlock that character's mirror-persona (which also has her own story). Naturally, the back stories of the girls are often entangled with those of the others, and there's some concomitant rivalry between competitors that comes out in the story mode.

Mechanically, it's a tweaked take on the SmackDown! fighting engine -- more demanding in terms of timing, and geared more toward the attack mindset, rather than defense. It's also less complicated with one strike button and one grapple button. A successful grapple opens the way for over 20 subsequent moves: Four from behind your foe, the rest from the front.

When implementing the all-important "humiliation" finishers, the player who initiated the move is given control of the camera to pan around, zoom in on the punishment, and really drive the insult home. This hold is often the perfect opportunity to draw gratuitous attention to what otaku call a "panty shot." And all the while, most Rumble Roses players are probably males anyway. Yeah, it's pretty weird all around -- with any luck, your girlfriend or sister will walk in on your gaming session and give you that look.

Players can also employ weapons, not all of which are "weapons" -- these include paddles, bats, whips, brass knuckles, ticklers, and more. Additional unlockables include new costumes, and there's a (once again gratuitous) gallery mode, wherein the camera can lecherously prowl all over the girls as they prep for matches or relax. Rumble Roses has a lot of style, and offers some leeringly elaborate ring-entries for each combatant (even tailored to specific arenas).

The voicework is of uneven quality, but the soundtrack is definitely worth some attention; it includes tunes by a German punk band called Killer Barbies, some Dance Dance Revolution and Beatmania songs, and a covered, but respectable, version of Van Halen's "Yankee Rose." You gotta give it to Konami for judicious use of available assets -- they even got Yamaoka Akira of Silent Hill fame to contribute two songs, as well as Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance creator Yamane Michiru.

The game looks great and plays well -- in the end, its drawbacks have more to do with the limitations of what's there, rather than with the execution of what is. There are really only two gameplay modes, and while exhibition branches out a little -- including the mud matches, where fighters writhe around in vaguely muddy-looking liquid that slowly slides off the competitors -- it feels like something is missing. Also, you'll likely run through each girl's catalog of moves within a handful of matches (which isn't the same as saying you'll get tired of seeing them).

All in all, Rumble Roses is better than one might expect it to be, and perhaps not as thorough as one might have hoped. It's certainly more than just a gimmick, and does offer some surprisingly solid, over-the-top -- and often quite funny -- gameplay. It's perhaps a smirking technical joke that the gorgeously-rendered CPU wrestlers can be made to fight each other, for those who literally "like to watch." If you're a healthy male gamer and anything other than a hardcore fighting game elitist, Rumble Roses is fun for a while; having plausible excuses prepared for when the real females enter the room is up to you.