Rumble Roses

"It really is Smackdown-vs-RAW, minus variety, plus T&A"

Konami's basic approach to designing Rumble Roses seems to be this: make an all-female pro-wrestling game with lots of absurd humor and gratuitious T&A. Simple enough, right?

If you have never played a wrestling game in your life, well, think of it as a fighting game at heart. You and your opponent beat up on each other until someone drops. However, while most fighting games demand that you memorize strings of combos to maximize your effectiveness, with wrestling games it's all about timing. Any character you use can reverse an attack as long as you time your button presses properly.

But there honestly isn't much else to say about them. There are differences between the most popular wrestling series out there, but of the ones I've played, the gameplay differences are usually rather small, and the most obvious differences are in things like the setting, the art style, or the variety of characters and match types you get to pick from.

Given that World Wrestling Entertainment recently released their latest PS2 grappler, Smackdown-Versus-RAW, and not too long ago EA Games released a very "gritty" and "hardcore" grappler called Def Jam:Fight For New York, RR's has a lot of tough competition. So is it worthy of you plunking down $40 to buy it? I'm really not sure. I am certain that it makes a great rental, in case you're not certain after reading the rest of my review, but buying a game is a whole different story. I think the best way to go about it is for me to list the the things I think it does better or worse than Smackdown-vs-RAW and DJ:FFNY.

What it does better:

- graphical quality is higher

It's a great-looking game, and not just for the most obvious reasons. If you're like me and are burned out on anime-style art, then you'll dislike the character art design a little bit, but everything still looks seriously good. It's one of the better visual feasts on the PS2, for sure. You could argue that DJ:FFNY looks every bit as impressive, but somehow I'm guessing that since men still make up the majority of the gaming public out there, they're going to find a roster of all-hotties more appealing than DJ:FFNY's all-rap-stars lineup. And while Smackdown-vs-RAW isn't ugly or anything, it simply can't quite hold its own against RR. I know, "it's all about the gameplay, graphics don't matter!!!!!" - well, I'm not sure I agree 100%. They don't matter MUCH, but I always have to give a game developer props when they do an outstanding job with the graphics.

- lots of new truly bizarre, unique, and definitely titillating wrestling manuevers to go along with the slew of moves ripped right out of S-v-R

Some are brutal, some are hilarious, some are both at once, and all of them are really cool. And somehow I doubt that you're ever going to see a lot of them in the Smackdown or Def Jam series any time soon. This really helps the game stand out from the crowd.

- whether it's unintentional or not (I don't think it is), the game is hilarious in a "this is so unbelievably stupid" way, both thank to the silly new wrestling holds and the ridiculous storylines

The storylines beat out all those great SNK fighting games like King Of Fighters when it comes to sheer lunacy. No, I'm not joking. Frankly, if you don't find yourself laughing at/with the game at some point, you may want to check to see if you have a pulse. Even my girlfriend found it hilarious, and this is after she was fully prepared to hate the game. It's an overdose of pure absurdity, and I'm thankful for that.

- the gameplay is identical to Smackdown's when you talk about the pure wrestling aspect of it

Seriously, the gameplay is 95% the same. The only difference is that you can't do as many standing front grapples per character, but that's a tiny issue. I do think Def Jam:Fight For New York is a better pure game than RR (or the latest Smackdown games, for that matter), but not by such a large extent that it ruins the fun here. Those expecting RR to be another pure-T&A game with no gameplay merits will be pleasantly surprised. It definitely isn't BMX XXX or DOA:Beach Volleyball.

The sole complaint I can think of here is that, like the older Smackdown games and DJ:FFNY, you can only break out of submission holds by button-mashing. I love the fact that S-v-R has a new kind of submission style where your chances of escaping/reversing it are based solely on timing.

What it does worse:

- lack of variety

I say this because of the small roster, the few available arenas, and the very few match types available.

S-v-R's roster takes some flak for being small compared to previous Smackdown games, and maybe rightly so, but even it is noticably bigger than RR's. And DJ:FFNY's is much bigger than S-v-R's. Here, you get ten basic characters, an additional alter-ego for each character, and two versions of the final boss. That's a grand total of twenty-two wrestlers. Oof. It won't take long to see everything all the wrestlers have to offer.

Arenas aren't a big issue at all, but it'd never hurt to have more, you know?

The lack of match types is my biggest issue with the game by far. You are given very few options: regular matches, mud matches (same as regular matches, except you're grappling in mud, and believe me this novelty wears off quickly), or "humiliation finishes only" matches (which sort of makes it like the WWE's Submissions-Only match). As a fan of all kinds of pro-wrestling, I'd like to see more high-risk match types like Hell In A Cell or Ladder matches, as well as garbage brawls. This game already has a few weapons that can be used in, ah, unusual ways, but I'm sure they could come up with more great ideas to add a bizarre twist to the usual hardcore matches. And I'd love to see what utterly bizarre moves the cyborg boss character could do off the top of a ladder, cage, or HIAC. Anything to spice up the same old formula would be a much-welcome addition should Konami decide to do a sequel.

- no CAW mode

I don't care if my CAWs would have poorer graphical quality or not. Besides, who says they would HAVE to? Unlike S-v-R, this game doesn't let you have six wrestlers going at it at any one time, so you could afford to make each CAW much more detailed than S-v-R's are without causing the framerate to take a hit. I am absolutely in love with CAW mode after playing around with the fantastic one offered in the Smackdown series, so I really hope that an RR sequel would include it. Doing so would obviously make up perfectly for the tiny roster.

- only one of each character's two personalities is usable at any one time

Unless you use a cheat device, that is. Here's how the alter-ego system works: each character has a good and evil personality, but only one is playable at one time. If you want to use the other personality for a character, you have to play some matches with the "vow system" (that is, play the match under special rules, such as "don't use weapons" or "don't let opponent do a taunt") to turn the character more towards their other personality until it unlocks. Once you do that, then the original personality is now locked. This is a fun idea in theory, I guess, but it breaks down once you start playing multiplayer. Say you or one of your friends wants to use a character's locked personality (for instance, I definitely prefer Killer Khan to Aigle). Well, you will first have to play a few "throwaway" matches with the vow system in order to unlock that alter-ego. Then, of course, once you unlock it, you wind up locking away the original personality, so if the next player wants to use it, they'll once again have to play a "throwaway" match with the vow system. Ugh, what a cheap and artificial way to "increase the replay value!" I'd rather that you just got the option to first choose which character you wanted to play, then got to choose which of the two personalities you wanted to use.

Final thoughts:

On balance, it's a solid game, but the comedy stuff and sharp graphics only helps disguise the weaknesses for so long. It's only selling for $40, when compared to DJ:FFNY and Smackdown-vs-RAW's asking prices of $50, so that's definitely something to consider. But frankly there's a good reason why it's not selling for as high a price: it's simply not quite as good a game. Therefore, you really need to make sure you know what you're getting into before you buy it.

As far as renting it goes, I say why not? If nothing else you should get several laughs out of the thing, as long as you don't approach it with the mindset of a prude who doesn't want either B-movie-plots or gratuitious T&A to make their way into your games.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/04