Rumble Roses

"The Perfect Marriage of Hot Babes and Great Gameplay Has Yet To Be Achieved"

When I first stepped into the Rumble Roses ring, I wasn't too impressed. All the women looked fat, the voice acting and story telling were beyond horrible, and I couldn't get the controls to behave. I sighed and resigned myself to playing another piece of Japanese garbage, replete with the extremely odd sense of style that only the Japanese can deliver. I had to, because I spent fifty bucks on the thing, and wasn't about to trade it in for a measly seven dollars or less at the local Gamestop. To my complete surprise, the more I played it the more I enjoyed it, and the more impressed I was with the game's overall approach. I soon found myself completely engrossed in the Rumble Roses world, experiencing the pure joy of pinning my opponent in the corner of the ring and pummeling her to within an inch of her life. The team at Konami has put together a pretty solid wrestling game here, despite the emphasis on scantily clad women beating the snot out of each other. Rumble Roses succeeds where Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball failed. It recognizes that while seeing half-naked babes with huge boobs is fun, it's not an end in itself. There has to be a good game supporting the eye candy. Rumble Roses manages to deliver both . . . sort of. You'll be impressed at first at how good the girls look and tickled pink when you start figuring out the cool attacks, but in the end the gameplay in RR falls short of satisfying. An awkward, grid-based movement system that favors the d-pad prevents the gameplay from attaining any feeling of fluidity whatsoever. Controls that only work half the time are the perfect recipe for building frustration. And victories feel hollow and meaningless when you often have to resort to cheating techniques built right into the game. Don't worry about attaining the ultimate goal, which is unlocking each and every girl's gallery: that will come with relatively little fuss. It's the journey there that is lacking in any kind of substance or feeling of accomplishment.

Satisfying the twisted desires of perverts everywhere who can't get dates, Konami has served up a bevy of the most beautiful ladies you will ever see on your PS 2. Don't worry if you're not too impressed with the initial line up. Unlockable costumes, swimsuits, and alter egos seemingly double or triple the tasty selection. The ladies get sexier and wilder as they show up for matches dressed in new, more revealing outfits, or assume a different personality altogether. The manner in which the ladies are drawn may take some getting used to, because they all look like they need to lose about fifty or sixty pounds. But after watching them in the ring and in cutscenes (especially the entrances), I decided this "fat" look works. After playing a bit you get used to it, and it actually seems to enhance the ladies' sexual appeal by accentuating their curves and making their bottoms and boobs look more three dimensional. The one area where Konami dropped the ball with how they render the women is the breast physics. They're just not very good. Their boobs do move, but in a restricted, unnatural kind of way that doesn't look convincing at all. There's also a very annoying shake effect to the graphics when the girls jump and down in the gallery. It's obvious that whoever programmed the breast physics was having a lot of trouble, and never got it figured out before the game was finished. That's too bad, because the ladies are rendered extremely well otherwise.

The game's graphics are quite impressive. Right away I was amazed at the extent of the detail on the ladies' bodies. And I'm talking during gameplay, not in cutscenes. Putting your opponent in a submission hold allows you to zoom the camera up close to the ladies from any angle you like. Of course I only did this to make sure I was applying the hold with the proper technique (wink), but I was stunned at how precisely rendered these women are. Excellent skin shading delivers the illusion of real skin with muscles underneath. Facial expressions change depending on what is happening. Breasts distort when the opponent's body gets mashed up against them. Skirts fly up when a wrestler is held upside down. Shadows from bikini strings fall across the chest (even in the midst of a contorted submission hold. That's a detail I never expected to see). It's clear Konami went to great lengths to make these ladies look hot and detailed. Their animations are also well done, and they connect together beautifully. You get a nice sense of impact and force when punches and kicks are delivered, with little gold flash animations indicating the point of contact. The crowd is rendered better than any other crowd I've seen in a game where you have a group of people watching something. It looks realistic, and is alive with people jumping up and down and waving their fists in the air. Many of the faces in the crowd look like they were photomapped, which is another nice detail I didn't expect to see. It's a welcome change from other games where you have cardboard standees as an audience, or even worse, undefined blobs of color that move side to side.

The main problem I have with the game's graphics is in the Mud Match wrestling. A big part of this game's pitch before it came out was that you get to wrestle in realistic looking mud. Well, the mud looks anything but realistic. In fact, it doesn't look like mud at all. It's really just dirty water, shaded to be a touch darker than skin tone. The effect when it covers the girl's bodies only serves to hide their wonderful assets, and doesn't even come close to producing the illusion of nudity as some have claimed. I take all my Mud Matches outside the ring, where I can see the ladies in all their undefiled glory. I give Konami credit for trying, because I don't think I have ever seen another game attempt an effect like this. But it doesn't work. Real mud is thick, dark, and . . . well, basically looks like poop. Maybe they should have gone for the effect of girls wrestling in a huge vat of cowpies. That would have produced more the effect I was looking for. Dixie Clemets would have felt right at home! Yee Haa!

The control is a mixture of good and bad. On the good side, they are simple, and they produce different results for every girl, location, and circumstance. In other words, the attacks are highly situational. Most of them are anyway. A grab with the triangle button in the center of the ring will produce a different result than the same command up against the ropes or in the corner of the ring. Punching with the square button and the left stick down will yield a backspin kick from Bloody Shadow, but the same command will yield a low elbow to the gut from Miss Spencer. Every girl has a different repertoire of attacks, and part of the fun of the game is discovering them all in the ring. Every girl can execute head, leg, arm and body submissions, but the commands for carrying them out can be quite different, as well as the situation from which the command has to ensue. Miss Spencer's submission holds have to be executed when the opponent is standing; for other wrestlers, the opponent has to be down on the mat. It behooves the player to learn each girl's attacks well, because once you begin entering the Vow System in Exhibition mode, you need to know what you're doing. If you make a vow to abstain from a certain attack, then well, I guess you need to know how that attack is executed so you'll know how not to do it. Another good thing about the control is the inputs with the d-pad are the same regardless of what direction your wrestler is facing. Miss Spencer's low elbow to the gut is ALWAYS d-pad down and square button, whether she's facing away from you, towards you, or to the left or right. This takes the guesswork out of attack commands. You don't have to worry about hitting the d-pad exactly away from, toward, or to the side of your opponent unless you're lunging, dodging, or dashing.

But there is a dark side to the control. The timing needed for reversals and counters is a complete mystery. Most of the time I reverse or counter by accident. I'm not sure what I did or when I did it to produce the reversal. When it works, hey great, but most of the time it doesn't. The game gives you specific control commands for reversing grabs and strikes, but sometimes grab reversals work on strikes, strike reversals work on grabs, and sometimes nothing works at all. You often end up mashing buttons in a frantic attempt to get your girl to do SOMETHING consistent. Part of the reason for this is the game doesn't appear to make a clear cut distinction between a grab and a strike. And it is virtually impossible to counter a Lethal or Killer move by your opponent. Seriously, they happen so fast I don't see how they could possibly be countered. If your opponent decides to have her way with you in the ring, there's very little you can do about it. All you can do is wait for her to let you get up and resume control of your character again, which could be a while. I've had a couple of matches in which my opponent owned me during the entire match and it was over very quickly. That doesn't happen often, but it is a possibility. The best way to avoid being put in that situation is to not rely on counter and reversal moves. I find running away like a pansy-ass works quite well. It's also a mystery how to get your damn wrestler up off the mat when she is lying there in a half comatose state after taking a hellacious hit. I've found that mashing every damn button on the controller seems to wake my girl up a bit faster, but no game should ever make the player mash buttons. That's just an excuse for bad game design.

Another annoying thing about the control is the way the girl's move. There is an invisible grid laid out over the ring and the pit surrounding it, and it restricts the girls to only moving in straight lines. You can't change direction while running, and the only real directions you can lunge in are forward, back, left and right. Doing anything in a diagonal direction is basically impossible or too awkward to work correctly. What's more, you have to tap the X button to run. If you want to change directions, you have to tap it again to stop, reorient your girl with the d-pad and then tap X again to move in the new direction. It's way too robotic, and often causes mistakes when jockeying for position with your opponent. Often, the determining factor of whether or not your attack will work is if you are lined up in a perfectly straight line with your opponent in relation to the camera.

Story Mode has you playing through each girl's story. This is a series of about five or six matches that always ends with the same boss fight. This is the mode where we dive wholeheartedly into the heart, soul, and motivations of each character, and learn to love them and hope for them to succeed (*cough*cough*HACK*weeeze*!!) . . . yeah right. This is actually the mode where most of the horrible voice acting and storytelling forces itself upon an unsuspecting human populace. However, you do get to ogle the girls in their cutscenes. Finishing one girl's story unlocks her alter ego's story, which is usually a bit shorter and with less dialogue. Playing through the stories is entertaining if for nothing else than to see how incredibly stupid they are. For example, Rieko enters the Rumble Roses tournament to prove to her dead mother that she can be a champion wrestler. Reiko is Japanese and has dark brown hair. Her dead mother shows up later on as a caucasian with bright blond hair (ok, she could be Swedish). Oh, and she's a cyborg. Yeah, the stories are that stupid.

The other side of the game is Exhibition Mode. Whereas in most sports games exhibition mode is little more than a goof off mode which offers nothing in terms of advancing the game, Rumble Roses uses it as the meat and potatoes. This is the mode where you get all your serious work done, and unlock all the fine things there are to unlock. The purpose of Exhibition Mode is to turn every girl into their 100% Face or Heel personality value. Face is good, Heel is bad. Accomplishing this enables the girls to enter title matches in which they can become the undisputed Rumble Rose champion. They don't like wishy-washy types as champions; they want full-on good or bad girls carrying that gaudy looking belt. Personality values are changed by using a vow system. The vow system basically puts limitations on how you can fight, and it's fun to use to challenge yourself, but what makes it a bit silly is that you can use the same vows over and over again for the same girl. Say you're trying to get Dixie Clemets to a 100% Face value, and you enter a match promising not to leave the ring, not to use weapons, and to execute a successful Killer move. You succeed in your vows, but Dixie is still only 80% Face. You can enter another match and use the exact same vows over again to get her to 100%. For me, this kind of lets the air out of the whole system. The way it should have been done is that vows already honored by the wrestler are greyed out and cannot be used again. This would make it more challenging to get your wrestler to full Heel or Face value, and require a deeper understanding of the game mechanics. For example, I have no idea how to do a Lethal Move, and I'd like to learn and try it, but I know I'll never have to because there are a bunch of other, much easier vows I can use over and over that will get me to my goal just the same.

Other beefs I have with the game: it appears to cheat occasionally. Sometimes reversals will work, other times they won't, even though you've done the exact same control input in the same situation. Also, using weapons is more of a liability than an advantage. Go to hit an opponent with a weapon and 98% of the time they will block and take it away from you. The only way to score a successful hit with a weapon is to cheat, which I will explain below. Most of the time, I leave weapons lying on the floor because they're just too dangerous to use. Also, the game's balance seems to be a little silly, with the advantage alternating back and forth between you and your opponent in a suspiciously predetermined way. These frustrating periods when you just can't seem to get the upper hand on your opponent cause you to take advantage of little cheats built right into the game. You'll figure out pretty quickly that your opponent is very vulnerable when climbing in or out of the ring. Using weapons at this time builds your meter quickly and enables you to stockpile Lethal Moves. When you are perched on the turnbuckle, your opponent will ALWAYS charge you, allowing for very easy dive attacks. Taunting frequently also builds your Lethal Move counter. Using these little cheats can quickly turn the balance in your favor, but it's unsatisfying because you're essentially taking advantage of flaws in the game's mechanics.

Ever play a Japanese game with atrocious voice acting? No, really, sometimes Japanese games have horrible voiceovers. I know it's a shocker, but it's true. Add Rumble Roses to that thousand-mile-long list. The dialogue sounds like every single sentence spoken in the game was recorded at a different sound studio by a different actress. It's a hodge-podge of misread voice inflections, nonsensical pauses, accents that turn on and off, and just plain wooden acting. It makes the acting in Episodes 1, 2, and 3 of the Star Wars series seem like Academy Award material. The animations that go with the voicovers are equally bad. The game tries to involve you in each girl's story and make you care about them, but it's impossible to take any of it seriously because it's so cheesy in its execution. But, horrible voiceovers and lame storytelling aside, you become acclimated to the game's style fairly quickly and you just go with it. It's the same reason people love movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Gods Must Be Crazy, or Chucky 13: Chucky Goes to Hell. They're cheesy, campy, impossibly bad movies, but people love them because of this very fact. The first time you hear Bloody Shadow exclaim, "To action!" you'll roll your eyes at how incredibly lame it is, but the tenth time you hear her say it you'll be like, "Yeah, let's go get 'em girl!"

The game offers four different rings in which to fight, but essentially there are only two: the indoor rings and the Mud Match ring. All the in indoor rings look the same. The game doesn't even give names for them. It would have been cool to have a bunch of different rings in vastly different locations, sort of like the courts in Outlaw Volleyball. Who wouldn't love wrestling in a Peruvian jungle, or on a frozen plain in Siberia? Of course one court would have to be set in a maximum security prison, and then you've got your mandatory sewer setting (that would work perfectly with my poop matches). But no, indoor and outdoor are all you get.

The music in the game is quite different, but it's actually not that bad. I got used to it, and I'm a rocker guy. I guess you would call it Japanese pop, or maybe Japanese techno/pop, or something like that. The game uses an admirable rendition of David Lee Roth's "Yankee Rose" as it's theme song, but all the other music is an entirely different animal. I'm pretty picky about what music I can stand to listen to, so I guess the fact that I'm not using this paragraph to complain about how horrible the music is means it's okay.

In summary, Rumble Roses does offer some worthwhile entertainment in an extremely good looking package, but the gameplay is ultimately unsatisfying. Hot looking, nearly naked women beating the crap out of each other will keep you going for a while, but it won't take long for you to realize how thin the gameplay really is. While it's still far and away better than what Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball offered, the perfect marriage of hot babes and great gameplay has yet to be achieved.

Pinfall

Graphics: 8 Girls are highly detailed with nice animations, but the breast physics are broken, and what's up with the graphical shake effect when the girls jump up and down in the gallery?

Gameplay: 7 A large variety of attacks and takedown options allows you to get imaginative, if only the control was there. Ring selection if very limited and the Mud Matches are not what they were hyped up to be. The weapons are also disappointing, because they are often more of a liability than an advantage. Also, it's easy to get by in the game without using any of the advanced moves, like Lethal and Humiliation Moves and their reversals.

Control: 6 At first glance, the control seems okay, until you start realizing that whether a control input will work or not is a rather random affair. Also, the mechanics for dashing and controlling your girl's movement are a bit awkward.

Story: 1 Unbelievably stupid with horrid, badly directed voice acting. It would be different if the game didn't try to take its stories seriously, but it does.

Audio: 7 Decent music and nice sound effects in the ring, but the girl's don't say a whole lot while they are fighting. Even when they do make a noise, it's the same few words or grunts over and over again. I would have liked to hear a lot more trash talk and screams of pain.

Replay value: Well, you play through the story of several girls, and then you take each girl (and her alter ego) on a mission to win the Title Match in Exhibition Mode so you can unlock each girl's gallery. I'd say the game is all about replay value. It also takes a while to become familiar with each girl's repertoire of moves, so you'll be doing a lot of experimenting and discovering new stuff even after you've played the game for awhile. But after you've unlocked every girl's two galleries, there's really no point in continuing.

Gameplay hint: Lady X Substance (the second form of your final opponent in Story Mode) always wins the first time. Save yourself some time and just stand there and let her beat the crap out of you and pin you so you can get to the rematch quickly, where you'll have a better chance. There's no point in going to all that work just so you can get pinned and have to start over.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/06