The disappointment starts off early in Rumble Roses XX. While the generally crappy story modes from the original PlayStation 2 game are gone, Konami has neglected to increase the roster. Aigle, Aishia, Anaesthesia, Candy Cane, Dixie Clements, Lady X, Makato Akihara, Miss Spencer, Evil Rose and Reiko Hinomoto all return with Bloody Shadow being renamed to Benikage. The game cheats by claiming that the face/heel variation of each wrestler counts as an entirely separate wrestler, despite being identical in all but appearance. A new superstar version of each character is now available (after an arduous unlocking process), who actually has some difference from the original base character.
The way to settle disputes at the June sales
Cutting the story mode has made the single player experience quite confusing. Players are presented with something that’s not quite a career mode, but not quite an exhibition mode. The main aim is to pick a wrestler, increase their popularity enough to get a title shot, increase their attributes and win the title. Along the way, you’ll earn money to use to buy new attire for your selected wrestler. It’d be fine if getting the 100 popularity points was enough to get you the title shot, but the game never actually gives you any notice of this occurrence – it’s quite random. Perhaps the only interesting part of this faux career mode is that the way you wrestle in each match is evaluated, and your wrestler’s style and appearance will be updated to reflect the way in which your matches are conducted. Maybe co-developer Yuke’s will incorporate this into future wrestling titles.
Rumble Roses XX is a lightweight when it comes to actual wrestling action. Each of the girls has a fairly limited move set, which are dumbed down from Yuke’s WWE Smackdown titles. There are only two types of grapple moves (with only a small number of moves to be branched off those), and only a limited number of striking moves and combos. There is a mild inkling of strategy within the game, such as targeting specific body areas in order to assist in making submission moves more effective, but it’s easy just to spam the counter (RB + X or Y) command at the right time in order to win your fights. The humiliation factor makes a return, and is executed in much the same fashion – simply perform moves that would humiliate the other wrestler (slap them around a bit, make a few counters and such) until their humiliation bar is full, and then execute the “H-Move”. Of course, the standard types of finishing moves are available, but aren’t nearly as spectacular as the finishers in many other wrestling titles.
There’s not a great deal of variety in match types either, with the typical singles, tag, handicap, triangle and 4-way matches available – which might have been acceptable 10 years ago, but wrestling games have progressed a lot since then. Rumble Roses XX has a three stipulation matches; the Queen match (loser has to dance, limbo or perform a “sexy pose”), street fight (beat on the other fighter until their health is gone) and the PHM match (win by an H-Move). Some of the Queen match humiliation dances and limbos result in a small mini-game, though it seems fairly inconsequential. Of course, the game does have support for 4 players over Xbox Live, which may prove a little more enthralling than the solo experience. The game is generally lag-free, but it does depend on the location of your opponent.
Moments later: a broken nail
Rumble Roses XX also retains the uncomfortable voyeuristic pervasion of its predecessor. For those who like to play dress-ups, the edit mode will allow you to put your wrestler into all sorts of ridiculous outfits, from school girl to dominatrix. It doesn’t stop there, with edit mode allowing players to adjust everything from muscle tone to breast size, which to us seems just a little big excessive. There’s also a photo mode that allows you to take happy snaps of your favourite wrestlers in what you’d call compromising poses. The game seems to go out of its way to give you as many shots of bouncing breasts and women’s panties as it possibly can. It might be fitting for pre-pubescent boys, but with an internet full of pornography out there, it seems kind of irrelevant and unnecessary. The models and animation featured in the game are reasonably impressive, though they don’t seem like much of a leap above the PlayStation 2 game until you see them in high definition – and even then, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a generational leap. The background environments are full of life, colour and sheen, and give off the required atmosphere without bogging down the game’s framerate, which remains fixed at 60 frames per second. Voice acting is terribly cheesy like always, but many of the entrance themes are catchy, from a cover of David Lee Roth’s Yankee Rose, to a bunch of tracks recycled from Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution games.
Rumble Roses XX seems to be more of an exercise in voyeurism for young teenage boys than a serious wrestling game. Like Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball before it, the core component of the game seems to take a backseat for all manner of bouncing breast and panty shots. If Rumble Roses XX had some of the depth of moves and characters as Yuke’s other wrestling titles rather than just blatant objectification, then it might actually be a serious contender in the field.
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