Review by Tom Servo |
The three things most important to mankind as a whole today are food, sex and cars, in no particular order. All three have made huge inroads in both print and film media, but for many years, only cars have had any luck in the realm of video gaming. Oh sure, there have been games based on food and sex before; But aside from the Dead or Alive series and maybe Burgertime, the field has been somewhat barren. It's not for lack of trying, it's just that in most cases, excluding the DOA fighting games, the focus was more on creating scenery to ogle as opposed to a fun game with scenery to ogle.
In my latest review, I tackle one from column B: "Rumble Roses", a fairly decent game even if you were to remove the all-female cast and replace them with, say, horny Japanese game developers. Fortunately, the horny guys only helmed the game's creation and gracefully stayed out of sight in the game itself. And now, I begin with the game's category you'll doubtlessly notice first:
GRAPHICS
Very rarely does a game that scores a 10 in graphics do well anywhere else, which is why I generally avoid them. But let me say this: This is most likely the best you'll ever see from PS2, the game simply looks amazing. There are no sharp edges to be found anywhere on or near the characters themselves. Jaggies? If they're there, you have to look pretty hard to see them.
Attention to detail is abundant as well. Clearly, the developers spared no effort in creating the lovely cast of wrestlers. From the soft earth that covers each characters body in a mud match to the tiny birthmark on the protagonist Reiko's upper chest to the often embarrassingly skimpy swimsuit costumes, there's plenty to ooh and aah over in Rumble Roses.
Of course, I have to note that while the entire roster is quite gorgeous, some of their costumes and personas are in quite bad taste. Behind every one of these wrestlers is a young woman who's very happy with her benefits package, no question. Nothing, but nothing is ever "understated" in Japanese pop culture, and RR is no exception. The game seems to use sex appeal like a baseball bat, hitting the player about the head with it's over-the-top teasing. Not a serious complaint, mind you, but one worth registering. Overall, this was obviously the most important category to the game's makers, therefore it deserves many accolades. Take a bow, guys. And then, wash your hands.
SOUND:
While the graphics are face-rockingly gorgeous, the music and sound effects are a good deal less impressive. I've finally settled on the fact that most video game voice acting is intentionally as bad as it is. You simply can't accidentally record dialogue of such poor quality. Every single one of these girls is fighting an uphill battle convincing me that they're there to do anything but titillate the gamer. Boo.
Many of the various effects are not quite so awful, but still nothing special. The punches, mat slams, bones cracking etc. strike me(har har) as somewhat phony. However, the various yelps, moans, grunts, screams, cries, gasps and squeals caused by the submission holds do a fine job of illustrating that the recipient is in no way enjoying herself. It's just when they open their mouths to do anything but express pain, the illusion is shattered.
Music is an oddly mixed stew, some great tracks are included, but it's mostly the instrumental lite-metal that's par for the genre. Some tunes, on the other hand, are bad enough to actually inflict pain. You will know them when you hear them, but I'll give you a clue: He ruined Van Halen, and now he has his sights set on game soundtracks. Need I say more?
GAMEPLAY:
Rumble Roses was distributed by Konami, which is a good sign, and was developed by Yukes, the team behind the rapidly improving SMACKDOWN! series, so you kind of have an idea of what to expect here. There are several impressive moves you can do that have never been seen in a wrestling game before, many of which look very painful(if a little easy to escape from). And pulling them off isn't too hard.
There are three special moves for each girl: A "killer" move, which can be done when an opponent is standing, a circumstantial "lethal" move, and a "humiliation" move. The humiliation move is thankfully the only one to make good on it's name. To do these, you must earn special move points, which you get by pounding your opponent. When you get a point, you can use the L1 button to perform a "killer" or "lethal" move. However, some moves will cause embarrassment to your foe, indicated by a small heart near her name bar filling with red. When it fills completely, She will visibly blush and beg you to lighten up. At that point, you can hit L2 to unleash a extremely painful "humiliation" move.
There are, of course, some caveats. The reversal system is nowhere near as simple as it was in, say, "SMACKDOWN!: Here Comes the Pain", meaning you'll take more of a beating than you would like to unless your timing is spot on. And the controls are not programmable, which is never a good thing. After using SMACKDOWN!'s default control scheme: "X = attack, circle = grapple, square = action and triangle = run" for a full year, I simply cannot get adjusted to RR's "X = run, square = attack, circle = action and triangle = grapple" layout. Why doesn't every game allow you to re-map buttons? It's not as unforgivably bad as forcing you to use the frustratingly un-ergonomic analog sticks for movement(a pox on you, Silent Hill 4!), but it's still very irritating nevertheless.
As for the cast, most of the popular fantasy characters are represented. 20 in total, but only 10 at any given time, thanks to the alignment system. There's Reiko, the sprightly protagonist. Dixie, the southern belle who can go to the mat with DOA's Tina any day. Aisha, the Beyonce-type performer. Evil Rose, the S&M-ish psychotic. And several more including the punk rocker, the dominatrix, the naughty nurse, the ninja, the cheerleader etc.(Some personas inhabit the same character). Hell, the only two archetypes that didn't make it are the sexy secretary and the French maid. In their place the have Makoto, the young judo gold-medalist and Aigle, the Mongolian simpleton. Both seem a little out of place to me, but perhaps rattle-headed Mongoloids and pouty judo champs are considered sexy in Japan, I don't know. And the nationality ratio of the wrestlers is seriously imbalanced. Out of the 10 principal wrestlers, four are Japanese, two Canadian, two American, one Mongolian and one the always frustrating "Unknown". Once again, Poland is tragically underrepresented.
Back to the alignment system: Each character has two different styles, one good, one bad. Their alignment can be changed by fulfilling "vows". Before an exhibition match, you can set vows like "use lots of weapons" or "don't use weapons". By fulfilling them, you shift their personality to become more good or more evil. This is a novelty, but provides quite an irritation as well: Only half of the roster is available at any given time! So Reiko can fight herself all she wants, but it's not possible for her to fight her own alter ego, Rowdy Reiko. Make sense? I didn't think so either.
The fighting engine is a simplified form of the SD! engine. Since the SD! engine is already a simplified form of wrestling, it's safe to say that RR isn't as deep as SD! or any of AKI-developed games of yore. Which reminds me, eventually I'm going to obtain and play one of these "legendary" AKI wrestling games, and if it doesn't shake the very foundations of my beliefs of what wrestling games oughta be, I'm going to to owe several of you a violent pimp-slapping.
STORY:
Penning a story for a fighting game is no easy task. It's easy to explain why Solid Snake is sneaking around a missile base popping people's spinal cords, or why Leon is blasting hordes of zombies in a doomed city, but providing a context for why a gaggle of allegedly sane people decided to punch, kick, stomp on groins and twist each other into byzantine shapes is not so easy. So the background stories for fighting, wrestling and other such games are at best tenous, and even better still omitted entirely. Rumble Roses is no exception, so I'm just going to assume they were going for laughs here and move on.
OVERALL:
The idea behind games like DOA: X-treme Beach Volleyball, BMX: XXX and Rumble Roses is always sound: That beautiful women are beautiful and worth looking at. Where DOA-ball and BMX:XXX went wrong was assuming that looking at beautiful women would carry the whole game by it's lonesome(I take that back, BMX:XXX was a bad idea from the get-go). This is incorrect. Rumble Roses takes and aesthetically pleasing premise and pitches it on a more solid framework, making it a worthwhile purchase for all but the most die-hard wrestling fan or Mennonite.
Ratings |
Gameplay....7/10
Graphics......9/10
Story...........10/10
Sound..........7/10
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