Reviewed: April 23, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Konami

Developer
Yuke's Media Creations

Released: March 28, 2005
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-4
ESRB: Mature

8
9
9
9
8.9

Supported Features:

Rumble Roses XX is one of those naughty games that you’re likely to stash under the couch rather than prominently display in your game case next to Yuke’s other wrestling titles. This is not the game you want your kids, wife, girlfriend, or mom catching you playing. At any given moment within the game you can take just about any grapple, hold, or submission move totally out of context and turn it into something nearly pornographic.

Konami already took a stab at this franchise back in 2004 on the PS2. That game actually offered a bit more substance than the XX version for the 360. You had mud-wrestling events and intertwining story arcs for the characters. These elements have been inexplicably dropped in favor of graphics that can substitute for Viagra, and these stunning visuals are further exploited in cinematic intro movies, gratuitous photo shoots, and shameful loser exploitations like picking skimpy costumes and having the loser dance, perform sexy poses, ride a bike, limbo, or clean your swimming pool.

Hot chicks wrestling in the ring is nothing new though. The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas pioneered the concept back in the 80’s with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) and spun the concept into late night TV before the fad met an untimely demise. The GLOW girls were mostly strippers and semi-pro mud wrestlers, while Konami ups the ante with naughty nurses, flight attendants, leather-clad cops, strippers, schoolteachers, cowgirls, and rebellious catholic schoolgirls…OH MY!

From the title screen you either start a new game or load a previous save. You pick your wrestler and head to the Map Screen. From the Map you can play Exhibition (non-career) games, or head online for Xbox Live matches. There is a Tutorial that will help teach you the basic controls and a Museum to check out character info and pictures. You can’t have 20+ girls in one game and not go shopping so the Shop allows you to spend you prize money on new costumes, photo poses, artwork, and even a digital camera so you can take your own snapshots.

The Locker Room is your central hub for the career mode. It is here you can train and tweak the stats for your wrestlers as well as change their costumes, intro music, tag-team partner, or dress them for a seductive photo session. The remaining map hotspots include various venues for career matches. There is the Skyscraper, Red Valley, Arena, Street, and Island Resort. Fighting in any of these venues counts toward your total matches leading up to the Championships match required to earn Superstar mode.

These venues offer a bit of variety in presentation as well as visual appeal. The Skyscraper matches are quick fights without fancy intro movies. The Street matches are actually street fights that forego the traditional submissions and holds, and require you to KO your opponent instead. And the Island Resort offers the tantalizing Queen’s Match where the loser must endure a humbling “punishment” of your choosing.

What is lacking is any direction or method to track your career. I must have played for hours and hours and never triggered a Championship match. Only after reading the online forums did I learn what needed to be done, and even now I’m not sure that is entirely accurate. It appears you need to win anywhere from 10-12 single matches (not sure if they all have to be in a row) and they have to be against different girls and you have to fight at least once at each venue.

This might be totally inaccurate but so far it has worked for me in unlocking all but three of the girls on the roster. So basically a career might go something like this. You pick your girl and start scanning the various venues looking for one-on-one matches. Apparently tag-team and handicap matches don’t count (again, I’m not sure on this).

It seems really odd that the designers would restrict you to single match fights when they offer so many other options. You have PHM fights that can only be won with a humiliation move, Tag matches that are two-on-two, Handicap matches that are one-on-two, 3-Way Royal, 4-Way Royal, and the venue-specific Street Fight and Queen’s Match.

There are 22 girls of which less than half are available when you first start playing. You’ll need to win the Championship and earn the rank of Superstar then defend your title against a challenger to unlock that new character. The bottom row of characters is like a naughty-twin version of the top row so you get to dabble in naught and nice, which actually comes into play when trying to boost your popularity meter. I found it very hard to get some of the bad girls to gain popularity with the crowd, and often a single loss would drain hour’s worth of gradual work from my meter.

But popularity is only one small aspect of what is a surprisingly rich and statistically heavy RPG. The game analyzes the way you play during each fight and after each match you will gain stat improvements based on the moves and tactics you used. You can then go to the locker room and tweak your muscles and body weight. There are numerous sliders allowing you to customize each girl however you want, but I never found a reason simply not to max out each slider bar.

While these adjustments definitely give the girls new body image – you go from soft supple models to totally ripped fighters – it also impacts the way they fight and the power behind their moves. Just adding body weight can help you keep that girl pinned down for the entire three-count.

Actually playing Rumble Roses XX required a major change in my game style. I’m used to fighting games where you relentless pummel your opponent until their health bar is empty. While that tactic works in the Street Fight mode, you really need to know how to wrestle (or at least the basic rules) to win succeed in this game. It’s all about the grabs and the holds and the flips, slowly wearing down your opponent with submission and humiliation moves before finishing them off with a spectacular Killer Move followed by a three-count pin.

Damage is location specific so you can target head, arm, leg, and body and do concentrated damage. When you get into a potential pin position you furious tap the controller in a battle of reflexes to either inflict damage or go for the three-count. As the opponent takes more punishment they are slower to recover. Your ultimate goal is to either wear them down entirely within the time limit, or focus your attacks on a leg or arm or head until they cannot recover from that one hold for a tap-out.

The gameplay can be quite cryptic for someone unfamiliar with the wrestling genre and the complicated control scheme takes at least a few matches to master. With strike and grab moves combined with guard and dash then having all these enhanced with counters and humiliations using the triggers, there is a lot to memorize for each character. And once you unlock the Superstar mode for each character you get all new moves.

You have your standard punch and kick and these can be modified with the directional. You can also double-tap the directional for a charge move, and then you have grapples and holds. Variations of moves can be activated if you perform a grab near the ropes or you can even climb the corner support and do flying tackles. Some characters even come equipped with weapons like a riding crop, nightstick, or an electric guitar.

As you beat down your opponent’s endurance you also fill a finishing move meter. This meter can be charged multiple times and spent on Killer, Lethal, Double X, and H-Moves, all of which do extra damage, stun your opponent, and trigger cool cinematic events. It’s a fairly complex system that will reward those with the patience and creativity to explore it.

The actual wrestling almost seems like a disguise for a shopping and collection quest, or at least a means to earn the millions of dollars required to buy everything in this game. But the worst part is, most of the rarer items must first be unlocked before you can purchase them, and even after you do buy them, these girls don’t share, so you have to buy them all over again for each of the 22 wrestlers. Yes, it’s and epic quest and worth a cool 250 Achievement points if you have the stamina for all that shopping.

Even more daunting is unlocking and purchasing all the costumes for all the girls. Of course you have no idea how to unlock any of these. I’ve unlocked one swimsuit and the maid outfit for a few of the girls but there are pages and pages of unlockable items in this game ranging from camera poses for single girls and girl-girl, Queen’s Match loser events, plus all sorts of designer artwork and images. And with most prizes costing several thousand dollars and many 4-minute matches only paying out in the hundreds, I don’t even want to imagine how long it will take to earn enough to buy all the items for one girl, let alone 22.

Of course the sheer joy of playing Rumble Roses XX is the obvious exploitation of these girls in their stunning cinematic opening movies, or should I say dance routines, although some of these are elaborate enough to border on actual theater. Each girl has a 1-3 minute opening movie that can often last longer than the match to follow. Each girl also has a new movie when you unlock her Superstar mode, and while these are usually variations of the same theme, they are also totally unique. And then you have even more custom movies for the various tag-team pairings, although these are usually much more simpler affairs.

But it gets even better. By holding down the left trigger when starting a match at either Red Valley or the Arena you can swap the opening movies so that essentially any girl can do any other girl’s dance routine or opening event. This even goes as far as adding subtle costume changes to the girls, so any girl who performs Dixie’s “Yankee Rose” number will automatically get a cowgirl hat and a pair of six-shooters.

Oddly enough, some girls seem better suited for other girls opening dance numbers, like seeing Dixie in her cowgirl leathers riding out on the Mistresses’ clown who is wearing the horse head then spanking him with a riding crop on stage. And any of the girls look totally awesome performing Aisha’s seductive pole-dancing number.

There is no denying that Rumble Roses XX would never fly if it was a bunch of sweaty guys. Once you have mastered the challenging control scheme and learned the moves for each of the girls the only thing keeping you going are the visuals. You’ll constantly be spinning the free-cam during submission holds and don’t even get me started on the countless hours I’ve spent in the photo shoot mode. My 300 (and growing) image library speaks for itself.

Rumble Roses XX offers a modest online experience with a cryptic ranking feature that tracks your success. You can search for quick matches, custom fights, or create your own session, and you can even exchange pictures you have taken in your own photo shoots. There is also support for up to four players locally in all the modes including co-op tag matches and battle royals.

Then again, the DOA girls are a bit softer and sweeter with smooth satin skin and not that much definition. The Roses quickly turn into ripped fighting machines and you can actually see improved muscle tone and shadowing after each training session. And while the designers might think it’s realistic, I found the abundant use of visible blue veins in the cleavage just a bit “too real” for my tastes. Then again, with hooters as big as your head, everything is going to be a bit more obvious.

As previously mentioned, each girl comes with her own grand entrance movie, and despite the lack of any ongoing story, you can see a few relationships just in the pre-event screens where the girls will be taunting each other. All of the character openings are fantastic and the main opening movie montage is one that I am strangely compelled to watch every time I start the game. Even though it’s 3-4 minutes long, it really sets the mood for what’s to come.

The various environments are limited in number and not that original. The Skyscraper is kind of cool since the girls really pop off the black background. The Arena is probably my favorite just because it looks like Madison Square Garden or some other massive venue. The reddish hue of Red Valley is an interesting location but the natural outdoor lighting can wash out the colors. The same goes for the Island Resort. It’s a nice location but the lighting just blasts everything to the point where you need sunglasses to play the game. The Street location is really cool, but looks more suited for a quick game of basketball than a cat fight.

Sound effects are atypical to wrestling with a slightly suggestive nuance about them. There are plenty of grunts and groans and even some moans that you’d easily dismiss if there were two 300-pound guys in the ring, but when half-naked strippers are unleashing their own custom kung fu and making these noises, anyone in the next room will think you are watching porn.

The soundtrack is kickin’ with a great female rendition of Van Halen’s Yankee Rose that is synched to the opening movie with expert direction. The rest of the soundtrack includes 44 amazing songs that are perfectly suited to the characters and the on-screen action. You have really cool Asian-influenced instrumentals juxtaposed against bump-and-grind tunes you’d hear at your local nudie bar. My personal favorite has to be Dixie’s Superstar intro complete with waving flag and fireworks, and Aisha comes in a close second with her pole-dancing routine. There is even a parody of American Idol.

With 22 wrestlers, 11 good and 11 evil (or naughty), and less than half available to you when you first peel off the shrink-wrap, there is plenty to keep you playing Rumble Roses XX for months to come. Initially, you’ll come for the girls but you’ll stay for the addictive action with a game that only gets better the more you play it and the more experienced you become. I've logged more than 100 hours and have only cracked the surface of this game.

Whether you are a hardcore wrestling fan or just like to ogle hot babes getting down and fighting dirty and unleashing their own custom can of whoop-ass, Rumble Roses XX is one sporting event that you won’t want to miss. So cancel your subscription to Cinemax and get this game today...or I'll have Cobra here, rough you up a bit.