Game #1210: Rumble Roses

 And I thought Dead or Alive was raunchy....

 First of all... Do not judge me! Secondly... I don't quite remember how I first got interested in playing Rumble Roses, but it doesn't really matter, as we are here now and there's no going back. Well, this is a Wrestling game, but a horny wrestling game. It's so horny that even the Instruction Booklet is full of double entendres and innuendo.

 Getting the elephant out of the room... yeah, it's one of those games. There are jiggling breasts and even jiggling butts. Girls wear the most revealing outfits, you can 'Humiliate' them and what not, and there's mud bikini wrestling. The "Gallery" lets you move the camera around their bodies as they stretch, it's very voyeuristic. Oh, and the intro movie goes on and on and on, as the girls dance and wrestle while camera pans all around them. Dead or Alive's got nothing on this one.

 The game does fall short when it comes to modes. You get Exhibition and Story, and Exhibition has basic fights or mud wrestling, which is pretty much identical to normal fights but girls wear bikinis and fight over mud, mud that looks like brown water. They do get dirty, and considering the time of its release, the effect is pretty neat. Story Mode is rather neat, because every girl of the base roster gets their own story, so that's 10 storylines, and... each of their personas(Face/Heel) get their OWN plot, so that's a total of 20 different stories to follow. And the story is fantastic because its super dumb and cheesy. The voice acting is TERRIBLE, and it has such genius plot contrivances as Reiko's mother dying during a wrestling match. Or how the Judo girl's Heel persona was born because she was tired of people expecting her not to cheat! AND THERE'S A ROBOT WOMAN FINAL BOSS! Her moveset is incredible, as she uses her robotic body to perform impossible moves.

 On the other hand... that's it, that's all there is to the game. No Tag Matches, no Elimination, no Cage Matches, no Ladder matches, no nothing. But, on the other hand, the character models are fantastic, this might be some of the best looking 3D models on the system.

 First of all, I want to praise the really good ideas. I love the concept behind Face/Heel personas, because that's very true to Wrestling. Each girl has a different look and moveset depending on their persona. That said... you can't have both personas unlocked at the same time, which is a waste. In exhibition matches you can select "vows", which are certain objectives, some grant you Face points and other Heel points, and once you veer to much into either, they get changed into that Persona. I liked the idea, and it could've worked for Story Mode, but not for Free battles, the entire roster should be playable, otherwise it's a complete waste. At least you can pick either persona for Story mode.

 The gameplay is similar to SmackDown, or how I remember it anyways. X is your basic attack that can be comboed up to five times. Square is a grab, depending on the direction you get different grabs. Circle is context sensitive, it's the Pin button. You can win matches either by Submission, by 'breaking' a body part through submission hold or by pinning down your opponent for over three seconds. You can also turn ON the option to win by Humiliating the opponent. You also have Counters, by timing R1+Strike to counter strikes or R1+Grab to counter a grab.

 There are three kinds of Super moves, all of them unique to every wrestler, which you can use by using a Super Bar, which you gain by landing strikes or grabs or by taunting. Killer Moves are performed with L1. Lethal Moves are also performed with L1, but they can be used only under certain conditions, such as a Dazed enemy, being on a corner, being behind the enemy, etc. Then there are the Humiliation moves I mentioned before. In order to use them, you must first fill a heart shaped Humiliation gauge. This is done through certain Grabs, and even some Killer or Lethal Moves, and these are the moves that, well, pretty much spread your opponents legs or stretches their torso. You know, by being a perverted. If the move also spreads your legs open, you'll also fill your own humiliation gauge. Once full, you'll get a special cutscene in which your opponent will look vulnerable as the camera pans through them. Japan. From then on, you can press L2 to use a Humiliation Move any time you want, or have available super stocks.

 Leaving aside how utterly lewd this game is, I admit that I actually liked it a lot. The core gameplay is pretty solid, so I had fun playing the game. Would I rather the game was less horny? Yeah, of course, but the game itself is fun and it plays as well as any other Wrestling game I ever played, which granted aren't many, but still. Not to say that the game doesn't have anything else going against it, as there aren't many modes, and the Face/Heel system, as appropriate and interesting as it is... having access to only 10 characters, instead of the full 20(22 counting the secret characters) is rather lame.

 7.5