Rumble Roses
- November 10, 2004 00:00 AM PST
Sexy fighter or silicon-induced fluff?
Good ol' Shakespeare said it best: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Such is the case with Rumble Roses, the latest game to meet our hedonistic desire for scantily clad buxom women fighting it out in the ring.The title for a game like this could be Aunt Jemima's Pancake Makin' Party and it would still draw crowds. But besides the requisite tight or nonexistent clothing, and well-proportioned models, does the game deliver the goods?
Have a Look at These Polygons...
The answer really depends on what you're looking for from the game. Engaging story? No way. Exciting gameplay? Not quite. Easy to play? To a degree. Plenty of opportunities to stare at half-naked women? Absolutely.
It's clear the objective was an easy-to-approach fighting game that rewarded players with well-angled shots of these women's finer attributes, and to Konami's credit, it did exactly that. The graphics, one of the game's strong points, are well done.
All of the characters--some 24 if you count the starting cast's alter egos--are well designed and have unique looks. But besides the good looking character models, the fighting stages are relatively uninspiring, with sparse variety, varying from a handful of rings that look strikingly similar and a single beachside mud-wrestling pit.
How Easy Is It To Fight in Those Stilettos?
The controls, like the graphics, are also a mixed bag. On the one hand, they're pretty easy to pick up in the course of a single sitting--single buttons correspond to single actions (attack, block, grapple, pin, etc.) while the analog stick or directional pad dictates the kind of attack or grapple.
Unfortunately, while the controls are simple enough for even the most casual gamer, the limited number of moves provided creates for some repetitive gameplay. Still, the signature killer and humiliation moves, coupled with the laughable dialogue and voiceovers, do provide some entertainment.
So while Konami succeeded at building a simple but graphically enticing fighter, it failed to create anything but an average game with a penchant for g-strings and larger than usual cup-sizes.
