Pros: Great graphics and lighting, play own soundtracks, amount of playable characters and play modes
Cons: Physics, street fighting mode, few enviroments, no cut-scenes, no storyline, no online players
The bottom line: Yes, I'm coming down hard on this title. I'm bumping my review score up some, prompting you to TRY IT. It's regrettable they didn't focus on the fun factor.
I remember the heat radiating from my face when I first fired up Rumble Roses on the PS2. The jiggling and gyrating of the women in the intro to the tune of Yankee Rose was enough to make me verify my own ID to make sure I was older than 18. The infamous intro is back in Rumble Roses XX for the Xbox 360, with even more blush-inducing gyration and jiggle. Setting off on that note, this spiritual sequel ups the ante quite well while falling far short in other ways.

Konami already had somewhat of a template to build from with the first Rumble Roses for the PS2. The previously impressive character models from the first game just needed to be prettied up for the Xbox 360 version. The soundtrack and effects were decent enough, but making custom soundtracks available could spice up the game features nicely. The story mode was poorly put together, so a deeper, constructed story and improved characterizations could now be made for Rumble Roses XX. Let's not forget the control scheme which was awkward, slow, and cumbersome. Unquestionably Konami would improve on that!



Well, two out of four just doesn't cut it. Let's go over the things that WERE done right for Rumble Roses XX. Right out of the gates, the refined graphics impress. The various arenas and environments show off some great lighting effects on the ladies of the ring. The girls themselves are texture-mapped to perfection and each and every one of the many unlockable outfits look as sharp and minuscule as possible. To be a bit finicky, there's a little too much blur and bloom effect on certain arenas, but overall the presentation is top notch.

Another nice touch is the ability to play your own soundtracks for both the introductions, and the bouts themselves. However, if you're looking to randomly jam out to tunes by loading a saved playlist during the event, you're going to be frustrated as the game only runs the playlist straight through, from first song to last. You'll be visiting the locker room option screen over and over again in order to hear different tunes during your Rumble Roses XX gaming session.

The amount of content Konami has stuffed into this game is admirable. You have over 40 women to grapple with, at least eight different modes including street fighting, tag matches, queen's matches, singles match, pure humiliation, handicap, and three or four way royals. Customization of the various ladies is nearly a mini-game in itself, with the ability to alter clothing, gear, muscle tone and entrance music. An online mode is also made available, offering both ranked and unranked matches.



A camera is available in the store, once you've gathered up enough money to purchase it. The camera allows you to enter Photo Mode, where you can put the various women (even two of them at a time if that's your bowl of gravy) through various costumes and poses while snapping away from any imaginable angle. The photos you shoot can then be uploaded to the Live servers for all to see. Likewise you can opt to download others' photos and compare them with yours to see exactly who the biggest pervert is! As nice as the photo mode is as an extra, I would have loved to be able to log onto a website and view or download my photos to my PC for wallpaper, but no such luck.

Let me now speak about the things that Konami did NOT do, or things that suffer in Rumble Roses XX and unfortunately, there's a lot of them. The odd "bouncing" physics for starters. Yet with extended playtime I came across even more problems. I still can't get over the fact that the mud-wrestling mode from the PS2 version is now absent. In its place is a really bad simulation of a brawler which pits the women against one another Street Fighter style, complete with a time limit, energy bar, and two out of three rounds.

What I really find odd, is how the control in the Street Fighting mode seem more responsive and less cumbersome than the normal wrestling matches of Rumble Roses XX. Still, the Street Fighting mode feels sourly out of place, and I would have easily elected for a graphically updated mud-wrestling mode. Even if I were to accept the addition of the Street Fighting, couldn't we at least have the fights in different arenas? It gets quickly tiresome seeing the same arena every fight. Truth be known, there are only a handful of environments available in the entire game, and all of them grow wearisome after seeing them more than three times in a row.

Then comes the Online mode. Technically there's nothing wrong with it, besides the fact that nobody’s playing it! I spent two whole hours waiting for an opponent before finally receiving a challenge (thank you, whoever you are!!!). Once in the online mode, there existed a virtual lag-free experience.

Konami also failed to update the storylines and cut-scenes. In fact, they were dropped all together! I agree that they were horribly done on the PS2 game, but is that really a firm reason to cut them? I would have much rather had them in the horrible, cheesy capacity they were produced in the first game rather then scrapping them altogether. This omission leaves the women of Rumble Roses XX completely devoid of any personality or motive. I suppose they just enjoy rubbing almost bare-naked bodies against each other in public huh? Though that's probably a recipe for success in the real world, I feel I speak for most of the gaming community by admitting it's certainly not enough for a videogame of next-gen descent.



To top things off, though the meteoric rise of your womanly superstar to 100% popularity by winning matches is simple enough, supposedly you're supposed to be offered a title belt shot sometime soon after this point, or once certain conditions are met as quoted by the fairly inadequate instruction booklet. I know I had to play over 20 matches after reaching the 100% mark. Though certain notable events DID indeed pop up offering me extra cash, new outfits, and a few other things, I never saw my title shot come available. Since the instructions didn't elaborate on this issue any further, I thought I'd walk through the tutorials, until I discovered that all thirty-plus of them are merely videos. I must tell you, after all these hiccups, I was just about ready to stuff my chosen lady's thread of wrestling attire into my wallet, pick up my gym bag, and retire from Rumble Roses XX a beaten man playing a woman.