Rumble Roses XX Review

By Graham Swann Published 13 June, 2006

Sex sells. Average wrestling games don't.

Version tested: Xbox 360

Right. This really is a wrestling game, although there are a couple of things - or to be more precise two huge wobbly things - that might convince you otherwise. Rumble Roses XX plays like a version of SmackDown from a few years ago. You strike, you grapple, you throw, fill up your special gauge and you sort of mince around the ring in awkward circles trying to get a good grip.

Only the key thing here is, you also spend a lot of time trying to get a good look. The girls are the stars. It's a game for men who don't mind getting caught watching the midnight freeview and if you have no shame, it's quite arousing. The costumes range from sexy schoolgirl options to string-based bikinis, and you're even encouraged to rotate the camera around manually when in a hold to get a better look at such things as bottoms, legs, tummies and cleavages. This is made by voyeurs, for voyeurs.

The girls are lovely, but the rest of RRXX doesn't look much like an Xbox 360 game should. Clearly the developers spent a lot of time getting the girls' bits and pieces in order and we thank them very much for doing that, the problem is the rest of it - the backgrounds, arenas and suchlike are pretty awful. You get low-res spectators and lumps of scenery popping into view, and terrible 2D surrounds behind everything.

It's almost as if the makers couldn't be bothered putting together the scenery and spent all their time smoothing out the skin of the sexy ladies. As if that would happen! Another thing they didn't spend quite enough time on is making the girls move convincingly. When they're being introduced to the (baying, perverted, semi-erect) crowd they look great, sashaying through their predetermined poses and blowing kisses and giving you the right horn over what's about to unfold.

'Rumble Roses XX' Screenshot 1

Spin the camera for better view. If you can live with the shame.

But in action - proper game action - it's different, as player control suddenly has them lurching around like zombies. Sexy zombies, but zombies nonetheless, who lurch, awkwardly miss grabs and struggle to look as enthusiastic and sexy as they do on the box. Just like in all porn.

To make them stand still and go all pretty again, an option lets you make your favourite girl pose for you, by, amazingly, dishing out a series of punishments. Beat a girl in a punishment match down on the beach and you're allowed - actually allowed and encouraged! - to push her over, spank her, tickle her with a big fluffy hand and pause and re-watch this as much as you like. Honestly, we felt ashamed playing it.

You unlock new poses as you play, eventually getting (or forcing) the girls to cuddle, pout and get themselves into all kinds of gusset-revealing poses for you to snap, save, then upload to Xbox Live in the game's massive online gallery of user-created filth. The game's been out everywhere for some time now, so there's already a gigantic online archive to browse, revealing every square centimetre of female flesh it's possible to see.

Online, players are ranked from F through to S, letting you choose the skill level of perverted opponent you want to face. Four people can play sexy tag online, but on your own (as RRXX is meant to be, er, enjoyed) Xbox 360 AI isn't what it should be. The poor bimbos get easily confused, stumbling about, ignoring you and generally refusing to put up anything like a decent fight.

'Rumble Roses XX' Screenshot 2

Strict mistress seeks submissive student for wrestling fun.

You might spend quite a while looking for other modes and options, but don't bother - the game structure is extremely simple. There's just a vague world tour of fight locations, a shop, that pervy Xbox Live photo-swapping and online play. And here's another disappointment - the Xbox Live Achievements are ridiculously hard, forcing you to earn and unlock every single item for each character to get one single Achievement.

The only play innovation that sets Roses XX apart from all other wrestling games is its use of H-moves. Thanks to a peculiar Japanese thing where they consider blushing to be more sexy than, say, seeing someone having actual sex, RRXX lets you fill up a 'humiliation' gauge then unleash the H-move. Which usually involves bottoms being spanked. You get to see the girls humiliated and their little cheeks blush. That, if you're Japanese, is the equivalent of finding a copy of Razzle on the back of the night bus home.

Pull off an H-move and you get an even closer close-up of the already close-up view of the semi-naked girls, leaving us to form only one possible conclusion - this is a game for pervs. Seriously. If you want a proper wrestling game, buy one. Rumble Roses XX is simple fun for macho gamers who feel their sexuality threatened by watching Triple H manhandling Kurt Angle.

Slip Rumble Roses XX inside a copy of SmackDown if you must buy it, just don't go expecting any innovations other than a big tickling stick, blushing faces, a gigantic Xbox Live porn archive and the wobbliest boobs yet seen in a video game.

5 / 10

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About Graham Swann

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Comments (35) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dbeamish #1 6 years ago

    I don't know about you.. but out of 10 I'd give all those girls 1.

    sorry.. couldn't resist. I haven't even tried the demo of this yet it looks so rubbish.

  • SeesThroughAll #2 6 years ago

    this is a game for pervs... Rumble Roses XX is simple fun for macho gamers who feel their sexuality threatened by watching Triple H manhandling Kurt Angle.

    Ouch. Though not entirely unexpected, was it?
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/06 @ 14:20

  • DiscoMike #3 6 years ago

    "...and the wobbliest boobs yet seen in a video game."

    As good a reason as any.

  • #4 6 years ago

    Soon to be out-done in the wobble stakes by Dead or Alive beach volleyball 2.
    Download the E3 video, you'll know what I'm on about.

  • KillerMonkey #5 6 years ago

    Kind of expected this :)

  • Steroyd #6 6 years ago

    this is a game for pervs... Rumble Roses XX is simple fun for macho gamers who feel their sexuality threatened by watching Triple H manhandling Kurt Angle.

    Ouch. Though not entirely unexpected, was it?

    But still that is a vicious attack on anyone who's going to buy the game lol.
    Edited by 1 at 13/06/06 @ 14:42

  • THATinkjar #7 6 years ago

    I was thinking about making this one of the first games I bought for my Xbox 360. But I waited. Then I played the demo last week. Pleased I didn't buy. Really shallow game with yucky presentation. Not for me, no sir.

  • tenma #8 6 years ago

    But still that is a vicious attack on anyone who's going to buy the game lol.

    Anyone buying this game deserves to be attacked. I just can't wait to read the justifications behind the purchasing of this game some posters will make.

    "I, um, buy it for the gameplay....honest!"

  • Grim... #9 6 years ago

    "And here's another disappointment - the Xbox Live Achievements are ridiculously hard, forcing you to earn and unlock every single item for each character to get one single Achievement."

    You mean getting them is a *gasp* achievement?

  • Steroyd #10 6 years ago

    This bit made me chuckle.

    You unlock new poses as you play, eventually getting (or forcing) the girls to cuddle, pout and get themselves into all kinds of gusset-revealing poses for you to snap, save, then upload to Xbox Live in the game's massive online gallery of user-created filth.

    Oh great what an innovative way to use XBL for pixalated porn.
    Anyone want to guess if they put in a spectator mode.

    These people should be shot, they've got an online account so it should be easy to track them.

  • SeesThroughAll #11 6 years ago

    Jack Thompson probably bought this... and is looking forward to the junior league version...

  • Xerx3s #12 6 years ago

    Shittiest game ever. \0/

  • Rambaldi #13 6 years ago

    Shame about the gamerscore: I would have considered a bollocking from the wife and a few hours of a shitty wrestling game for a cool 1000 points, but hours and hours of shite and a divorce...NAH!

  • York #14 6 years ago

    "Slip Rumble Roses XX inside a copy of SmackDown if you must buy it"

    Or vice versa if you want to buy Smackdown, yet still appear to like the laadies.

  • SimonM7 #15 6 years ago

    It's really quite surprising to see such MASSIVELY flawed animation in a game that, like pointed out, tries so hard to be sexy. It's easily the most robotic movement I've seen in a fighting game since... I dunno... Rise of the robots.

    But then I've never actually played those "proper" wrestling games with men in them.

    On the character select screen it's evident just how well, er, sculptured the character models are. (I have the demo) But you just can't keep any sort of enthusiasm up once they start wonking around mechanically.

  • Darkedge #16 6 years ago

    the demo was rubbish and this review just reinforces that view. Cheesecake crud.
    sexy crud, but pure rubbish

  • nickthegun #17 6 years ago

    it may have been on here, but the best Rumble Roses quote ive read went along the lines of:

    Imagine every stereotypical perversion the Japanese have and there is a Rumble Rose character to act it out.

    Made me wonder what the unfortunate soul who got stuck with Scat and Tentacle rape looked like, but, after playing the demo, it doesnt seem too far off the mark.

    My Mrs 'caught' me playing the photo mode and she gave me more shit for that than the time she found my Razzles when we were first going out.

  • reality_cheque #18 6 years ago

    I'm going to have to play the demo when I get home, just so I can annoy the missus! :D

    Shame about the achievements, this is another (along with King Kong and that shit Fifa game) that I'm not even going to bother renting.

  • ilmaestro #19 6 years ago

    lol @ York.

  • Dizzy #20 6 years ago

    Japanese games have two extremes:

    The cross dressing gay type (Final Fantasy)

    The bouncing boob schoolgirls fantasy game (This one)

  • Darren #21 6 years ago

    I downloaded and tried the demo and although the game isn't even remotely impressive, it was better than I expected it to be. However, the graphics are weird... maybe it's the art style but the girls just look "odd" and not even remotely attractive. Also the stiff animation makes the game feel lifeless, like you're fighting plastic dolls not real people.

    5/10 seems about right to me.

  • Zero Beat #22 6 years ago

    Smackdown falls under 'average wrestling game' and sells really rather well. The new stick control is a step in the right direction for the new one though.

  • dk_rare #23 6 years ago

    Great game and all, but what if you prefer boys?

  • Drakron #24 6 years ago

    At $5000 plus you will be saving for a long time ...

    I cannot say I am suprised, I played the PS2 demo (it had mud wrestling that seens absent from this one) and I was not impressed (then again, I do not particulary like this type of games) ... it seens Konami was pulling a DoA but it blown in the face.

    Also it seens they removed the story mode with to me it indicates they decided to make a fast game using existing resources (the PS2 game) to perhaps recover for losses (the PS2 game).

  • NegativeZero #25 6 years ago

    This sounds like one of several dodgy Japanese porn games you see floating around the 'net.





    ... not that I've played any of them, of course.

  • Drakron #26 6 years ago

    No, those seen to have better gameplay.

    =p

  • Garibaldi #27 6 years ago

    I'd agree with that Grim, I can't speak for the game ( looks awful ) but I'll applaud any efforts to make Live Achievements something to work for rather than things that plop into your score with no effort whatsoever. Sure, include a small number of points for just finishing a level but titles like Tomb Raider take the piss, 50 points?

  • WhyMeeeeee #28 6 years ago

    hmmm, i think you should have used more screenshots to illustrate how you can move the camera around while they are grappling.

  • 3william56 #29 6 years ago

    "This is a game for pervs"

    And really sad pervs at that. With an interweb chocked to the gunwales with free real pron, you've got to be some sad sack to be getting your jollies from this.

  • weaselrat #30 6 years ago

    This game is shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.
    Do not play.

  • Fatnick #31 6 years ago

    Perhaps you don't like it because you're all big girly-men :o

  • SlackMaster #32 6 years ago

    Yeah I prefer a bit of 'pron' on the interweb as well... :s

  • Krun #33 6 years ago

    It's a shame porn is always so badly made.

  • Mr_Whacker #34 6 years ago

    PLayed the demo last night. I couldn't even get a semi with that awful animation. The rubbish game engine is offensive!

  • darkbhudda #35 6 years ago

    "This sounds like one of several dodgy Japanese porn games you see floating around the 'net. "

    Maybe that's why the XBOX never sold well in Japan.
    Not enough tentacle monster hentai games.

    Mind you with the Wii controller, I think Nintendo will have the hentail games market covered. I know it does up and down, does the Wii controller do back and forth? If it does, Nintendo will be showered with gold.