If decadence is gaudily clothed women modeled better than the bland areas they fight in while grinding each other in a mediocre wrestling engine wasted on poor design, then Rumble Roses XX is decadence incarnate. You could really replace “decadence” with any word and get my point, but I find that term appropriate due to the excess amount of cheeseball costumes, modes, and animations. Rumble Roses XX isn’t meant to rock your world with its mannequin-toned females, at least I hope it isn’t, but its unique look is meant to get your attention to a fighting system that is a light version of what Yuke’s been doing for years. Unfortunately it doesn’t come together very well.

There really isn’t a point to Rumble Roses XX. In the various WWE offerings from THQ, you have elaborate story and create-a-character modes that accompany a complex fighting system that really offers an experience you can sink your teeth into. You can pick a star, or create one yourself from a plethora of options, and get involved in the locker-room antics as you play the crowd, purchase gear, and work your way to the top of the food chain. There is none of that here. Instead, you get to buy costumes. Well, costumes and other miscellaneous items, like a digital camera that allows access to a photo shoot mode that lets you pose and take snapshots of your favorite wrestlerettes to view anytime in the Museum.

Instead of a story mode you are given a world map and a variety of areas to play in. There is an Exhibition Mode that allows you to tweak the perimeters to play just the kind of match you like, without having your losses negatively affect the positive crowd approval that you’re striving to build. The main bouts in Arena come with either solo or tag teams – 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, 2 vs. 1, a 3+ Royal Rumble, and PHM bouts (victory requires finishing an opponent off with a humiliation move) – and come complete with bigger purses and lengthy intros; each intro has to load, so enjoy the loading screens with too-fast-to-read hints - you’ll be seeing plenty of them. There is a Streetfight mode that uses a side perspective and more traditional life bars, along with walls and fences to bash people into. Other modes include Online, Skyscraper and Red Valley, with nothing particular alluring about any of them and, aside from playing other people online, differ only in their backgrounds.

The oddest mode is the Queen’s Match. The victor in this one gets to watch the loser do something humiliating, like be squirt with a water gun or exercise. The only thing you do is use your limited camera controls to watch. There are a handful of humiliating tasks available from the start with the rest having to be purchased from the shop; and since you don’t really rake in the cash, you’ll be playing a while just to see something that is more of an oddity than anything else.

The fighting system has some interesting ideas, but the game itself is too basic to properly utilize it. In tag matches, you can get your partner to jump in or assist from the sidelines, with the effectiveness of their participation being tied to how well the characters get along. There are also a variety of moves – lethal, killer, and humiliation – that are charged up throughout a match, with better performance making them more accessible, and each simple to perform. The variety of tackles isn’t bad either, and the reversal system is easy enough to require good timing – and a little luck. The basic moves require a simple control scheme with one button used for striking and another for grappling and the directional pad dictating what type of particular move to perform.

The main problem with the game is that it is very random, not only in its inconsistent difficulty and representation of momentum in matches, but also in how the characters themselves seem to not respond to controls at random points. I admit that I suck at the game, but after a few street fights I had my character bulked up enough to where I was invincible. If I was inclined as to guess as to how to proceed to win a championship and unlock all of the items to purchase in the shop, I might’ve scored some sweet achievement points off of it. As it stands, I had my fill after coming back from a match where I should’ve lost - after being tossed around like a rag doll, frantically pressing buttons out of frustration without much coming of it – and instead dominated my opponent with a few strikes and a grapple.

A new, touted feature is a poor create-a-wrestler mode. It’s strange to see something so limited since this feature has become so prominent in wresting titles. There are only nine slots that can be filled and each character is based off the same wrestler, Lambada. The options are limited to choosing between three voices and body dimensions of height from 5’5” to 5’9” and weight from 115 to 151; no tweaking moves, only choosing between move sets, and each created wrestler uses the same intro. This means that even the limited nine slots allotted will be filled with characters that aren’t that indistinguishable from one another.

For an early Xbox 360 title, the production values are nothing to write home about either. The characters look good in intros and decent in-game, but the backgrounds tend to be bland and somewhat muddy, making the contrast all the more striking. The animations, grapples aside, are stiff and dull. The music can range from strangely poppy to grating, and the announcer is like a female version of the vocal angel from the earlier Street Fighter Alpha titles. Not an overall impressive combination.

Overall: 3.5/10

Rumble Roses XX comes with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The problem is that the game itself isn’t sold well, with its introductory engine used to middling effect. The game is aimless and plays that way. For those who want to get into wrestling games, this wouldn’t be a bad start, seeing as how the newer WWE titles are downright daunting, but it certainly won’t satisfy the wrestling or fighting connoisseur – or those who appreciate their $60.