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Review: Ready 2 Rumble 2 |
I never played the first Ready 2 Rumble on any format. I saw it in a lot of shops around the time of the English DC launch, but it seemed too simplistic and mindless to appeal to me, and didn’t even look that great. So I ignored it.
I would’ve ignored the sequel too, if it wasn’t for a piece of news posted on our front page a while back, and a discussion on the message board that followed soon after. (You SEE what you’re missing by not reading the MB?!?)
So I thought “what the hell” — if anything it’ll be interesting to see what exactly it has in common with a “proper” fighter and also how it differs.
And right from the start it’s clear it isn’t a “fighting game” as we know it. Jim. Sure, you’re fighting, but the nature of the sport in question and a number of choices that the designers of the game have made regarding the engine mean it’s nothing like, say, Virtua Fighter or KOF. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing … but if you’re a fan of proper fighting games (and you should be if you’re reading this, unless you’re one of the Bulma porn people…) you may not care for what R2R2 has to offer. Hmm — this is harder than I thought.
As soon as you start the game the aggressive, chunky attitude is laid on thickly. The big all-caps fonts that rock back and forward when highlighted, the shadow-boxer behind the menus, the simplistic but rousing music … it’s tacky, but that’s the point. They want you to hit things. Hard.
I saw a review of this game that gave the sound “3/10″ with the reason “You cannot hear the sound at all” uh…. sure. If you actually have ears on the outside of your head, you’ll hear lots and lots of clear, reasonably-acted speech, tonnes of beefy punch effects and some good music: from the laid-back funky style of the training mode to the shouty in-your-face title track.
As I said earlier, I’ve never played the first R2R, so can’t really say how much the actual game graphics are improved. They’re good … not DOA2 good or ShenMue good … but decent enough, and nicely detailed. The motion is realistic and there’s no polygon glitching (apart from the way you can fall through the ring aprons :/) and there’s nice attention to detail in the way that mouths are synched to speech and eyes blink. And, as you punch the living hell out of the other character, their face will start to bruise and swell up to “Elephant Man” proportions.
The backgrounds aren’t as nice … they’re standard boxing rings (duh), complete with that annoying 2D crowd effect that NEVER looks convincing.
Following in the footsteps “that game”, one of the ‘improvements’ made to the graphics engine is the inclusion of … yes … bouncing breasts for the female characters. Hooray. Only it’s not good: it’s crap. Of the four female characters, there are two who are supposed to be sexy (the other two are a gargantuan whale of a woman and uh Hilary Clinton) — and this “sexiness” is achieved by giving them tacky outfits, massive lips, retarded “sassy” attitudes and, of course, ludicrous breasts.
And if you’ll pardon the expression, they’re thrust into your face at every opportunity. “Lulu Valentines’” entire pre-fight routine involves her warming up by making quick, jerky movements so her chest can pulsate appropriately.
It gets worse. In the “Aerobics” training mini-game, the female instructor (wearing a tiny white leotard no less) constantly jumps up and down throughout the training. The resulting effect is just *so* gratuitous that it transcends ‘funny’ or ’sexy’ and just becomes stupid. It’s the same sort of irony-free gratuity that can be found in something like “Baywatch” — and it’s just not on.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for salacious cleavage, breast bouncing, schoolgirl outfits and pneumatic 16-year old (female) ninjas, but whereas the women of Dead or Alive 2 are IMO some of the sexiest videogame characters ever, the ones in R2R2 are, frankly, shit. It seems American game designers (oh …. alright, and British ones … we’re responsible for Killer Instinct and *ugh* the Tomb Raider series) have little clue about making attractive female characters other than attaching huge watermelon appendages to their fronts. Just look at how horrendous Lara Croft is.
Eh … that was kind of a rant, but we got to talk about brestesses, so it’s not a total loss.
The male characters don’t fare much better in terms of stereotyping. Would you fall from your chair if I said there’s a “Bruce Lee” type? Or a Russian powerhouse? Or an “English gentlemen”? (think: Dudley, but white and lame) And a flamboyant Mexican, a “cool” black guy and some non-descript “average” fighters with no distinguishing marks whatsoever.
There are a few, more subversive types who are definitely the most interesting characters in the game. “Freak E. Deke” is a skinny Canadian punk with huge spiked hair who warms up before the fight by punching himself repeatedly in the face. Yes.
And it just wouldn’t be a Midway sports game without stupid body deformation cheats and bizarre celebrity secret characters. Yes, you can pick Michael Jackson (fresh from his appearance in Space Channel 5), Shaquille O’Neill, Bill Clinton (!!) and his wife Hilary. Cool.
The thing is, all the characters play so similar. Instead of jumping, kicks, throws, super cancels, juggles, strikers or anything else that makes a game good … we’ve got: Punching.
And the fact that it’s a semi-’realistic’ boxing game means all of the special moves are: Punches.
I know I shouldn’t hold this against it, given what it is …. but I do. It’s just dull.
The button layout is left/right/high/low punch…. different types of punches can be done with stick combinations…. and you have a high and low block, a reflexive jump back and an impossible-to-do parry.
It’s not totally useless – because there’s no jumping or crouching, the stick/D-pad grants you full 3D movement all the time, and dodging or sidestepping a blow is pretty satisfying. But the controls are sluggish and unresponsive, and once the fight gets up close, it’s button-mashing time.
Like the first R2R (I did read EVA’s old review) there’s a ‘RUMBLE meter’ at the bottom of the screen that fills up when you connect a blow or do one of the four taunts available. This time round the meter goes up 3 levels, and allows you to activate a “RUMBLE FLURRY” which is a half-assed sort of super combo that involves: Punching, and for some annoying reason can be blocked halfway through, or can miss or just land one or two hits, thanks to the strange hit detection.
Using the “level 3″ to finish an opponent results in them being punched out of the ring in a supposedly “hilarious” finish that’s guaranteed to cause absolute silence among a group of people. It’s a real “uh …. yeah” moment.
So basically, the fights go: “walk about, punch, punch some more, build up the RUMBLE super meter, do a RUMBLE FLURRY, then walk about and punch again until someone falls over.” I know I just described real boxing too there (except the RUMBLE meter bit) — but it’s just not stimulating enough. And no amount of basketball-size breasts will change that.
But there’s a small jewel nestling in the manure pile … the “Championship Mode”. While it doesn’t make me want to keep this game or indeed ever touch it again … it’s undoubtedly the best thing about it. You pick your character and then essentially “manage” them. There are several stats (endurance, strength, speed etc) and you have to improve all these by doing various training routines so your fighter will stand a chance against the tougher opponents and make mincemeat out of the easier ones. I thought the actual training would be a cop-out … you’d click on the exercise you want to do and the level would just go up, but NO! — you can actually do them … and this is where the fun is. There are seven exercises … weight-lifting, skipping, three different punch bag routines, a “match the buttons to the images” test and even a Dance Dance Revolution game (with my bouncy friend). These mini-games are played by utilising skills like button-mashing, timing, hand-eye co-ordination, memory and various combinations of them all.
As time passes (it’s calendar-based) you can enter prize fights to win money and title fights to advance up the tournament ranking. I have to say, this is easily the most fun I had with this game. I spent around 80% of my total game time in this mode … even the fights seemed somehow more fun, and the training modes are a genuine pleasure. Hmmm.
But back to the game … oh … it’s just so simplistic… no complex tricks or traps to master, no moves that require split-second timing, and a totally un-customisable engine where pre-defined “combos” consist of baby dial sequences.
It’s true boxing *is* relatively simple in theory, but that theory does not translate well to videogame format. I can’t score it too low because it’s all very good at what it’s supposed to do, it’s just what it does is not really much use to a fighting game fan.
If you’re more flexible than I am in your preferences, you may enjoy it, but I’m tired of it already and am going to take it back to Electronics Boutique. Perhaps the chick who works there on weekdays will be jumping up and down while wearing a white swimsuit.
But I doubt it.
