I feel kind of crawly.

Rumble Roses XX is the kind of game where the gameplay comes across as some kind of happy accident. It's ostensibly a wrestling game, but that's kind of an afterthought. You are actually here to watch girls in various stages of undress grapple sweatily with each other; it's less a game, and more like the kind of thing that launches young boys into puberty.

Some people are going to love it. Some people are going to feel as though they're too mature for it. Some people are going to pretend to be the latter but will actually be the former. Some people will screw up, play it in front of their mothers, and get their 360s taken away.

Basically, what we've got here is the PS2 Rumble Roses with improved graphics, no story mode, no mud wrestling, way too much goddamn bloom effect, and quite a few things that are surprisingly difficult to unlock. It's not so much a sequel as it is a stripped-down reinvention, and whether it's an improvement over its predecessor or not is largely up to the viewer.

Rumble Roses XX is not wildly dissimilar to the average WWE title; it makes up for any deficiencies in the gameplay, and there are a few, with an astounding amount of pixelated ass.

Actually, let me just get this out of the way.

This game is about breasts. Glorious, jiggling, bouncing, breasts, of all kinds, colors, sizes, and forms. You can actually shrink or grow them in the customization menu; you can choose a variety of swimsuits and wrestling outfits to expose or conceal them as you see fit.

To a lesser extent, it is also about women's undergarments. I don't get that so much, but whatever blows your hair back, Japan.

Somewhere near the back of the line, Rumble Roses XX is a wrestling game, and as such, it's not that bad if you have four controllers and three friends with no shame. Each character has a full complement of throws, holds, submission moves, and even supers, usable when you generate enough heat from the crowd.

There's also a counter system in Rumble Roses XX that's vaguely reminiscent of the last few Dead or Alive games, complete with their frustrating abusability; it's one of those game mechanics that the computer will use better than you ever will. On top of that, getting countered--or getting hit with one of a handful of moves--will increase your character's humilation meter. When she's fully humiliated, your opponent can instantly win the match by landing her Humiliation Move, which only costs a bar of super. It's... well, it's humiliating, which is kind of the point. It's a little frustrating, too, since a few CPU characters just have to play a waiting game and let you defeat yourself.

A few CPU characters are also legally retarded. RRXX's singleplayer mode veers wildly back and forth from helpless punching dummies to psychic counter monkeys, with very little room in between. You'll be able to work half the cast with no problem, but the moment Miss Spencer or Makoto Aihara show up, you'll be your own worst enemy.

This wouldn't be quite as big of a deal if RRXX didn't want you to play the singleplayer mode at ridiculous, incredible length. Unlocking anything in Rumble Roses XX involves winning the singles championship with one character, which means fighting through a bunch of random battles until you get enough wins to go for the title. That's worth ten points on your gamerscore. Then you have to either keep fighting until the game randomly coughs up enough tag-team battles for you to try for the tag-team championship... or repeat the process with another character. You would not know this from the game itself, either; if not for GameFAQs, I still wouldn't know how the hell I'm supposed to unlock anything.

Rumble Roses XX is a fun enough game, as these things go, but it saddles you with a lot of busywork. If you're insanely fond of the engine and the gameplay, you'll be at this for a long, long time, but odds are good that unless you're really perverse, the sheer titillation factor of the game will wear thin long before you've unlocked everything.