Christmas Wong Kresten: Tan lines, witches, Roses, and more!

Started playing Dead Rising over the weekend. It has its share of flaws, but I’m having a great time with it. Costume wise, it’s one of the first 360 games that has offered free downloadable outfits. I haven’t tried on all the available types in the game yet, but there are lots of fun options.

This dose of horror got me in the mood to revisit Silent Hill 3. Part 2 is my all-time favorite, but I have a soft spot for the third one. The choice of a female lead character was refreshing, especially since Heather wasn’t your clichéd bodacious gaming babe. Plus she had quite a selection of shirts to sport and one space age thingy. The pic below is from this site.

I don’t have anything new regarding Bullet Witch except for this new pic below. Same outfit as before, but still striking.

More Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 pics, info, and import magazine scans continue to surface at a steady rate now. The only controversy of note so far seems to focus on the inclusion of tan lines. The previous game had minor tanning (the girls got somewhat darker), but it was not very pronounced. Some folks are griping and hoping for an option not to have tan lines. Anyone who has play the last game can tell you both sun tan lotion and sun block were readily available for cheap in the shop. If you don’t like tan lines, slather on the sun block. End of story. Tan lines do mix up the look and effect of particular bikinis though. I think it’s great.

It’s nice that they are not bringing back every bikini for the first game and mixing it up with plenty of brand new looks. Better texturing will make all the old ones look far better, so looking forward to that too. One of the “lost” features from DOAXBV was variable bikini sizes (it was in early previews of Famitsu and Famitsu Xbox). You could buy smaller sizes and have the more ample ladies squeeze into them for an “overflowing” effect. Rumble Roses XX offered this by way of adjusting body part sizes. It’s doubtful it will find its way to DOAX2, but I guess you never know. It’s kinda crass, kinda sexy, um, I dunno. I could live without it.

One thing I would love to see are non-bikini outfits for the night time. I’m not sure how different the gambling portions will be, but it sure would be great to see the ladies in formal evening wear or more casual tropical night clothes sauntering around the casino. In DOAXBV, you played against the other girls and could hear their voices and view their icons. Other than that, the casino looked like a ghost town.

I haven’t played Rumble Roses XX for a while, but decided to pop it back in to gather some final thoughts. Before I knew it, I had logged in another 8 hours. I haven’t played many tag team matches and fully explored the create-a-wrestler mode. Using the team of Rowdy Reiko and Sgt Clements, I unlocked all of the Rowdy Reiko’s possible outfits. The most costly two are the Marine Gift Flower and Scallop bikinis. Sure, they're sexy, but they're also kind of ugly and gaudy.

Those Marine bikinis and some string-like ones appear to be the most risqué in the game, although the point of purchase banners would have you believe there are far sexier non-outfits and situations. There was also this previous piece of sales material posted earlier.

This flight attendant number wins my award for most ridiculous in the game, which also means it’s the most awesome.

There may be a few more hours left in me to unlock some items for Sgt. Clements. Other than that, RRXX may finally see retirement. I’m not sure how the game did in Japan, but it didn’t do so hot over here. Looking into my CostumeGet! crystal ball, I predict a true follow-up to the PS2 version for the PlayStation 3 is still possible. If it were to come to fruition, there is no doubt the PlayStation 3 release would be the make or break it for the franchise. I mean, it’s shocking RRXX came out at all for the 360. The only reason I could think of was to lay the next-gen asset ground work for PS3.

Freaks like myself somehow found ways to still enjoy the flawed game, but there needs to be a ton of improvements if they hope to post any decent sales numbers to the masses.

Unfortunately, or should I say predictabley, the updates on the official Rumble Roses sites have now ground to a halt. However, the flow of Rumble Roses figures continues. There are three new larger scale figures due later this year. Out of these, I would kinda consider Dixie because she is one of my favorite characters. Her face and body molding don’t look quite right though. Maybe the final production model will be a bit more improved. The final Reiko figure looks much better than the first prototypes shown.

Speaking of figures, the 2006 Wonder Festival in Japan ended recently. Brand new figures keep on coming for Witch Blade. I think all of the ones below are of the “you have to build it and paint it resin kit” variety, which sucks. Most of the popular ones get made into pre-painted figures though. This set includes our gal in street clothes and then transformed by the Witch Blade.