During the great, big, "Welcome Back" party the staffers here at Netjak threw for my grand return after four months, they handed me the honor of reviewing a newly received press copy game. Nothing says lovin' like a free game, especially one that I get well before the teeming masses. Of course, there may have been a secret message hidden within. The game they handed me was Rule of Rose.
Rule of Rose is essentially a Silent Hill type game. The world is creepy, dark, and the story is twisted. However, Rule of Rose took the theme to a serious extreme.
Rule of Rose stars Jennifer, a 19-year-old girl in 1930s England. Her family tragically died, leaving her to head off to a relative's to live. During the bus ride, there was one other passenger- a young boy. The boy handed Jennifer a storybook, handwritten on lousy paper, and then ran off. Jennifer followed and the bus left her behind. She followed the boy up to a place called the Rose Garden Orphanage and this is where stuff truly begins.
The biggest aspect of Rule of Rose is the story. I have to warn everyone, the story is twisted and disturbing. Not just disturbing like roaches and ugly monsters, but as in, the subject matter of this game is mentally disturbing. I will be up front about it, Rule of Rose features a lot of not-so-subtle references to rape and child molestation, among other things. During the first hour and a half, the player will experience veiled threats of rape, overt threats of murder, animal mutilation, kids beating a dog and later a rabbit tied up in a sack, an old lady being beaten to death by mop wielding mutants and then shoved under a bed, the main character is buried alive, a nasty fat girl that shoves a rat tied to a stick in your face, and frequent rape references.
The rape events aren't so subtle once you reach the first boss. The first boss is a mutated guy with one of those irritating British accents (not the normal ones, but the overly stereotypical annoying one) who has a riding cane. His attacks are beating you with a cane, and then lunging at you and knocking you on the ground, after which, he goes into this humping motion. He even calls Jennifer a "bad girl that needs to be punished", adding to the unsavory references of child molestation, as that is a frequent reasoning those sick individuals use to perform their acts, even though Jennifer, at age 19, isn't a minor. I can see why I was awarded the "honor" of playing this game, given it is nearly impossible to offend or disturb me and I could actually get through the game without turning away in disgust. Anyone who ever had any bad life experiences or remotely gets offended will truly find Rule of Rose reprehensible, and impossible to play.
The story itself, apart from the truly M rated subject matter, isn't presented very well. Rule of Rose is set up in month-long chapters. This is very confusing to the player since it is hard to imagine running after a butterfly or a spending an entire month lying in a casket. The story tends to jump around and has poor transitioning. One moment you're in an orphanage, and the next you're in a zeppelin. The player isn't even treated with an explanation of how you went from the ground up to a lighter than air craft over the ocean.
Of course, if the gameplay were solid, sick and twisted subject matter could be somewhat ignored. However, Rule of Rose doesn't play very well, either. Controls are character centric and tend to be clumsy in motion. Combat is a particularly clumsy affair. The poor control response makes it very difficult to "aim" Jennifer at the enemy. What makes the combat worse is that Jennifer never locks on to any of the enemies that are in her vicinity. Activating the combat mode keeps Jennifer facing the same direction and will only allow her to strafe when attempting to turn. Strafing is fine in a shooter because you can still turn around quickly, but in Rule of Rose, something inevitably gets on your back, you have to release combat mode, turn around, go back into combat mode, and then start process over again. The attacks themselves are also clumsy. True, Jennifer is a completely unskilled combatant, but this truly makes for a miserable game experience. She can swing off a three hit combo with most melee weapons and end up with a bit of a delay due to being thrown off balance. This is a particular problem with boss battles. They are insanely difficult, and not because they are a challenge, but because you're constantly fighting the controls just to get off an attack.
The rest of the game, however, is way too simple. The "puzzles" are made overly simple with the inclusion of Brown, Jennifer’s trusty canine companion. Most puzzles involve you just having Brown sniff and track items in your inventory, and he leads you right to where you need to be next. Every aspect of the game is far too obvious to even be a mental challenge. Inventory management is a breeze since you can just drop whatever you don't need in the immediate future and pick it up again in a wastebasket repository. To make things even simpler, the save points, called "Bucket Knights" because they are two mops tied in a cross with a bucket for a helmet, also offer clues as to what to do next.
Visually, the game is lacking. While the pre-rendered cut scenes are nice, they're slowly becoming somewhat mundane, especially given the new consoles are putting out visuals that are just about as good or even better than the pre-rendered fare being pumped out. The rest of the game, however, is drab and boring. Brown (no, not the dog) is the prevailing color and the game's default setting is at "impossible to see" dark. It is suggested that players boost the in-game brightness option to be able to even tell where you're walking. Even then, the world of Rule of Rose is bleak and boring and not particularly detailed. Character models aren't very attractive and the overall environment is best described as tedious.
One of the other problems with the visuals is that the font used in much of the game is like a child's scrawling. This causes problems when trying to read various books for clues or follow along with what is going on.
Sounds aren't all that much better. The game is filled with a continual violin solo, which gets a little irritating after a while, and the character voice over work is not all that great. It also doesn't help that voice over work is also very sporadic with few lines here and there actually spoken. Other sounds, like the weird thing that Amanda does that makes her sound like she wants to eat you, is just plain gross. Other generic sounds that are expected to be in games, and probably have a stock library sitting somewhere for everyone to grab, are present like footsteps and monster grunts.
Without a doubt, not even finding merit to play this game the first time through eliminates any semblance of a replay value. The game is just too twisted to voluntarily do this more than once.
Every now and again, some form of media shows up to really test the limits of human decency. Rule of Rose is little more than the worst aspects of theMarquis de Sade's philosophies, and that is without the benefit of any useful insights into the human condition. While I am an ardent supporter of the First Amendment of my beloved US Constitution, there are certain boundaries that should not be crossed...voluntarily. While I won't advocate silencing the subject matter of Rule of Rose, the tasteless way it was presented really forces me to suggest to the mass audience as a whole to avoid the game with every ounce of their being. I would have not have been turned off by the subject matter of Rule of Rose had the story delved into the human condition, but that simply wasn't the case. Rule of Rose turned out to be a hackneyed series of simple puzzles, dodging monsters, bad controls and unreasonably difficult boss fights packaged in a poorly developed story.
Furthermore, the lack of any real excitement in any other aspect of the game made me feel that this entire project was just a perverted attempt to shock and awe the audience. The gameplay itself is clumsy and lends badly to the game's battles and the overall sound presentation was simply not too exciting. All I can say is avoid this game at all costs. Rule of Rose is no fun to play nor is it any fun to experience.
