Xiaolin Showdown (gamezone)

- gamezone -

Step into a world of martial arts. Step into the shoes of a swift ninja girl, a belly-thrusting hick, or a yellow warrior who looks like the lovechild of Ms. Pac-Man and Viewtiful Joe. Pummel one another to your heart's consent. But don't think about ripping one's heart out – this game is G-rated. And don't think about breaking one's heart – sappy love stories are reserved for RPGs.

Xiaolin Showdown is a 3D beat-'em-up trapped in small environments. It vies for Smash Bros. attention, and searches for its Shrek SuperSlam niche. It reaches for the past, the genre's conception – Final Fight and Streets of Rage. It hopes that it can be one tenth of those games. If it could, Xiaolin Showdown would have a secured spot in our hearts forever.

Starring Omi, the Ms. Pac-Man/Viewtiful Joe lovechild (unofficially), Xiaolin Showdown focuses on a few specific goals:

(1) Collect the items.

While bashing your opponents with punch combos, jump kicks, and thrown objects, players will be alerted of special scroll items that they need to collect. They'll first appear with a force field surrounding each item, which can't be defeated with any of your attacks. To remove the field, attack the robotic minions as they’re dropped into the game. Destroy them – all of them – and the barrier will be lifted. Now you can jump in, grab the items, and repeat the process until all three have been collected.

You should notice that attacking your opponents – three of which are more or less your allies in the Adventure mode – will cause them to drop colored orbs. These orbs replenish your special attack meter. Special attacks are selected at the start of every level. Up to three can be assigned at one time, but you must have enough coins to buy three attacks before that's an option. Count on having only one special attack for your first fight.

These attacks can freeze enemies, triggering a state of temporary paralysis. They can stop opponents from moving by lifting them into the air with a strong gust of wind (like a personal tornado for each character, good or evil). Use another special attack to fire projectiles, and yet another to stun enemies with a strong lightning blast.

Roughly 30 special attacks, called Shen Gong Wu, are included in the game.

(2) Mini-game survival.

In between the main levels, Xiaolin Showdown presents a few different mini-games: IT (tag), Keep Away, and King of the Hill. There isn't a whole lot to explain. You know how to play tag – being "it" pegs you as the loser, and in this case, will kick you out after a short period of time. This is one of the rare times when you can be removed from the game.

In Keep Away, grab the ball and run. King of the Hill – is there anyone left who doesn't know these rules?

(3) It's called a beat-'em-up for a reason.

Or at least it should be. One effective strategy for winning – that should in no way be effective – is to let your allies do all the work. Then, at the last minute, grab the scrolls.

(4) Fight the boss.

What’s this!? A moment of combat! Do as you will and combo till he's toast.

Aside from being a 10+ year-old concept, Xiaolin Showdown had the promise of delivering fun and excitement within its unoriginality.

The controls are great, and should be very impressive to those of you who have kept up with the genre. Do you know what's out there? The outlook hasn’t been good. Stiff controls with bad combos and weak collision detection are not uncommon. Xiaolin Showdown is smooth and instantly accessible to anyone who knows how to pick up a controller. The analog movement is fast and reliable, and the combos work consistently well.

The camera is a whole other story. It's stiff, jerky, and will get stuck behind objects that, until the moment comes, will not appear to be in the way. I can understand this happening in a 3D adventure, but Xiaolin Showdown is in a fixed environment. The view is always facing one direction. Changing the direction of the character merely causes the camera to tilt left or right. Those basic movements should've led to a basic but accurate camera system.

If that were the only problem the game could be forgiven, just as most technically flawed games are. But there's a bigger reason to be upset – Xiaolin Showdown isn't any fun. Not even a little, and not even for a short time. All the hope and promise is lost on a combat system that feels repetitive the second you start attacking. It's not the familiarity that kills the game – it's the lack of anything worthwhile behind the constant button-mashing.

In Adventure mode, you have three allies that can do most of the work for you. None of you can be killed or eliminated outside of mini-games. I thought that was the whole point of a game – to have a consequence for not doing your best, creating challenge and a desire to do better.

But even with a consequence, the game would still be the easiest beat-'em-up known to man. Collecting items and getting together for boring games of tag – over straight combat? I'll pass.

Review Scoring Details for Xiaolin Showdown

Gameplay: 4.3
Four characters. One series of combos. One small arena. One clunky camera. Xiaolin Showdown is repetitive from the moment you start the first level. I have never been so unenthused by a game that looked so cool and full of promise. Xiaolin’s controls are on par with games of a much higher quality in gameplay – that’s at least some progress the industry is making. But when good controls alone are all that’s worth praising, you get a game that feels like a tech demo that arrived five years late.

Graphics: 5.9
Cel-shaded character models on top of flat and lifeless backgrounds. Xbox can and has done better.

Sound: 3.0
Lackluster music and horrendous voice-overs that can’t be skipped. The game interrupts play several times per stage to tell you that another collectible item has appeared.

Difficulty: Easy
With a health meter, Xiaolin Showdown would’ve been the easiest game I’ve played on Xbox. Since these characters don’t have one, this could very well be the easiest game in existence (excluding kids-only titles).

Concept: 5.0
Xiaolin Showdown doesn't show us anything we haven't seen before. It’s a sub-par beat-‘em-up without a sense of direction.

Multiplayer: 4.0
This is not the way I’d want to spend an afternoon with friends – beating up on opponents that cannot be taken out of the game. The goal of collecting scrolls sounds like a nice idea, but it’s immediately repetitive. Within the first hour, boring. By the second hour – exhausting. After that it’s time to play something else.

Overall: 4.3
Xiaolin Showdown relies on its multiplayer to facilitate replay value. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t have any. The monotonous and all-too-easy button-mashing combat is so been there, done that it’s not even remotely interesting. There are ways to make these kinds of games fun (see Power Stone for more). Xiaolin Showdown doesn’t use any of them. You won’t believe how easy and below average the objectives are. It’s like playing a game from 1995 – minus the fun and technological advancements that made ‘95 a year to remember.