Official Webpage
Platform: PlayStation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS, Xbox
Genre: Beat 'em up
Number of Players: 1 - 4
I am led to understand that the
game Xiaolin Showdown is based on a cartoon of the same name. This
would be easy to deduce from the colorful, cell shaded graphics and
overall presentation. It would also be easy to tell by the fact that
it takes about 30 seconds of play time to realize that this game is
for kids- either very, very, young kids, or kids who don’t actually
care about how good the game they are playing is.
The game is a very simple arena brawler. You go into the arena, you
fight, end of story. You can have up to 4 players in a game- if you
go it alone, the CPU will play the other three characters. You will
all run around, fighting repetitive, generic looking enemies, and,
as the lock on system for the game is quite frankly horrible, you
will often inadvertently fight your fellow monks in training. At
least I think you will be fighting them inadvertently- as all of the
objectives are shared between all the characters at once, and this
is a “showdown”, it may well actually be that you are supposed to
fight them. I assume not, since they are your buddies, but the fact
that the lock on targets them so easily and often, and that fact
that they are just as affected by your special attacks (called Shen
Gong Wu) as the bad guys, leaves it all a bit murky.
You will play as Clay, Kimiko, Raimundo, or Omi, but the fact is, it
doesn’t really matter, as there is little difference between them in
the game. You will break pots and such looking for energy, and you
get power ups from defeated enemies as well, but none of it is
really any fun because it all just the same thing over and again.
Regardless of what the arena looks like, the game is always the
same.
As the game will always- always, mind you, stop in mid play to tell
you all about whatever new objective pops up (no matter how many
times you have done it before) and as it is so devoid of any kind of
challenge or depth at all, you should be aware that this game will
only be suitable for the youngest of players. Even then, they
probably still won’t spend much time with it. Rent this one before
you buy.
-Ed-
