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.
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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.
