Level Up: Xiaolin Showdown

I have to admit, Xiaolin Showdown was a guilty pleasure for me, mostly since when it came out, I was a little “too old” for the show by society standards and because most of my friends thought it wasn’t that good anyways. None the less, I liked it, with its different settings, interesting villains and kid friendly kung-Fu. The magical items, the Shen Gong Wu, just tied it all together, making me look forward to seeing what would be discovered and how it would be used. One day I saw in Nintendo Power that they were going to make a game based on the series. “Cool,” I thought, “can’t wait to see how they use the Shen Gong Wu in it.” Somehow, that was the last I heard of it, until I saw it in a discount bin and picked it up for 10 dollars. So, let’s talk about Xiaolin Showdown for the Nintendo DS.

The game starts up, and you have the choice of selecting one of the four monks. What’s the difference? There pretty much seems to be none other than cosmetic. Attacks do pretty much the same damage, but look different, and any difference you might notice is probably psychosomatic. Other that, or the differences are so small, they can be mistaken for psychosomatic. The first level you’re thrown in is pretty much the mandatory training level, where you’ll see what you’ll do most of the game; move around, jump, kick and punch. In this game though, there is the chi meter; the more you attack your enemy, the more it fills up, letting you launch an elemental attack or use a Shen Gong Wu. Most of the Wu are just projectile attacks, but different kind, and the few that aren’t don’t seem to last long enough to be useful.

If it sounds like I’m disappointed in this game’s game play, it’s because I am. With all the Shen Gong Wu there was available and how they’re used this could have been a great adventure game where you could use the Wu to get further, as in games like Zelda. This would of probably also made for more interesting boss fights then the bland ones of “trigger an event, then punch”. Seriously, this subject is prime for a Zelda rip off, but instead we got a copy paste beat-em-up, which just really let me down.

To talk about the graphics, this game looks weird. There are some jagged edges at really random places and some of the colors just off, with some skin tones looking very gray. Probably doesn’t help that the camera looks oddly framed and you can’t change the angle. However, some of the enemies are really well done, and the 2D cut scenes and random images are perfect remakes from the cartoon, but since you’ll be mostly looking at your character fighting on the 3D area, it’s not really worth it. The music left no real impression on me. I can’t say I found it bad, only because it was so ignorable. It’s bland to say the least. The other sounds are pretty standard for beat-em-up, with the addition of the voicing while challenging each other or launching attacks. I gotta say, I thought it was cool that every character actually said whatever item they were holding, like in the show. Final point: the audio visual of this game is as disappointing as the game play.

This game was a disappointment. But hey, I shouldn’t be surprised; buy a cheap game, and don’t be shocked to get a cheap game. For a bit, this game made me question the subject in itself; was it lame enough to deserve a game like this? I mean, back when I watched it when it was new, it was good, but I also didn’t see that they used a different spelling of “Shaolin” (… poor literacy) (I gotta stop stealing Linkara’s jokes). But then I kind of looked at it again; it’s not all that bad, just not good as it could be. I mean, nothing prevented me from beating it (other than one glitch one time) and I didn’t feel like I was suffering while I was playing. I think that if (publishers) Konami would have released a similar game for the SNES in 2D, it would have been one of those “underrate games” for the system. But now, we have higher standards for our graphics, game play and mini games, and expect more than one easily erasable save file. I can’t say this game is good, but it’s not all bad, just severely disappointing. I give Xiaolin Showdown for the Nintendo DS 5 levels out of 10.