Xiaolin Showdown review

Start with a second-rate cartoon license. Add a dash of a bargain-bin party game, then stuff it inside half-baked 3D roaming combat and stir well. Finally, let the mix rot in the sun for a week. What do you get? You’d be half right if you said “something really icky,” but you’d be totally on the mark if you said Xiaolin Showdownon the Xbox.

Xiaolin Showdown is a four-player, free-roaming competitive fighting game (though you’d be hard-pressed to tell by reading the blurb on the game’s packaging). You select one of the show’s characters to play as against up to 3 other competitors in various arenas. Your goal in each arena is to beat up both enemies and other players while collecting items, money, and pieces of a scroll that show up at regular intervals.