I expected more from the videogame adaption of Xiaolin Showdown, the awesome kung-fu themed Kids WB cartoon starring a bald headed junior monk named Omi and his three quirky warriors-in-training friends that also regularly airs on Cartoon Network. Instead of a deep gaming experience where players earn powerful artifacts and play through a storyline fraught with danger at the hands of the forces of evil, we get a shallow repetitive gaming experience that even the youngsters will tire of after only a few hours of play. You can almost get a glimpse of the vision that the developers had for this game, but this title is half-baked, implanted half-heartedly and ultimately mediocre.

A strong opening salvo, but with such strong source material you can imagine the kind of game you could make based on it: Xiaolin Showdown would have made a great third-person action game where you take on a 4 person party and take on the forces of evil, occasionally battling for Shen Gong Wu. Instead the developers chose to turn the game into a Super Smash Bros. style party game, that in and of itself isn't a bad idea, but the gameplay is so weak and repetitive that it's hard to really stick with it to the end.

In this action focused game, players take on one of the four guardians or adversaries like Jack Splicer and battle for bits of mystical scrolls and the coveted Shen Gong Wu. In between all the endless fighting, you'll be tossed into a mini-game or two where you'll vie for these artifacts by wagering your own stock - if you win you get to select one from whatever everyone else wagered. On paper this sounds good but there are a few problems..

The first and most confusing problem is that you are battling bad guys and your own team mates all the time. This really goes against the whole nature of the Xiaolin Showdown franchise because we've become accustomed to the fact that three of these characters darting around the screen, kicking and punching you and everyone else are supposed to be working together. In the show the Shen Gong Wu challenges are usually very personal experiences where one person from the team of good guys battles against Jack Splicer to claim "all the marbles." In this game that whole concept is tossed right out the window and everyone ends of brawling for these magical baubles. And then there's the whole wager vs. reward system in these mini-games: When you put up your Shen Gong Wu in the show, you get them all if you win, but not in this game. In this game you can only choose one and keep the one you wagered. It's really hard to get by this fact.

And the Shen Gong Wu you do get aren't all that exciting. They pale in comparison to the power that they contain on the show. While using these Shen Gong Wu can give you a temporary advantage in the grand scheme of things they don't have all that much of an impact. Most are acquired by collecting coins and purchasing them at the beginning of each round, which is also far removed from the show's concept. There's no Shen Gong Wu store in the popular show…

And there's the biggest problem with Xiaolin Showdown: You spend hours fighting and it feels like there's no real reward for doing so. You'll fight, use your Shen Gong Wu countless times, utilize your unique elemental powers, and then be thrusts into a Shen Gong Wu challenge mini-game. There's no real way to tell how much good you've done or how well you've fought until the end when you receive a score. Nobody ever really gets hurt in the game, no one ever gets knocked out permanently in these battles and there's no real indicator that your getting hurt, hurting someone else or accomplishing anything.