Avatar Showdown: Review

Avatar Showdown is a reaction-based indie game. You and your avatar can challenge either pre-set opponents, or fight against your friends in the 2-player mode or online. The main aim of the game is to press a single button faster than your opponent when prompted on screen. All it takes is one punch, and the round is over. Yes, it really is that simple.

There really isn’t a lot more to say about the gameplay, or the game as whole to be honest. The single player puts you up against representations of famous people, such as Kanye West, Beyonce, Chuck Norris and Forest Gump. These are done well, and most of them are recognisable.  As you progress, your reaction times must increase in order to beat the new competitors. There are 2 difficulties to go with the game, Easy and Hard. With the Easy difficulty you can keep attempting the rounds even if you lose. On Hard however, when you lose you are put back a round. From what I have found, there are 13 different rounds and opponents, with the final round requiring a reaction time of 0.18 seconds. Saying this however, the gameplay is very disappointing. You cannot move your avatar at all. You can get it complete in around 5-10 minutes. The graphics are average for an indie game ( I mean avatar graphics are avatar graphics). The background image never changes either which is a real shame as the game could have benefited from having a few different arenas.

Avatar Showdown can be purchased for 80 Microsoft Points  from the Xbox Live marketplace. Unless you have some spare Microsoft Points and really don’t want to save them, I wouldn’t recommend buying this game. I found myself bored after around five minutes, if that. Since no one I knew had the game either, the multiplayer became pointless as no games were ever found, and even if my friends did have it I can’t imagine it would entertain me longer than the single player mode.

Review by Josh Hardman

You can try the game out by clicking here