I’m going to be upfront with you folks; Avatar Showdown is one of the dumbest games I’ve ever played. Not just the dumbest Indie Game I’ve laid my hands on, but dumbest ever. The game is just pressing one button faster than the computer. That’s it. You literally do nothing else to control your character but press one button when the game tells you to. Oddly enough, I actually had some fun with this game.

Created by JForce Games (who gave us a copy of the game for review), Avatar Showdown pits your Xbox Live Avatar against other Avatars in a quick-draw kung-fu match. The game can be played in single or multiplayer mode. Single player has your Avatar fighting game-created Avatars that look like random (and I mean random) celebrities, while multiplayer is a duel between you and your friends’ Avatars. Again, I did actually have fun with this game.

This review is gonna be short. The gameplay of Avatar Showdown is pressing a button according to an on-screen prompt. If you press it faster than your opponent, you move on to the next round. Graphics are as simple as you can imagine: the background is a dull wood-panelled dojo, and the Avatars you’ve unfortunately seen before. Music is simple and nothing to write home about. The single player mode has a tiny sliver of humor associated with it, and it actually makes the game decent, if only for ten minutes.

The celebrities made for the game are actually spot-on recreations; Forest Gump looks like Forest Gump, Mario looks like Mario, and so on. Yes, you read that right; Tom Hanks’ lovable slow person and Nintendo’s mustachioed mascot are in this game, along with the Terminator, the Joker, Chuck Norris, Neo, Kanye West, and an assortment of others.

Before each bout, the celeb you’re fighting spouts some sort of catch phrase. Kanye rants about how much better Beyonce’s avatar is, Neo talks about silverware, Norris tells a terrible Norris-esque joke. It’s all incredibly cheesy and lame, as is the entire fucking game, but it works. I was actually enjoying punching the different avatars in the face. I fully enjoyed guessing who each celeb was. I genuinely felt victorious when I moved on.

Then the game ended. After ten minutes. The only other content in the game is a trailer for this game and JForce Games’ next game, JForce: UNSTOPPABLE. I’m not really sure why a game like this exists on XBLIG when it could’ve been (and probably already is) available for free online, and had customization options for your character (none for your Avatar here; you gotta quit out to do that). This has no business being anywhere where it costs money. Sure, it’s quite fun for a few minutes, but then it’s done, and you don’t feel any better for having the experience; kinda like sex. I think I got fucked over by Avatar Showdown.

(What does this score mean?)