Nothing smells like success during the holiday season for publishers quite like releasing games based around a kid-friendly collectible card game and TV franchise. We've seen some duds (Ben 10), but have also seem some respectable adaptations (Bakugan: Battle Brawlers). In Chaotic: Shadow Warriors, Activision takes the Chaotic card game/TV show franchise and attempts a fairly unique gameplay hybrid of card-based strategy and action adventure. As a whole, the game actually pulls off that combination into a solid single package.

In Shadow Warriors, you take on the role of Tom, one of the TV show's four heroes - a Chaotic card game master that travels the globe competing in tournaments. You have discovered the presence of Shadow Warriors that have infiltrated the holographic world in which the battles take place. These villains threaten to throw off the balance of the four factions in the game world, and they must be stopped.

Your job consists of two roles, which you'll repeat through the main storyline:

Exploration - When exploring, you'll receive quests to obtain items, perform recon, and talk to lookouts. This exploration is done as a typical 3d platforming action-adventure. There are some simple physics-based puzzles (e.g. press a lever, then jump over the wall before it raises back up), but for the most part, it's very straightforward. Along your way you'll collect abilities ("maguk" casts, which are basically magic spells to use in combat), and other "battlegear" item cards. You'll also encounter a few aggressive animals in the environment that you'll blast with your Pyroblaster.

Battle - When you encounter a more significant monster in the game world, you enter battle mode. Battles start with you selecting up to 5 of your creatures, and equipping them with battlegear, selecting your maguk, etc. You place them on the board, and then head into turn-based combat. During the combat, you can attack (optionally choosing to use a maguk cast, battlegear attacks, or your creature's base attacks) a selected enemy. The attacks will do a set amount of damage, with a chance to do a bit of extra damage by completing a micro-game (e.g. rapid randomly sequenced button presses). When the enemy attacks, you can choose to block, or even to scan your opponent, which when done enough times can put that creature into your army for use in future battles. The battle continues until one of you are defeated.

The game mechanics actually work fairly well. Exploration is fun, though fairly simple. But the battle can be quite strategic as you fiddle with the right combinations of abilities and creatures.

Shadow Warriors is not without some rather disappointing issues, though. I found combat to become very easy, very quickly. Once I found a good combination of cards, I could simply reuse that combo in every battle. Also, modifiers such as battlegear, maguc, and the bonus-damage micro-games really have a very minimal effect on the battle. The core damage done by a creature is static, and the bonuses have disappointingly little affect on the damage dealt. Also, hard-core fans of the card game are likely to be disappointed as some of the game mechanics have been altered, and the game offers a very small number of the origin card game's playing cards.

Visually, the game looks both wonderful and stale. The character and monster models look terrific - they're detailed, animated well, and are very true to the TV show. However, the environments are very repetitive and lack any pizzazz. The music throughout is basic TV/anime fare, and gets a bit repetitive. Tom will also shout things during battle that add a little bit of atmosphere, but also get a bit on your nerves after being bellowed 3 dozen times.

Overall, Chaotic: Shadow Warriors is to be commended: it offers a fun combo of card game strategy combat and 3D action adventuring. While those that love the card game may be critical of this adaptation, most will enjoy some of the adventuring elements between battles. For fans of the TV show, they will find a lot to love in this game.