Alvin & The Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Review
It's easy to describe Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked as a Kinect dance game, because Kinect dancing is about all there is to it. The movie tie-in comes in the form of the game's story mode, but the "story" here is a short sequence of comic book balloon conversations between a couple of chipmunk heads at the bottom of the screen before each group of four or so tracks is unlocked. You may as well just skip to the free play mode since all of the tracks are already unlocked in this mode and you can save yourself the trouble of occasionally A button hitting your way through some inane static text you won't bother to read anyway. I know that this is a game aimed at kids, but lazy game development is lazy game development and kids deserve better than this.
As for the dancing, each song features the Chipmunks (or Chipettes) doing a series of dance moves in front of a minimalist backdrop that looks like it was borrowed from a local community theater. The Chipmunks themselves look a little creepy, probably because they are only animated about as much as the musical robots at a kids' pizza parlor and their faces aren't animated. The dance moves aren't particularly coordinated to the music or the beat, but to its credit the game does a decent job of tracking your attempts to match the dance moves on the screen.
That's about all there is to the game. You imitate a sequence of robotic dance moves while listening to renditions of rock and pop songs with high-pitched vocals. If that sounds like your sort of thing (or you want to pad your gamer score with some easy, high point achievements), then great. Otherwise you'll want to steer far clear of this chipwreck of a game.
Final Rating: 40%. It's a chipwreck alright...
