DS Review: Alvin and the Chipmunks

As we continue our search for good movie-to-game transitions on the DS, Alvin and the Chipmunks is the next candidate. Rarely do we find quality games based on children’s movie licenses, but the first Over the Hedge title for DS is actually good, and Cars and Shrek the Third are decent titles as well. Can squeaky voices and a dozen of well-known songs put Alvin and co. on the high spot? Let’s find out.

Alvin and the Chipmunks is a rhythm game all the way; twelve recognized songs and a ‘tap to the beat’ gameplay style previously done well, to some degree. Think of this as a possible way of transferring Guitar Hero to Nintendo’s double-screened portable. As single notes or held streams travel down the touch screen, your goal is to tap on the correct circle, located at the very bottom of the screen. Build a good combo and rack up the points, playing some mini-games mid-song to keep things fresh a bit. Gameplay truly is as basic as it sounds; tap on one of five different spaces and, uh, try to follow the rhythm.

You see, contrary to what you might have heard, the biggest problem with this game is not faulty touch screen recognition; in fact, it works quite well through the entire game. The game’s biggest flaw—and a huge one at that—is its lack of note consistency, meaning that the notes you tap don’t match the rhythm of the music or the lyrics. At the end of the day, you must tap to a different beat as you attempt to avoid the urge to follow the natural flow of the song. The game’s note flow is well posed for each of the three difficulties, but really, the main ‘challenge’ comes from attempting to nail every note regardless of its tempo. Not only is this a big problem, it happens to be evident on every song on any difficulty; right from the start you know something’s wrong.

If you find it possible to enjoy the game even with its uneven note flow, you can try Quick Play for a short gaming session or attempt Story Mode, as you play through the songs and travel the US to ‘wow’ audiences. 100% completion of the game requires multiple play-troughs of Story Mode, although the differences in difficulty are quite minimal. There are also score battles for multiplayer, which unfortunately requires multiple copies of the game.

A good rhythm games needs good audio, and Alvin and the Chipmunks delivers, as long as you can stand those squeaky voices at different pitches. Familiar songs such as ‘Shiny Happy People’, ‘All The Small Things’, ‘Rock & Roll High School’, and the catchy ‘Christmas Song’ by the Chipmunks themselves offer something for a wide variety of music genres, and 12 songs is a decently-sized tracklist for a DS title. The game doesn’t offer anything pleasant graphics-wise, with slow and generic animations and camera movements on the top screen attempting to showcase the Chipmunks as they play. There are some graphical glitches as well, such as note leftovers on the touch screen; nothing critical, but a glitch nonetheless.

Alvin and the Chipmunks could’ve been a worthy recommendation for rhythm game enthusiasts if its scrolling notes followed the beat of the song. This is crucial for a music game, and failure to comply kills the concept and renders the game useless and hard to enjoy. Squeaked-up versions of popular songs sound nice for the most part, and gameplay can pack up a challenge and be quite addictive; it’s just too bad that the rhythm is broken. Alvin, you missed this one. Alvin? ALVIN!!!

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