Rabbids: Alive & Kicking should've been a great party game. The crazy nature of the Rabbids, the possibilities afforded with the Kinect, it could've been a crazy cocktail that could be played at any event. It isn't.

Rabbids continues the tradition of promoting these crazy rabbit-like creatures through a variety of minigames. The problem is, these minigames aren't very good. There's a decent variety to them, whether you're swatting away obstacles, navigating down an obstacle course, headbanging, licking the screen clean to win, or helping some lemming-like Rabbids get to their goal, but most games just aren't fun to play. Many of them are so short that you'll be looking at scores and loading screens longer than the actual game itself. Some games simply have you performing a single action before it's all over.

There are mostly just two modes of play in the game: Quickplay and Party. The first allows you to just play through a quick succession of games, and is fine when you just want to get some game on. Party is a little more complex, allowing you and your friends to go through a series of games while getting scored and ranked.

Losing an activity has the loser perform activities that essentially make themselves look like a fool while their fellow players rank them, to avoid losing a lot of points. It's an alright idea, and most people will do their best at scoring and performing the activities, simply because you don't want to be that guy who's a jerk at the party. Party mode does let you play more of the minigames, since many require multiple people to play through, so this will likely be the mode that gets the most play.

A fun diversion to the game is the ability to use the Kinect to bring a Rabbid into your play space. You can buy toys and such using funds earned from playing games for it to interact with. Smack it around watch it dance, dress it up. Fun, but ultimately just that: a diversion. While it's cool to see a little Rabbid...thing in your living room, there's not really much to it.

It just comes down to the fact that Rabbids isn't very much fun to play. Except for a couple specific minigames, I didn't find myself enjoying the title very much, and unfortunately minigames is really all it has to offer. The Rabbids can usually entertain me, but this time they've just missed the mark completely.

For the context of this review, the platform primarily tested was the Xbox 360 release of the game.

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