Modern kids get bored easily. Activision clearly know this and so in Monsters vs Aliens, players take control of a different member of the monster squad for each mission and assign them their own gaming genre; Play as Susan, aka Ginormica, and you'll you duck and dodge on skates made from cars (racing), while The Missing Link is all about fighting (beat 'em up) and B.O.B the blob solves puzzles (strategy).
Give them each their own Wii motion controls and you have a kid's game with nary a dull moment. Well...except for the frequent loading screens.
Chris B. of TGF writes:
"By now most gamers are immune to being sucked in to purchasing a video game that is based off a movie. For the most part the games aren’t based off the movie itself, and are usually a side story created using loose parts of the movie to tell it. Developer Beenox and Amaze Entertainment, with publisher Activision decided to throw their hats into the ring and take on the project of creating the home based console and handheld versions of the movie by DreamWorks Monster vs. Aliens."
Movie-tie-ins are almost always universally panned by critics and are seen by the majority of the industry as an opportunity to cash in on something big at the box office. Usually criticism levelled at said productions is due to poor game play elements resulting from a short development time and a rush to release the game on a tight schedule, unfortunately for Activision Monster vs. Aliens fits this trend to a tee.
PGNx writes: "Monsters and Aliens battle it out in Activision's latest title. The game, based on the upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens feature film, is developed by Amaze Entertainment for the Nintendo DS. The general plot and gameplay is fairly similar to its console cousins though the game was obviously adapted for the handheld."
