Monsters vs. Aliens did what it was designed to do, but not much else (besides a headache, perhaps).
The game follows an extended storyline of the original movie which was released in theaters not long before the game came out. While you play, you cycle through three different characters (Ginormica, The Missing Link, and B.O.B.) to cooperately take down the aliens. Each one of them has a different style of gameplay that is designed to challenge a child's puzzle solving skills, finger coordination, and patience.
The game designers did a good job attempting to add a lot of variety in the gameplay. While you play as Ginormica, you run down an set path and aggressively dodge obstacles. When playing The Missing Link, you play him in a platformer (which felt a lot like old school Crash Bandicoot). When playing as B.O.B, you solve mazes and take time to make correct choices. Those three cores being met in one game is no easy task, and while they had those three elements in the game, the play itself got boring and frustrating really fast. The problem I had was that I bonded with a certain character's gameplay, and when that scene ended, I felt stuck with playing something I didn't want to.
Another problem is that cutscenes, cinematics, dialog and actual levels repeated themselves. While this added length to the game, this made me more discouraged to want to beat it.
The co-op play was really sloppily done as well. They added the wonderful feature of allowing a second player to join in and exit a game whenever he or she would care to. The only problem is that the second player's gameplay was literally to control crosshairs and shoot stuff while the first player played. You wouldn't even know it was there. This grew frustrating seeing as the cameras are all fixed and moving every few seconds.
[Edit: The voices that were in the movie made it to the game, they just didn't feel as synced and natural as they did in the movie.]
The graphics, while being compared to the movie, were pitiful. This shouldn't shock anyone. While those graphics were compared to other family games, it actually did a fairly good job. I mean, B.O.B. was poorly designed and most other characters seemed blocky, but as far as environment and attention to movie accuracy, it grabbed my attention.
Achievements would be have to be the sole reason I gave the game a looksie at all. With achievements like "Jump 150 times with each character" and "Eat 50 things with B.O.B.", few of them actually required much skill. The only thing that made getting them challenging was patience to get through the game to get them. I would consider it on the much easier side as far as achievement collecting goes.
All together, the game had great potential but didn't make it much farther than the starting line. Had they taken more time and thought into the game, it could have made more than three stars in my book. I'm sure they'll be heartbroken.
3.0