Monsters Vs Aliens

Publisher : Activision
Developer : Activision (Beenox)
Date of Release : March ‘09

HDD Installation size : 6.1Gb
Save file size : 60 Kb
Points I released at completion of main story line : 520 (27/45)


OK, I’ll admit it, I’ve never seen the film this is based from, and had come to the game knowing it was a film to game adaption, in much the same was that Shrek the third (turd) & Surfs up both where.. – ie, Easy points..

The film itself (checking from IMDB) voice-starred the queen of chins Reese Witherspoon, House M.D. & Seth Rogan (who people tell me is funny but I just don’t see it).
You’ll be pleased to know only House M.D. drops out of the voice acting, which isn’t a bad thing but either way I didn’t recognise any of the authentic voices from hearing them.

Being a multi-format film cash in, it shows in its quality and polish… Graphically, it looks like the game was developed principally for the PS2 & was just a lazy port; from the grainy, lo-res textures during the game, to the laughably poor quality ‘movie stills’ (really, is it too much work to get a decent quality hi-res image from Dreamworks?)
The game levels however generally are colourful enough, probably well targeted for the age level the game is based towards, but equally have little variation throughout the game that you’ll actually care about what you’re meant to be doing.
Audio-wise, the game is pretty average too but it’s the repeated sayings by the characters that do start to annoy. Pause the game and some cockroach will start spouting off every 30 seconds so mute the TV too. Even within the game, speeches get repetitious. Several times The Missing Link would repeat the same phrase continually whenever defeating enemies.

The game itself consists of 4 chapters covering a total of 25 scenes. These are split between the 3 protagonists (Ginormica, ‘The’Missing Link, and Bob) each with their own specific range of gameplay styles that doesn’t alter throughout the game.

Ginormica is a essentially just a tall average woman whose levels consist of her having cars stuck to her feet & ‘on rails racing’ into the screen avoiding the fixed hazards ahead of you by ducking (green obstacles) or jumping (red obstacles).. Occasionally (mainly during boss battles) this changes to a side viewpoint, but it’s the same mechanic regardless.
The developers don’t actually explain why she has shoes on her feet, so I’m going to leave it to the film and trust that it does, they’re really low quality textured models too You’d have thought the woman would have more style than to wear such unfashionable shoes
Equally annoying is the Quick Time Events (QTE) that pop up both across all levels, not only is the graphic for this really low quality, there is also no clear indication whether the button press is just once, or keep mashing - you’ll die a couple of times because you’ll end up doing the wrong thing.

Finally, you have Bob’s levels, who is a blue gelatinous blob and whose levels are both the best and the biggest disappointment.
The first few training levels have Bob sticking to roofs and walls and eating enemy soldiers/robots that then float in your stomach allowing you to open doors with presumably what must be a high powered RFID scanner, until you spit them out & smack them around with your big gel filled head.
The good parts of the levels are actually later in the game when the puzzle elements come into play… stepping on a grate causes bob to fall through (& die) unless he’s digesting something – using vertical & horizontal grates as obstacles means you have to determine the best path to proceed. Sadly, the puzzles are far too easy to truly offer any difficulty & the potential for having truly 3D based puzzles is hinted at, yet never realised as the fixed camera instead resolves to make things into a single plane again.
Bob’s other game mode is used in the boss battles and also quite fun. He remains static and using the right analogue-stick aims at targets whilst spitting blobs at them at high speed. “House of the Dead” it isn’t but it is fun, especially with the later bosses firing lasers at you causing you to alternate between the shield defence and shooting.

The Missing Link is apparently a hybrid of a fish and an ape… Further questions about evolution and why he hasn’t evolved aside becomes even more annoying by the consistent calling of ‘The Missing link’ by other characters... doesn’t the guy get a nickname or something?
His levels consist of a more straight-up brawler, and are barely average at best, which generally involve going from point A to B with no greater difficulty than determining which large gun to destroy first to open up the next pathway (hint : it’s the nearest)
Sadly, and this carries across with Bob’s levels also, the camera viewing point is just shown at weird angles, not quite horizontal or vertical. It’s bad to the point that when walking along platforms you can easily fall off to your doom because holding right moves the character upwards at the same time

Completing levels unlocks more paths within the DNA lab, which allows for 35 challenge levels to be played, and unlocks ‘audio commentary for levels’ & the aforementioned poor quality images, as well as health upgrades for each of the monsters - which aren’t really needed as there isn’t much challenge to begin with.
What makes this slightly more of a fraudulent experience from the developers is that bonus points are awarded after each level based on the number of other Dreamworks games you have save files for: 15,000 points for each one. This can make quite a bit of difference over the 25 scenes especially when there is an achievement for getting 10 million. – Play the other games first if you have them! – Completing the game 1st time around netted me just over 5 million.

The challenge levels themselves are re-plays of the game levels but with a point scoring or time requirement attached to them. Some of these are actually quite difficult to get the gold rating! (As well as an associated achievement)

To get 1K achievements might take two play through, given 5 hidden achievements that require the player to not die more than 10 times across the entire game, with the dodgy camera angles and the QTEs it means that you could be dropping to the dashboard to ensure your not going to have to do a third run through!

In Summation:

Not as easy as other Dreamworks titles, but equally not difficult, just lengthy. Once played through once it’s a grind. Unless you really enjoyed the film, or really are a gamerwhore you’d be best to stay away.

So how many out of 10 mate???

Your review is well written mate, you should do more for us!

But this does not sound like one I will be whoring thru.

Cheers

Kent Hammer wrote:So how many out of 10 mate???

no idea.. I find that 'points out of 10' to be rather misleading.. as developers will then just start making better games going to 11..
(which also doesnt work if you compare current out of 10 games, with say spectrum based games.. - current games would wipe the floor graphically, but there's plenty of speccy games that better than certain games)

There is a great tip for getting masses of DNA with a second controller on one of the ach guide sites

As I have just ordered this game for whorage during a compo I am in shortly, I hope its better than it sounds from Rossis report.

Once I get it I will check out the DNA boost tip and if it works I will post it in here