I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of video games released on the back of a film, they usually turn out to be dull, half baked, half arsed games with low production that have been rushed out with little thought to game play by focused intently on how much green they can pull in. Playing the demo of Monsters vs Aliens however has gone a small way to changing my mind about these games and may even have gone so far as to convince me to purchase the game (for my, erm, family obviously...)
From the levels on the demo, I realised I was playing a well thought out game that will definitely appeal to the younger gaming generation. Ok, it appealed to me too and I'm rapidly approaching the big three one but thats just because I like loud bright colours and explosions; and thats what Monsters vs Aliens has in abundance – its big, loud, colourful, full of explosions, character and humour and that's what makes it so charming. At its essence it is a platform game that you work your way through as one of three characters; B.O.B, The Missing Link and Ginormica (voiced by Seth Rogen, Will Arnett and Reese Witherspoon respectively) as you smash and bash your way through the various hordes of bad guy robot aliens that stand before you, there are no overly complicated button combinations here, you jump, you smash, its very simple to grasp yet each character has their own unique quirks; B.O.B is a gelatinous blob that can jump and walk on walls and ceilings and also spit out objects that he sucks up. Lovely stuff. The Missing Link can dodge attacks with the right stick and whip people with his tail whereas Ginormica is.........well, tall. The levels themselves are very linear and very uncomplicated to manoeuvre through but this doesn't detract from the gameplay which is fast and frenetic throughout; the evil robots aren't too difficult to beat to pieces, even the end of level bosses (which I ranted about previously in the blog Thou Shall Not Pass) are simple and entertaining to defeat, usually down to the tried and tested formula of figuring out its attack pattern and then dodging its attacks. The coup de grace is then administered by hitting the appropriate button that appears on the screen accompanied by a cut scene – fun and thoroughly entertaining. The audio is also very good; fast paced music, very good voice acting that you'd expect given the array of Hollywood talent on show, and equally impressive sound effects that add to the flavour of the game.
Graphically the game looks very pretty, bright colours, smooth animations, loud colourful explosions with large levels that are broken down into simple fighting, puzzles and jumping- again there is nothing ground breaking here, its all been done before and had this been a low production game, hurriedly produced then it would be heading straight for the bargain bucket and video game obscurity quicker than you could say ET ( quite a substantial amount of the Atari ET video game ended up in a New Mexico landfill in 1983 due to poor sales and the fact that it was the worst video game in the history of the universe due to reasons I mentioned above) but Monsters vs Aliens may have the production values and staying power to save it from obscurity and achieve high unit sales from the strength of both the game and the film.
 
The demo itself is well worth downloading even just for a taste of what the game is all about and it gives you three very different platform levels to play as each character, with each level having its own unique charm. Like I said at the start of this article, I'm not the biggest fan of video games released to coincide with films but Monsters vs Aliens has raised the benchmark for such releaese substantially.