WorthPlaying writes: "I review a fair number of movie tie-in games, and I'm getting to the point I find reviewing movie tie-in games one of the most challenging things to do. At best, movie games are praised with backhands like, "The developers tried to impress people who don't care," or "For some reason, the designers put more effort into this property than it really deserved." The thing is, no matter the intended artistry of any movie game, they are foremost co-marketing opportunities. The notion behind a movie game is to sell that game to people who like the movie, and especially to children who often, though neither exclusively nor unanimously, tolerate a lot of gaming mediocrity in the name of playing scenes and characters from films."
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."
