In Monsters Inc, you play as Sully and navigate through the levels to find broken pieces of a door. At first, it seems interesting since the game-play is different from the usual platforming and side-scrolling beat-em-ups you expect from a movie tie-in. Instead, you navigate side-scrolling levels which have doors and ladders to form a maze.
Initially, I employed a exhaustive search method to locate the pieces, until I discovered that pressing 'Select' brings up a map which not only shows you the room layout, but shows you the locations of the door pieces, which then renders most of the level a bit pointless. In fact, it makes the whole game pointless.
There are enemies in most of the rooms which can only be temporarily stunned using Sully's roar attack which costs 1 candy, or using a gun which costs 1 tin can. These candies and tin cans are available to collect in the level.
Even if the game relied on using an exhaustive search to locate the pieces, this would be a chore so would get boring very quickly. Since you can just use the map to find out where you need to go, it relies on the level design being interesting or having fun elements as you traverse the map. However, it doesn't. Most enemies you can just run past, but occasionally you will make use of the stun attacks. Sometimes you may need to jump, but there's no tricky platform sections either. Some levels are linear with no doors or ladders, and all the pieces you need to collect are in the last few screens. So it's a case of running through the screens, bypassing the optional candies, and grab the pieces. It's strange why these levels aren't the first few levels to introduce how the game works.
Once you complete a level, you then have to place the pieces on the broken door, which is basically a jigsaw puzzle. This is the most interesting part of the game. Once you complete the door, you then move onto a boss level, then on to the next set of levels.
It's hard to say what the point of Monster Inc actually is. I thought it was supposed to be a maze game but it's not actually as good as that. On a positive note, the graphics are fine and it all functions without any bugs/slowdown etc, but maybe the developers should have just made a collection of jigsaw puzzles instead.