It sure is frustrating reviewing The Simpsons Game.  On one hand, it’s fatally flawed camera and repetitive game play should make it easy to write off as a pass.  But on the other hand, when the Simpsons Game works, it works really well.  The humor is top notch, all the original voice cast is on board and it’s genuinely fun to explore Springfield.  Graphically it’s like the cartoon come to life during most of the game, and some cut scenes are movie quality.  Other cuts scenes lack polish and look like they’re from a completely different game. 

The game begins with you taking control of the Simpsons family as they’ve just found an instruction booklet discarded on the ground describing the game which they’re in.  Turns out God is a big Simpsons Game fan and misplaced it during a play session.  You are tasked with going through many different mission based on classic episodes in a typical platforming style.  Throughout the game, you’ll play through Metal Gear, Madden, Sonic, God of War, Mario, Grand Theft Auto, Space Invaders and many other video game spoofs.  Matt Groening and Will Wright have hilarious cameos.  The game is just chalk full of self referential humor, including the unlocking of Video Game Clichés (as announced by the Comic Book Guy) and fighting your way through the EA factory among other things.  The game is most certainly worth playing through (or just watching someone play) just to hear the thousands of lines of dialogue and hilarious cut scenes.

Where the story and humor excel, the game play….well doesn’t excel.  It’s mostly a typical platform game with a broken camera.  There are two attack buttons, one for normal attack and one for special attack and hitting a bumper will change into your character’s alter ego.  The game requires you to use everyone’s different special powers to get past certain levels, but the puzzles are either way too easy or just plain guessing games.  The fighting aspects of the game get repetitive quickly and camera almost always gets in the way.  But it rarely causes more than inconvenience as the game is pretty easy to breeze through.

Overall, The Simpsons Game is a mixed bag that will appeal to fans of the show.  It’s hilarious from beginning to end, and just as the game play gets so monotonous that you want to pull your hair out, it throws a new hilarious episode at you that will keep you laughing until you want to destroy the camera and repeat the process all over again.

6.5/10 (Fix the Camera and it goes up a point, make the battles more interesting and you’ve got another)

Mahalo,

Duke