Everyone likes The Simpsons.  The massive popularity of Matt Groening’s franchise is enough to sustain a legitimate constant influx of Simpsons games for the rest of video gaming history.  I played this game on the Wii console, and yes, the motion controls are there, but only for special moves.  There is no IR functionality, so really you won’t miss out on any of the fun as long as you play the game on any system that has an analog stick and some buttons.  I have to admit that even though I do not think The Simpsons Game is anything spectacular, I promised myself I would play it and finish it no matter how bad the game is just because I love The Simpsons.  After watching the trailers for this game, my expectations were definitely higher than they should have been and I knew that.

My initial reaction to the game was poor, however once I forced myself to lower my expectations and accept the many flaws in controls, camera, and platforming elements in general, I was able to adapt myself to lower standards and enjoy this game for what it has to offer.  Flaws aside, it offers a diverse range of unique stages that are short enough to only get frustrated by the poor camera and loose controls a few times before you are fed another giggle-inducing cut scene to keep the experience feeling fresh.

Although the game claims to be 2-player co-op, it is essentially a single player game.  When adding a second player, it switches to side-to-side split screen mode which severely cripples the player’s visibility.  So much so, in fact, that Homer takes up the majority of the screen when using his balloon ability.  I would venture as far as to say it is unplayable in this mode.  Although my girlfriend quit playing it with me due to the lack of visibility, she enjoyed watching me play it single player and all cut scenes are saved so you can go back and watch them straight through later as if it was a movie.

The first few levels of the game are actually quite terrible, but eventually The Simpsons get sucked into a video game universe and the game becomes a lot more structured and enjoyable to play.  I have always praised games for showing you all available levels and letting you choose the order in which to play them.  It gives a sense of progress towards a finite goal as you peg off the levels one by one.  The story starts to get interesting at this point and the finale is actually hilarious and entertaining to play through!  Without spoiling too much, lets just say it involves God challenging you at DDR…Hilarity ensues.

The cut scenes may be clever and satirical at times, however there was this constant battle in my head concerning my opinion of the game due to how marred it is with gameplay issues.  I felt like my depth perception was off.  Often, I found myself jumping into the same pit multiple times during what should have been a simple platforming jumping task.  I eventually realized that this was due to the atrocious camera system.  I realized was dying constantly because I was too lazy/frustrated with the camera that I would often be taking leaps of faith just because it would take less time to do that and die 5 times instead of fiddling around with the camera until it was just right.  The fact that falling into pits merely caused your character to respawn back where he fell off of was the saving grace.  The only time you ever need to restart a level from the beginning is when both characters die at the same time, but this is a rare occurrence.

To adjust the camera, you have to press the directional pad which is not inverted so I often kept moving up when I wanted to move down.  And to snap the camera behind the avatar, you hit the ‘Z’ button which worked okay, except if the avatar was backed against a wall, it completely broke.  An easy fix to this would be to have it do an overhead view while against a wall like Zelda:TP and Super Mario Galaxy did.  Also, snapping the camera behind the avatar does not do a camera-pan to get from where you are to behind the avatar.  Instead, it actually blinks/teleports to a view from behind the character which is confusing at times.  There is also no option to switch the view from 3rd person to first person view just to have a look around (but not move your feet).  That would have been nice.

The levels seemed to be tailored towards one character even though there are always two characters present.  For example, Bart would have to use his grappling hook and ability to climb certain walls to get to an area, then releasing a switch so Homer could use an elevator to get up to him.  I can imagine that this would hinder co-op gameplay enough that the second player would always feel like a thug who is only there to punch out the baddies where as the first player gets to do all the fun puzzle solving.  This solidified my suspicions that co-op mode was just tacked on and not originally in the game design, otherwise I could imagine much more complex tandem puzzles requiring effort on behalf of both players.  Furthermore, sometimes it is a complete nuisance to have completed the puzzle solving with the first character and then spend sometimes close to 5 minutes searching around for the switch to open the door for the other character to naively parade through.  Sometimes the buggy camera causes you to unknowingly walk right by the switch when it should have been in plain view.

For all its flaws, The Simpsons Game makes fun of itself in true Simpsons spirit.  Besides the camera and loose controls, every other time I found a flaw in the game, a window would actually pop up with the Comic Book Guy making fun of the game for using some sort of classic gaming cliché.  Examples include the game acknowledging itself for using different colors for the same enemies later in the game, random occurrences of trampoline-like objects to get to higher places, bottomless pits, unlimited enemies respawning until you destroy the respawning station, and so on.  My eye-rolling actually turned into a light chuckle at these moments.  Well done.

I enjoyed the different abilities of the characters in the game.  However, I wish they would have had the default melee weapons be something different for each character instead of just fists.  I remember the old arcade game had Marge clubbing people over the head with a vacuum cleaner.  Homer has the most diverse abilities in the game, but nothing tops the cheapness of Bart’s ability to sit back and pick enemies off with his slingshot.  Sometimes the AI just stands there and takes it without even fighting back.  The scripted sequences are well done though.  For example, trying to save Professor Frink from Donkey Kong and watching the two headed Patty and Selma dragon burn down houses is pretty neat.

Overall, there are other buggy things that get annoying sometimes like the volume goes too low on some cut scenes and the boss battles could be a little more challenging.  However, I feel they are challenging enough just due to the loose controls and constant fighting with the camera.  So if you are the type of person who has the ability to lower your standards for a game and just enjoy it for the franchise quirks then I would definitely recommend this game to all Simpsons fans as it does have quite a few memorable moments.  It’s too bad that the camera and controls almost ruin the game because had they been a little tighter, I would have loved this game.  I tend to agree with my friend’s comment that it may be more enjoyable to watch this game being played by someone who can cope with its flaws than to actually play it.  The game really ramps up near the end and you get to see some Futurama characters too!  The potential for fun is there, it’s up to you to find it.

Final Call:
Recommended for a play through

Tags: Simpsons
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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Reviews, Wii Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.