The game that works backwards
The story follows the Simpsons lives sort of running like how videogame characters would, everyone is gaining certain powers or the ability to use certain things, the town is thrown into an only-in-a-videogame series sort of events. The game eventually explains the, you guessed it-your-in a videogame, and that things are going around with some Simpsons creator, a massive producer in the gaming industry, and a couple of other VIPs. The story could be guessed through at some points, and at others it might surprise you, it certainly does feature a plethora of fairly entertaining cameos.
The actual gameplay is that of platforming, you navigate an area using two of the Simpsons characters using their powers or working alongside together with each other to get past a platform or fight the enemies; you might flip switches, trigger other events in the game use your superpowers at a moment then have to use another characters super powers but after this little bit of mastery, the game becomes a bit repetitious as your doing basically the same functions in other locations with a different theme such as looking for an enemies weak spot instead of commanding mobs of people until it ends. You do run into more clichés of gaming and every level has personable collectibles but they aren't really game changing (though the clichés you come across are funny). The game does have rather good AI and when dealing with your AI mate, that's important, the last thing any control-two-characters videogame needs is for the other character you are not controlling to run around and do everything wrong and that you have to watch them like a child, these characters understand functions such as stay still, attack, get across platform and so forth rather quite well. However, the camera is not done properly, with the main issue being that it sometimes corrects itself when you least want it to, the camera allows for full rotation except when your character(s) are either directly disallowed camera control or your character(s) are in confinements too tight to maneuver the camera. The camera lets you look around freely but unless you guide the camera your way, the camera reverts back to putting itself behind you which can make platforming just as frustrating as you remember. Beyond that, the game can be a little difficult to follow in some portions, you will be asking yourself where to go, what to do at some points because the creators just haven't indicated well enough what has to be done or activated.
Graphically, it has always been a bit of a strange endeavor to bring the Simpsons to the third dimension and so the awkwardness of seeing 2D characters turned into 3D has been left away from in the review. What is here does look awfully close to the show, lines can become a jagged mess and the anti-aliasing needs to be a little better (stairwells really do show this off), the color pallet matches what you would see in a show, and the movies look nearly dead on, the house looks almost exactly like the show and is all drawn the same way the real show is done. The sound side has par effects, great acting and dialogue, the music on the other hand, not much to remember.
In the end, this is the only game where a complete lack of innovation for complete derivation of gaming ideas becomes its own innovation. It's certainly funny to see a game mock other gaming traditions when it is ironically doing the same and making fun of itself. This isn't the best videogame, though it is a game that greatly matches the Simpson's style humor and persona. As it stands the length of this game could be helped, expect about an 8 hour romp; if you like you can try to make it past the time trials, replay episodes, collect everything, or try 2-player offline co-op play. Any Simpsons fan would not be steered wrong picking up this title, but most other 'experienced' gamers will for the most part only get some good kicks out of its making fun of the videogame industry style. Why do I direct attention to experienced, because if you're new to the gaming industry you likely won't understand allot of the games humor. So in the end, Simpsons fan: buy, not so big a Simpsons fan: try.