The Simpsons game does many things well and bucks the trend for licensed Simpsons games that have been released before.
The graphics are very colourful and for an animated video game they are pretty crisp, even when moving. The cut scenes are just brilliant and are sometimes funnier than the new episodes they put on TV! The character models for some of the lesser characters aren't always so good but that doesn't bother me.
The set up for the levels is based around parodying well known video games with a Simpsons twist. The GTA inspired level was pretty good and Marge was probably the best one to pick for it with all her motherly views on the game. Other parodies include Medal of Honor, Frogger, Shadow of the Colossus, Space Invaders and many others.
To make the levels longer, the game introduces collectables which serve no real purpose except to increase the power bar slightly. There are also 300 to collect in the Springfield open world part of the game. Springfield looks and feels brilliant and with all the characters wandering around, there's always a clever comment to be heard by one of them. I was going to go through and get all the collectables but after spending a couple of hours searching Springfield for them I came up a couple short for Marge and Lisa which made me think why did I bother? I spent ages trying to get them all and if you don't get every last one then there's no reward. It did annoy me that I purposely took my time on the actual levels to get them all as I could've just breezed through the game doing just the objectives.
On the whole it's a very faithful recreation of the TV show and the cut scenes truly are brilliant. They also come out with some pretty funny comments throughout the game which hides the fact that the core game play is pretty basic. The thing that makes me laugh the most though is how it makes fun of gaming's history with game references and pointing out all the clichés. It's ironic that even though it makes fun of the clichés, most of the actual game content is based around these.