The Simpsons Game is funny & smart, but it's repetitive and oftentimes broken gameplay ruin the overall experience.
The Simpsons Game, from EA, would fall right in between. The story starts off with the release of a new video game in Springfield called Grand Theft Scratchy. While Bart is trying to get his hands on it, Marge is working hard to have it banned. Soon enough, Bart will discover The Simpsons Game, a game based on him and his family. As you can imagine, all hell will break lose soon enough and the Simpson family will be the only ones capable of stopping the annihilation of Springfield..
What we have here is a mix between a platformer and an action game. You'll be doing plenty of button mashing and puzzle solving as you fight to save Springfield. You'll always have 2 Simpson family members at your disposal for all of the levels and, quite often, they'll have to work together to solve different types of puzzles throughout the game. Each Simpson has special abilities at their disposal. Homer can transform into this huge ball, called Homerball, and bash through different objects and float when he breathes in helium. Marge has a megaphone and can rally citizens to her cause. Bart changes into Bartman, which gives him the ability to grapple onto objects and glide with his cape. Lisa can hypnotize enemies while playing the saxophone. Finally, Maggie, who follows Marge around, can crawl into air ducts and reach secluded places.
The general idea behind this game is that it never takes itself seriously. The Simpsons will go through different levels spoofing different video games like Neverquest, Medal of Homer, Happy Happy Fun Fun Game (Katamari games) and so on. They'll also come across different video game clichés, which are pointed out by Comic Book Guy as you go along. Some of them include double jumping, the inability for your characters to swim, repetitive enemies and so on. There are also plenty of throwbacks to older, classic games in there, which are sure to make you smile when you come across them.
If there is one thing that this game does right, it's humor. All of the original cast is present and accounted for in the game. You'll also come across some characters that only Simpsons aficionados will recognize, accompanied by some special guest stars. The voice acting is stellar as every actor voices his or her character perfectly. The story is funny and entertaining and will remind you of the good ol' glory days of the series. It's also a delight to hear the characters let out jokes about video games For example, when Homer is running around a mock-up Gauntlet game, you'll hear a voice say "Homer needs food badly.", to which Homer replies "Homer also needs beer badly!"
The graphics are also incredibly well rendered. The cutscenes actually look like a Simpsons episode. The main and secondary characters look awesome. Springfield looks as good as ever here and so do the other places the rowdy family will visit. You can clearly see that a lot of care was put into designing this game.
Sadly, awesome graphics, a great script and terrific voice acting aren't enough to make this game good. The game consists mainly of button mashing and, quite often, it only seems like mindless button mashing. The controls aren't hard to grasp by any means. In fact, the game is just a little too easy as you'll very rarely get stuck in a level and not know what to do next, which makes the game's length (around 8-10 hours) seem even shorter. The camera angles here are quite possibly the worse I've ever seen in any game. Oftentimes, you'll find yourself struggling with it, trying to find a good position as you swivel it around. It gets extremely annoying and frustrating at times.
There is no real reason to go back to this game once you finish it, unless you're a perfectionist or a crazed Simpsons fan but, if you insist on doing that, there are a ton of collectibles in each level which unlock different trophies. The design of the levels tend to repeat themselves a lot during the course of the game. Now, I don't know if this was done intentionally or not but, if it was, it's a very bad idea. The AI isn't bad, but it isn't perfect either. You'll find that, on certain levels, your computer controlled Simpson will get stuck in some places and not follow you around. This doesn't happen often but, when it does, it's really annoying.
In conclusion, The Simpsons Game is filled to the rim with humor and plenty of clichés about video games, while giving you a ton of nostalgia that will put a smile on your face. But it's repetitive gameplay, broken camera angles and relatively short length keep it from being a game to remember and there is no real reason to go back to it once completed.