Home > Categories > Games & Puzzles > Xbox 360 > The Simpsons Game review
The Simpsons Game features a hilarious, sprawling, and mind-busting storyline crafted by the TV show's Emmy Award-winning writers. For this action-comedy, the full cast of voice actors from the TV show and movie reprise their roles to lend the ultimate in authenticity and realism to the game.
In The Simpsons Game, Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa use exciting, all-new powers to save Springfield from rising chaos. To help the Simpsons, gamers must journey through their home town (as well as vast worlds beyond!), vanquish an amazing array of villains, and fight their way through parodies of multiple popular games.
Features:
• Play Your Favorite Characters - Battle enemies and save Springfield while playing as your favorite dysfunctional TV family; Homer, Bart, Lisa, Marge and even Maggie Simpson.
• The Real Simpsons - With the actual voice actors from the TV show and movie reprising their roles; characters from The Simpsons Game sound exactly as they should.
• Unique Character Abilities - While The Simpsons family have general abilities that can be used to fight opponents, interact with environments, and finish puzzles; each one has been imbued with special abilities that are unique to their personalities. These abilities grow and change as they progress through the story to battle tougher and tougher enemies in their quest to save Springfield!
• Looks Like The Simpsons - Using innovative 3D into 2D technology, the developers have been able to recreate Springfield and the entire cast of The Simpsons as the most visually authentic Simpsons game to date.
• Featuring Favorite and Original Springfieldeans! - The Simpsons Game features over 100 of your favorite Simpsons characters from the show along with 50+ new characters that were inspired by the fiction.
• An Original Episodic Adventure - The Simpsons Game features a 100% original script from the writers of the show with 4 distinct acts divided into 16 episodes and over 8,000 lines of dialogue.
• Springfield Hub - The open-world Springfield was designed as a central locale to jump into episodes with iconic locations to visit, characters to be visited and interact with, and hundreds of collectibles to be found.
• Parodies and Satire - With parodies of the video game industry, pop culture and current events, the game has the same gut wrenching hilarity as the show.
• Co-op Play - With two members of The Simpsons family involved in each episode, all episodes can be played cooperatively in addition to being played in single-player mode. Play by yourself and switch between characters to solve the various puzzles or have a friend come over, pick up a controller and drop-in drop-out of any episode they choose.
• Collectibles - Roam throughout the episodes and Springfield itself to discover custom video game cliches, and unique collectibles for each member of The Simpsons family. Collectibles lead to trophies that increase your family's powers, and can be viewed in your trophy rooms back at home on Evergreen Terrace.
• Time Challenges - Every episode can be replayed, and each unlocks a unique Time Challenge. Use the skills you've learned throughout the game to beat target times over 16 individual Time Challenges.
• Enjoy more than 6,000 lines of dialogue and 16 chapters of hilarity in these popular platforms. Jump directly from The Simpsons House from one episode to the next, or into your saved game.
Product reviews...
The Simpsons Game is a very strange game, on the one hand it is a very basic gameplay and uninteresting platformer, yet on the other hand it knows that that is what it is and pokes fun at itself as muich as it can..
The premise for The Simpsons Game is simple, Bart happens upon a manual for a game called The Simpsons Game, which has floated down from out of the sky and learns that this game gives him and his family members special powers, he then promptly sets off to cause as much violence as possible. At the same time, a game called Grand Theft Scratchy has just been released in stores and Bart wants a copy, much to Marge's chagrin. She sets off on a crusade to stop video game violence. And so much more, such a weird mash up of things that this is basically like another episode of the show.
As with the series there are a great deal of jabs and jokes and parodies of popular console and PC games as well as movies, basically anything pop-culture that they can poke fun of, they do, and even better is that it is the same actors from the TV series, so this isn't some cheap knock-off. With lots of jokes and references to past episodes and characters this will provide some good fun for any hardcore (or lightcore, is that a word? ) fan of the series.
The humour does a lot to distract you from the fact that the game play isn't very good and the camera is frequently getting in your way and that most of these mission objectives are just kind of boring. Most of the game revolves around simple action platforming where you hop around a lot of platforms and solve some light puzzles. Oddly enough, the game seems entirely self-aware of its own blatantly average gameplay. Along the way, you'll collect a number of "cliches," which are highlighted by Comic Book Guy himself. These include pits of lava you fall in, invisible barriers, a character's inability to swim, recycled enemies, escort missions, and the like. It's kind of funny to see these pop up because, yes, these are very clearly video game cliches. But the really weird thing is how utterly dedicated the game is to making you live through these cliches again. The game makes fun of escort missions, but then makes you do one anyway. You have to give the game credit for dedicating itself all the way to its gags, though the game play suffers a bit because of it.
Co-op is good, and when playing solo you still get a companion who does a pretty good job of keeping up and helping you. It's a quick game to clock, but if you try to collect every little thing then you can expect a longer game. Wandering through Springfield can be fun but it is disappointing that you can't move any faster, so it starts to lag a bit.
If you want a fun game full of gaga then this is a good game, based on gameplay, it isn't.
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