Elsewhere, Marge orders her mob to build a platform for Lisa to climb, and Homer weighs down one end of a giant dinosaur skeleton so that Bart can jump from high enough to float down to the next room. Solutions are completely prescribed, but reasonably varied.įor example, if Lenny and Carl are about to be minced by Monty Burns' logging machine, Lisa needs to use her Buddha-backed levitation ability to rearrange some nearby pipes so that gusts of air can carry a floating Bartman up to an elevated lever, which then opens the way for Lisa so she can free everyone's favourite comedy duo. Each level is played by two Simpsons at once - you can either switch between them using the d-pad, or a second player can jump in at any time - and in between bashing things, you're expected to draw upon their diverse characteristics to solve minor puzzles - often in collaboration. Homer, again, gets the best - a fabled chilli that turns him into a swollen blob of red rolling death. Sideshow Bob is particularly good.Įach of the four-and-a-half Simpsons keeps their special abilities fuelled by boffing enemies and gathering pick-ups, and each can take advantage of a special temporary power-up to become super-strong and invincible. Pretty much everyone you can think of makes an appearance. All that in addition to the usual button-mashing punch attack.

Bart can fire his slingshot, or turn into Bartman and hover across gaps Lisa can stun enemies with her saxophone, or use Buddha statues to assume an aerial view of the level and deploy a hand-of-God UFO-Catcher to move things around and Marge can use a megaphone to rally NPCs to help her, or shove Maggie into vents where she can pull switches and uncover collectibles. The Simpsons have discovered that they are in a game, and have special powers to match, and each has different ideas about how to put them to use.Īs with the show, Homer's the star - he can burp people to death and transform into Homerball to bowl them out of the way, and gets most of the best gags.

Split into 16 episodes - self-contained stories bound by their mutual desire to send up videogames - what we have here is a third-person platform game full of simple combat and puzzles, most of which is defensibly average, potentially stabilised by a lot of good jokes and the occasional moment of mild inspiration. Instead, they've come up with new scenarios, recorded tons of new dialogue and proper animated sequences, and, er, built another dull, 5-million-selling platform game to fit. Given that The Simpsons has been on TV for longer than most of the TV channels that show it, you could forgive EA for pillaging the existing scripts and building another dull, 5-million-selling platform game to fit.

The simpsons game review