The Simpsons Game

In The Simpsons Game, Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa use exciting, all-new powers to defend their home town from rising chaos. While the Simpsons 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! 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. 100% original script from the writers of the show with 4 distinct acts divided into 16 episodes and over 8,000 lines of dialogue. 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. 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 ESRB Rated T for Teen
Customer Review: Entertaining, but a weak game
The Simpsons game is a rather basic beat-em-up platformer dressed up with an entertaining story. I hate to give away the entire review, but the game itself- if not for the Simpsons writing and style- is a bore. The characters are diverse, and playing two character teams makes for some interesting puzzles but I found the level design to be a little flat and confusing, you find yourself wandering over the same ground. Having the "target time" displayed after a level makes you feel like an idiot when you were roaming a level for almost an hour and you "should have" finished it in 12 minutes. That speaks to poor level design, not a genuine in-game challenge. The controls are tight, though the projectile targeting sometimes didn't seem to want to lock on to the intended enemy if you had multiple targets. Jumping in itself is a simple task, but it is complicated by a camera system that is a little jumpy and rather touchy. You can kind of control what you see and where, but you can't easily swing the camera around your character, nor is there a particularly useable "look" function (think Mario 64). The flatness of the color palette will lead you jump and miss many many times when you think you're on target. However, problems aside you feel compelled to play through because the writing and voice acting is -naturally- very entertaining. I wouldn't rank it up there with the great Simpsons episodes, but I found myself chuckling at the gags in the cut scenes as well as dialogue heard in-game. However, there is one thing at the heart of the Simpsons game that really annoyed me. They keep making jokes about how bad most videogames are, that they're too violent, too predictable, that they rely on bottomless pits and spiked walls and flame traps and lava and all that(there are even "cliches" you can collect). The sad thing is that this game is riddled with them, and not in a mocking way, but in a way that seems to say, "we, as game designers, didn't try very hard." Making fun of something and then going right ahead and doing is a good way to parody something, but when the person has to experience that poor game design first hand, it just underscores what a lousy game you have created around a very funny premise. It is worth a rental to experience the humor of the game, but I never want to actually sit down and play this game again.
Customer Review: exactly what you think, 2 player is more fun
this game definitely had a lot of creative involvement from the people who produce the show. the writing, animation, and game play is right on par with what you'd expect from the show. it isn't really that challenging, but it's almost more like a playable episode with typical video game objectives mixed up with simpsons humor. play this game with a friend in 2 player mode. it's a split screen, much more fun than 1 player.

It was a few weeks ago when a lone nutcase bought a few guns and killed 32 people in one of the worst massacres in U.S. history at Virginia Tech. So far, there have only been a few mumblings here and there that the media is to blame in all of this, most predominately by Dr. Phil. He accuses the videogame industry of being somehow complicit in this one crazed gunman's actions, which is obviously unfounded and ridiculous. But there are always congressmen in office who are otherwise ineffectual in getting anything done to stop guns from getting in the hands of mental patients, who go on tirades against the entertainment community when something like this happens.

Thankfully, most people are waking up and seeing that mental psychosis is responsible for these crazy people's actions, not the latest Rob Zombie horrorfest. The movie studios for the most part capitulated to congress' need for a better system of screening out hard "R" rated movies that are unsuitable to kids under 18 years old. They now force i.d.'s to be shown at all ticket windows to allow teenagers to buy tickets to r-rated movies. Now that another massacre has occurred, they might be encouraged to force even stricter guidelines on r-rated movies.

The Federal Trade Commission regulates video game ratings, and is the watchdog for the movie industry, making sure that r-rated flix are not seen or bought on dvd by kids under 18 years old. The FTC chairman, Deborah Platt Majores states "The latest FTC report shows improvement, but also that the entertainment industry has more work to do." The FTC conducted a research group whereby they sent a variety of children into a retail store to buy r-rated dvds. Eighty-one percent of kids 16 and younger were able to buy R-rated movies in 2003, and that number dropped just 10 percentage points to 71 percent in 2006.

Based on these statistics, and in light of the shootings at Virginia Tech, there is reason to believe that retail video chains like Blockbuster will be in the headlights of watchdog groups like the FTC to make sure movies like "Hostel" and "The Devil's Rejects" do not get into the hands of 12-year-olds.

Hopefully, a massacre like Virginia Tech will never happen again, and R-rated movies should be given the freedom to grow as a genre so movies like "The 300" can be made for the vast movie-going audience's never ending appetite for extreme, well made action.

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