Needlessly difficult. Game animation poor.

There’s times when a game should be hard. But the times when that hardness is not due to an increase in difficulty, but rather a failure at camera/control programming … that’s needless.

The Simpsons Game suffers from this constantly; as your control over a character is influenced by the camera angle you’re viewing the game at (something that can easily be changed with one of the sticks). Normally a game can handle this fairly smoothly; but the camera angle seems to constantly change at the most inopportune times, making what was going to be a simple leap between poles become a dismal failure.

Because of this, my PS3 controller almost made a short, quick flight to my HDTV multiple times. I’m just glad my doctor wasn’t monitoring my blood pressure at the time.

On to the animation …

The cutscenes (at least the ones that were actually animated) were done very well. However, while you’re running your characters around the game, particularly if you’re doing it in HD, you’re going to be heavily dissatisfied with how well the characters are rendered.

I’ve also heard complaints about character switching. Most maps (save maybe two) are done with only two of the characters. On the PS3, you only need to have one of the relevant ones in your party of two (which wanders Springfield) to start a wave.

Other than that, I guess the game is okay. If I were you, and you think the price is going to drop eventually, I’d wait. It’s not worth the near $30 I paid for it, given the poorly programmed controls/camera work and poor computer animation of the characters.