This week we rented the fun “The Simpsons Game” for the Wii.  (I say “we”, but really I rented it.   Sarah never had anything to do with this one, either in the renting or the playing.)

You get to play with the four main Simpsons family members, who each have their own fun special super-hero abilities: Bart becomes Bart-Man with a grappling hook, glider cape and slingshot; Lisa has mystical Buddhist powers that include levitating large objects and striking enemies down with lightning; Homer can turn into a ball and roll around slamming into stuff; and Marge has a megaphone with the ability to make ordinary citizens become her very own mob, ready to do her bidding.

This is a very large game, bigger than any I’ve played before on the Wii. The premise is basically, “Let’s take every video game cliche that’s ever been done to death, and have the Simpsons lampoon it while they’re going through it.”   So you get clever parodies of all kinds of games, from Donkey Kong to EverQuest to Medal of Honor.

Throughout the game, the designers make good use of the whole world of the show and its huge supporting cast. There are references to all eras of the show’s run, but with the addition of clever lines and animation created specifically for the game. I liked hearing the real Simpsons character voices spout random lines related to what I was doing in the game, whether that was a main character like Homer or Bart, or a bad guy like Comic Book Guy or Moe. (Oddly, I saw Kelsey Grammar’s name in the credits, but Sideshow Bob was nowhere to be found. Maybe his part got cut from the Wii version.)

The game is pretty tricky for a casual player like myself, and I relied heavily on walkthroughs on the Internet to get through it. (Something that the Simpsons make fun of in the game itself.) That dependence kind of bit me in the butt on the level where the Simpsons meet their creator, since the version I was playing was completely different from anything I found online (even for walkthroughs that claimed to be for the Wii).

I also thought that the Lard Lad level was too hard — I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to beat that one. My favorite level was “Grand Theft Scratchy” where Marge’s mob has to clean up a slum to make things look nice.

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing the Simpsons Game while we rented it, and I could have spent a lot more time picking up all of the collectibles in each level (i.e. Homer has to find 5 Duff bottle caps in a specific level to earn the Duff Beer that goes along with the level). If I had a lot more time to play, I would consider buying this game to keep going at it. As it is though, my family comes first, and they didn’t really like the game — it was way too hard for all of them, including Sarah. So it was a good one-time rental for me, but not a buy. My final score for The Simpsons Game : 9/10