The Simpsons Game Updated Impressions (Xbox 360)

It’s been a fact of life in the game industry: Licensed games are more often than not…well, “teh suck.” It doesn’t matter if they’re titles made from movies, from TV shows or other media properties…they aren’t usually good games. (Let’s not even get into the similar history of movies made from games.)

However, Electronic Arts just showed us the latest version of The Simpsons Game, which is due out sometime this fall, and we’re happy to say that it looks really promising. The potential is there for lots of humorous moments, many of them self-deprecating—with even more if you’re a fan of the TV series and “get” the often-subtle in-jokes scattered around the game’s 16 episodes. But mostly it seems to be a video game that uses the Springfield family as a vehicle to honoring-by-way-of-poking-fun at the game industry.

As was noted in Will Tuttle’s E3 preview a couple of months back, the game is built around the premise that the Simpsons discover that they’ve been licensed to be in a video game and their subsequent discovery of their various game powers against numerous enemies. Through it, you can play as any of the four family members—Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa—with some Maggie interaction also possible, as she rides on Marge’s back in the game.