The Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy Land

Before The Simpsons Movie came out in 2007, it had long been touted as a sort of Mecca in audience terms. Adults love The Simpsons, and kids love The Simpsons. Everybody inthe world would want to watch it.

When the film came out to box office numbers below those achieved by the likes of the second tier of CGI films like Madagascar and Ice Age, plus a critical shrug of the shoulders, the film's release could be seen as a little underwhelming. That's without even mentioning the terrible mobile game tie-in, either.

So how will this latest attempt by the residents of Springfield to venture beyond the television fare?

The Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy Land follows the yellow family in a trip around the theme park of the title. A ready-made video game world, each themed area of the park is the source for a handful of levels.

You play as Homer, running from one end to the other, occasionally 'collecting' other characters from the series as you dash about the isometric levels.

The plot is based on the TV episode where the family visits the park and Bart defeats an army of animatronic felines by pointing the flash of his camera at them, but there's really no story rooted in the gameplay itself. The only requirement for finishing a level is getting to the end without depleting your health bar.

In a similar vein, each of the worlds contributes nothing more than a visual theme to the levels. You're always dodging the same spikes and circular saws.

Each level is split into a number of different sections. Most of these will be where you're simply walking about the level, avoiding said dangerous metallic objects. However, other sections see you controlling the angle of Bart's pea-shooter or Marge's hoover to take down enemies, or controlling the path of a bowling ball thrown by Homer.

Playing through these mini-game sections is pleasant enough for the first time, but the disappointment factor soon mounts up as you realise quite how little changes as you progress.

The game manages to feel aimless despite being linear, as each level ends with nothing more than a screen displaying your points, and moving between the various theme park worlds is quite simply that - ambling between them.

Sure, a more detailed, context-lending story would ultimately be a contrivance, but contrivances can sometimes be comforting.

Considering The Simpsons: Itchy & Scratchy Land isn't a particularly long game, offering not much more than an hour's play, it's not as if the size of the game makes up for this lack of design care and attention, either.

Much like Minutes to Meltdown, Itchy & Scratchy Land is an uninspired effort that only manages to get the visuals about right, leaving any other game elements to fester away neglected and only half-developed.

The Simpsons series does have a good mobile game in it, but this isn't it.