“Clogged arteries, expanding waistlines, and now donuts are deadlier than ever”

A playable demo for the “The Simpsons Game” is now available for download on both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Both systems feature the same level, a battle against the colossal donut boy brought to life in a classic Treehouse of Horror episode, Lard Lad.

Using Homer’s doughy rolling ability and Bart’s glide as Bartman, you have to target the weak points on Lard Lad’s back. The battle action is clearly recycled from other games – at points Comic Book Guy can be heard to remark “How cliché!” The game is fully aware of its own clichés, even going so far to pop up notes about the fact in certain particularly eye-rolling scenes.

Even if the developers are aware that certain genre conventions are being followed a little too closely, that doesn’t make it any less annoying to play. The “colossal” fight against Lard Lad takes a turn for the mundane when it devolves into a hide-and-seek game for power-ups. Finding them becomes a matter of jumping on mattresses and dumpsters while encountering the occasional alien invader.

The playable characters are a bit sluggish and the nonstop barrage of Krusty foes don’t make for challenging opponents. The graphics help make up for the dull pace of the demo, with really rich and beautiful cutscenes that look like outtakes from the recent movie, but even the graphics can’t fix what plays like a dud.

Hopefully the levels featured in the final game, like Medal of Homer and Grand Theft Scratchy – which recalls Marge’s efforts to ban Itchy and Scratchy and has very little to do with jacking cars – will be more fun to play. The Lard Lad level is an unusual choice, considering that is mainly a boss fight with a bunch of superfluous platforming elements instead of a standard level from the game. Still, it’s worth checking out for any Simpsons fan, if only to hear Kent Brockman provide a random running commentary.

Tags: EA, Lard-Lad, The-Simpsons-Demo

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