Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly

"Welcome to Camp Painful Gaming"

When Simpsons: Hit and Run came out, one review they cited called it the ''Best Simpsons game ever.'' Taking a look at where the Simpsons video game franchise has been, however, shows that's not as big a deal as it sounds.

Anyway, the parents have dropped Bart and Lisa off at summer camp. A summer camp run by Mr. Burns' nephew. And it's a total hellhole and they quickly make up their mind to escape. Geez, has there ever been a summer camp on TV or a video game that isn't totally evil?

So anyway, you start the first level. You're Bart, playing capture the flag against everyone else in the camp. And they all want Bart to spend the rest of the summer in intensive care. Just saying in case you forgot this summer camp is totally evil. But what's that in the tree up ahead? It's Lisa wish some boomerangs to give her brother something to fight back with. Good old Lis. Those boomerangs sure do work funny though; if you're on the ground they go straight, but if you jump they go at weird angles and are hard to catch on the rebound. And if you don't they're gone. And without boomerangs, Bart only has spit balls, which only freeze a guy for a few seconds and only once per guy. Funny how well-armed the world's biggest underachiever is in all his other games.

During lunch and dinner Bart throws away his weapons and instead hucks prune ice cream and tofu hamburgers at the guys after his skin. But he has to eat all his ammo if he gets caught by the chef. Then it's more running around in the woods while more people are looking to beat on him.

This is largely the tone of the whole game. Bart runs around performing awkward jumps and awkwardly throwing things at guys trying to punch him. Except they are NOT awkward, so good luck finding anything to enjoy in this game.

The graphics are bland and washed out, and the background music that plays is some rendition or other of the Simpsons theme song at all times. For some reason the makers of Simpson video games thought you'd want to listen to this music non stop. Okay, that's a fine little bit of music when it lasts for up thirty seconds right before the show. But to listen to it for the hour or two straight it'd take to beat this game? No.

The game tries to include vocal samples too, but they're so tinny and hard to make out it actually types what's being said on the top of the screen while it's being spoken. But then again, how cool is it to hear Bart say ''eat my shorts'' every single time he gets hurt? Not very.

This is not a good game. Not with a Gameboy fan's time, not worth a Simpsons's fans time. And to respond to that review comment before I go, like it would've been hard to make a game better than this.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/09/04, Updated 07/28/05