It's hard, writing a review for The Simpsons Game - not because of the game itself, although, as you'll discover, I'm in two minds about it - but because whatever I say, the game's going to fly off the shelves. It's always the way with popular licenses - and The Simpsons is, let's face it, a pretty popular one.

Indeed, The Simpsons are possibly America's best known family. Many of us have grown up watching the cartoons, repeating the catchphrases, laughing at the jokes and wondering how, exactly, Marge manages to keep her hair looking like that day-in, day-out. Many of us have played various Simpsons games over the years too; I remember Bart and his skateboard taking on the terrifyingly blocky space mutants, for example. But, somehow the games never quite live up to the original creation - and when another licensed title was announced back in 2005, I didn't think it would be that great. Alright, so the last one - Hit & Run - wasn't too bad. It was enjoyable enough, looked about right and featured some funny one-liners. But it never really felt like The Simpsons somehow - and there were better games out there to enjoy. Is this latest attempt - or more specifically, the PSP version of it - any better? Is this, in other words, the first really decent Simpsons game?

Short answer? No. Yes. Maybe. It's not good when a reviewer can't quite decide I know, but there it is; I'm torn between the pure gamer who says "this is okay but not great," and the Simpsons fan who says "this is fantastic!" The good news is that, as a game, this isn't bad. It's not great either, but that won't stop all the hordes of fans who buy it over the Christmas period. At its simplest it's a platformer where you control the various members of the Simpsons family as they romp around the colourful levels. It's a straightforward game, but as you'd expect, the whole thing is incredibly polished; the cut-scenes are outstanding, the music and voiceovers are great (and fully voiced by the TV cast), the jokes are funny and the storyline is amusing. The whole thing's been scripted by the same people who write the show - and you can easily tell.

Most of the levels involve you taking control of two Simpsons characters and swapping between them in order to progress, by killing enemies and solving puzzles. Each character has a variety of special moves; Homer can turn into a large ball that knocks down anything in its way (and later becomes 'gummy Homer' who can spit plasma-like gum at his enemies), Marge has a megaphone that she uses to control the mob (although your 'mob' is normally no larger than four characters), Lisa's saxophone can stun and manipulate enemies and she can also use the 'hand of Buddha' to move stuff around, and Bart becomes 'Bartman' with all the caped fly-aroundery and slingshot tomfoolery that you might expect.

Dedicated Simpsons fans may have noticed already that, in terms of their newfound special abilities, the characters of the game aren't exactly the same as the family in the cartoon. However, there is a cunning reason for their powers; the Simpsons become aware, very early on, that they're actually characters in a videogame, and use this knowledge to their advantage by exploiting their special moves. They even end up looking in the game guide and on the Internet to find cheats! The whole thing is incredibly self-referential and self-deprecating; as you progress you'll be collecting, among other things, clichés - little snippets of gaming wisdom such as "infinite bad guys come from a small door" and "isn't it convenient that you find ammo at the right place and time?" In some ways this doesn't work - after all, these little hints do tend to point out the lazy parts of the level designs - but generally it's all pretty light-hearted and amusing.

This gentle sense of fun continues throughout the game. Not only do some of the one-liners make you laugh out loud, but the cut scenes are - unsurprisingly - hilarious. As well as all this, the level designs and concepts often either poke fun at other games, the gaming industry in general, or the Simpsons themselves. It's difficult to give examples without - literally - giving the game away and spoiling the jokes, but I guess most people are already aware of the Medal of Honor level called "Medal of Homer". This is much more than just a simple pun; the entire level (from the beginning cut scene on) is heavily influenced by the Electronic Arts shooter and there's even a strategic map - something that none of the other Simpsons levels share. You'll see how wide-ranging the game's humour is too in this level; a very early cut scene shows the French surrendering unequivocally when the small German child Uter throws a stone through a window! This is the sort of humour that makes The Simpsons - both the cartoon and this game - as good as it is; it's laugh-out-loud funny and incredibly close to offensive without actually crossing the line. So, as a Simpsons game this is pretty good; it'll make you laugh, the characters and the storyline are well realised and it looks the part. What's it like as simply a game, though?

As I've already said, it's alright - and given that it's a pre-Christmas licensed game that's bound to sell in bundles, that's high praise. It feels like some care and attention has been spent on things; the level designs - as well as being funny - are actually pretty good, with just the right amount of linearity; the graphics are suitably cartoony (they're cel-shaded and don't work as well as they do on the more powerful consoles, but they're not bad); the music is - of course - excellent and the voiceovers are amazing. What lets it down - and it really lets it down badly - is the camera, which is as unpredictable and nasty as a certain Charles Montgomery Burns. For a start, it seems to always choose the worst possible angle. Not a problem you might think; just manually position it. That would be fine - positioning it is as simple as holding the left shoulder button and moving the nub - but as soon as you move your character, your perfectly placed camera spins back into 'random mode' again. To make this even worse, sometimes it won't go where you want it in the first place; it gets stuck on invisible scenery, moves incredibly slowly sometimes for no obvious reason and won't quite line up how you need. So you end up stopping, moving the camera, moving the character, stopping, moving the camera... This would be bad on any game, but on a platformer it's unforgivable. You'll send the various members of the Simpsons family to their deaths over and over again because of the awful camera. What makes it even worse is that several of the levels are on timers ('Cliché 6: If your game's boring - just add a stopwatch!') and the biggest time-killer of all is, of course, trying to get the camera straight.

Having said all that, the game never feels hard. It would, of course, be a lot easier without the camera problems, but even as it is the difficulty is pretty low. This probably reflects the game's target demographic - there'll be plenty of 'casual' gamers buying this - but it does mean that the thing is over quite quickly and never really challenges you. You will probably want to replay the levels once or twice; partly because they are so funny in places, and partly to collect the various 'trophies' by finding all the hidden items, but the first run through won't take you more than a day or two of play time. There's no multiplayer mode at all, which is fair enough; it feels like it should be a single-player game. But it might have been nice if there were some mini-games to play outside of the main campaign; just something to prolong the playing time if nothing else.

Despite its shortcomings, The Simpsons Game is actually pretty good fun. At times it's frustrating and at times it's so funny that you just don't care. If you're a fan of The Simpsons then it's worth a look, but if not then the seven I've given it becomes a six, because the frustrations here will probably overwhelm everything else and there are better PSP platformers out there.

Reviewed by Dom Turner for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).