The Simpsons: Hit & Run

The Good
The Simpsons: Hit & Run just lets you loose in Springfield in a way no previous Simpsons games have done. In each level, you're given a chunk of Springfield to just roam free in. You can perform missions or wander off and serch for hidden items, enter races, etc.

The game makes great use of its source material. It's voiced and written by the team from the show and contains dozens of the Simpsons supporting cast members. You'll get to play not only as the entire Simpsons family, but also that jolly Bengali Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. Even Halloween-episode regulars Kodos and Kang appear as the main villains, using evil cola to take over Springfield for an alien reality TV show.

Hit & Run is in many ways very similar to Grand Theft Auto III, but instead of being a hybrid driving/action game, it's driving and platforming. It even makes some improvements to the design, such as a menu option for instantly restarting the current mission. You won't have to drive all the way back to a start point here.

The Bad
Unfortunately, it doesn't compare as nicely to its inspiration in other areas. There's a lot less freedom. There are five levels. Each has seven story missions to complete in order, one side mission and three races. These side missions aren't really connected to other, either. You'll find nothing on the order of Marty Chonks here.

The reward structure is unfortunately disappointing. Each level has three races, three vehicles to buy, a side missions and three outfits, 20 robot wasp cameras to smash and seven collector's cards. Finishing all four races or the side mission each get you a vehicle. The collector's cards focus on various items from the show and a full set gets to a multiplayer slot car game. That's pretty cool. The wasp cameras get you nothing except money. THe outfits all come from the show, but they don't actually do anything. The most annoying thing is the vehicles, which are the bulk of your rewards. The vast majority of them are completely useless.

I have some other related quibbles with this design. You must finish all three races in a level to get your reward. The game only indicates how many races you've beaten, not which ones. If you forget, you just have to do all the races in the level over again.

I have some gripes regarding the audio as well. Each character only has a few lines, so they're saying the same thing over and over. Often, they'll say the same thing twice in a span of a few seconds. It's funny the first time grandpa tells you about how they used to call sandwiches black freddies, buy even he should be able to remember he just told that story five seconds later.

Another annoyance is the money. It costs $50 to get busted by the police. On some missions you'll get busted a lot and lose all your money, forcing you to restart from an earlier save or do some rather tedious things (that might get you busted again) to earn more cash. Thanks to a combination of load times and the interface design, it takes a substantial amount of time to do this. Money is a far more limited resource than in Grand Theft Auto, but it's quite a bit easier to lose it.

The Simpsons and GTA are an odd fit. You can't very well have them go whack people and the platforming segments are sadly underused. The game is made almost entire of driving missions and really only has three types: collect the item/get to goal before time runs out, race or destroy a vehicle. The designers really needed to think of some new mission types rather than just eliminating all the GTA types that didn't work with their license. The ending is what bugged me the most as it's more or less the same mission three times in a row.

Speaking of variety: I would have liked to see some more playable characters. You play Bart and Homer twice each. Since they were doing supporting cast, I would have loved to see a segment where you play Flanders or something.

The Bottom Line
The problems are all minor quibbles. The bottom line is this is far and away the best Simpsons video game currently available, not that there's a lot of competition. It manages to be true to the show and be a mostly fun game and give a decent ten-plus-hour play time. I highly recommend it.

The Good

The best thing this game has going for it is the truly funny plot and acting. The entire Simpson's cast provides voice acting for the game, and writers from the show provide the plot. The game also manages to make Springfield come alive as a fully explorable world. You will be able to visit almost every obscure place from the show you can think of. You can check out Evergreen Terrace, the Nuclear Plant, Burns' Mansion, and Moe's. Even things like the Escalator to Nowhere and the Stonecutters' secret traffic tunnel are present. You can even take the broken down monorail for a spin! The game on a whole is very, very funny.

The Bad

Sadly, funny doesn't equal fun. At all. The missions are all basic variants on the same theme. Race this car to this place. Collect this many items in this amount of time. Drive to this place in this much time. And so forth. Almost all the missions are timed, and most of them are lame. It always feels like you are performing the same task again and again and again, and it gets old fast. While I truly enjoyed exploring Springfield, I honestly dreaded having to take up a mission to advance the plot. And, unfortunately, the plot is completely linear, despite what you may have heard. There is no branching storyline, and no real incentive to take things at your own pace.

The Bottom Line

Only if you are a Simpson's fanatic would this game ever be worth a purchase. Even then, I would have to recommend a rental first. I am a huge Simpson's fan and only my love for the show enabled me to trudge though the seven boring, repetitive levels. The game is worth checking out for the humor factor, but it's just too bad that there is nothing funny about the lame-ass gameplay.

The Good
It's been a long time since I played a Simpsons game that was actually, in some way or form, entertaining. The last one goes all the way back to the arcade game developed by Konami. Since then, nearly every game based on the series has been total rubbish, especially most recently with Simpsons Wrestling and the Crazy Taxi rip-off, Road Rage.

So, I'm glad to say that Hit & Run is a return to form for the franchise. The humor comes think and fast, thanks mainly to the addition of nearly the entire voice cast plus an original story. The game stays true to the show, with a collection of characters, places and items from some of the best episodes of the shows long run appearing at some point during gameplay.

The game itself plays fairly well. The controls are simple and easy to use, certainly not as complicated compared to any major racing game when it comes to driving your cars around. Mission objectives are also fairly basic, and for the most part they don't take much time at all, but the side quests will keep you going for much longer, such as racing against the clock and other racers, or collecting the many bonus items and wasp cameras.

The Bad
Despite the solid engine under the hood, there are plenty of bugs that spoil the experience, including the usual camera problems or strange errors where the characters get stuck in certain situations for no reason at all.

And though the game is fun to play for the most part, the objectives are the same all the time, with little originality during the later levels (the same 'find this' or 'do that'). It can get boring quickly as you work through the game, which is a real shame considering what could have been done.

The cut scenes aren't all that crash hot either, simply filling time more then moving the story along. Sure, looking at the cast in 3D is nice, but I would have liked some original 2D artwork by the cartoon animators far more.

The multiplayer element could have also been worked on a little more. It's fun for a short time, but it would have been nice to see a co-op mode or deathmatch mode ala Mario Kart, what with all the cars available.

The Bottom Line
It isn't perfect, but compared to the everything else that has come before it, Hit & Run is a much better game to build upon for the future of the Simpsons franchise. Fans will love the humor and references to previous shows, and the extras will keep you going for a little longer. I'm looking forward to see what Vivendi can do next.