The Simpsons: Hit & Run

The Good
Do you like The Simpsons? Do you like GTA? Well, then you are going to love... oh, wait, that's not it. D'oh!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Hit & Run. The game in which you can run around virtual Springfield, collecting coins, which you can use to purchase... well, almost nothing actually, just some useless outfits and a few cars. I wish I could spend all this money on donuts. Mmmm... do-nuts...

Right. So what's really good in Hit & Run? Well, it's quite addictive. Almost like chocolate. Mmmmm... chocolate... You start the game, and immediately you can hop into your car and drive around Springfield as much as you want. You never have to think about your next objective. It's all driving, driving, and driving. And it's fun. For a while.

The city is re-created in all its glory in full 3D. Every part of Springfield you've ever seen on the show is here, and you can explore it. 3D Springfield is undeniably the star of the game. Driving around it, visiting familiar locations and discover others which weren't even shown in the TV series (but which fit its theme very well) is a more pleasant experience than following the game's story and missions.

Almost every character from the show you can think of appears in the game. And naturally, all the characters are voiced by the original cast. As far as fan service goes, Hit & Run certainly delivers - though more in quantity than in quality.

The driving itself is fun, and there is something strangely addictive in the game's ridiculous timed missions. You feel compelled to try "just one more time", until... well, until you really can't take it any more.

Destructible environments are perhaps what I liked most in this game. Nothing beats the feeling of methodically crushing everything you see. There are coins hidden pretty much everywhere; destroying poles, telephone booths, and other parts of the city while driving and getting money in the process is definitely the most exciting activity in the game. There are many places to explore; and if you are tired of driving, you can just run around on foot and kick the hell out of the environment.

There are plenty of collectible items to scavenge; people who care for this sort of thing will probably enjoy exploring every corner of the city for yet another Itchy & Scratchy coupon or whatever.

The timed missions are difficult, but the game is much more forgiving than GTA, since it allows you to restart a mission right away (without the annoying driving to destination), and even skip the mission entirely if you fail too many times! This is certainly a feature I would love to see in GTA games.

The Bad
Hit & Run was supposed to deliver us a double amount of fun: that of playing a free-roaming driving game, and that of experiencing high-quality comedy TV-like entertainment. Unfortunately, it fails on both fronts.

Let's first see why Hit & Run is not a very good Simpsons product. I belong to those old-timers for whom Season 3 of The Simpsons was the real deal. I loved the kind, not overly cynical humor of early Simpsons episodes, and its good storytelling - always with a moral meaning, though never didactic or preachy. It is true that the series had different writers, and many of them, especially during the later years, focused more on gags and grotesque and less on what made The Simpsons endearing to me in the first place. However, Hit & Run doesn't even reach the level of some of my less favorite episodes in terms of writing and narrative. It's neither warm and charming, nor amusingly nonsensical - it's just dumb. The plot is almost non-existent, and what is left of it is something that even the least sophisticated Simpsons episode would be ashamed of containing. The characters lack any personality beside assorted one-liners - granted, those are pretty much within the style of the show, but you can't make your writing depend on one-liners, just as you can't make your gameplay depend on timed races (and as we'll soon see, Hit & Run does both).

Playing Hit & Run doesn't feel like participating in a Simpsons experience. You don't get attached to Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa the way you did in the series' better episodes. It's also not particularly funny. I barely even smiled when I was playing the game. Sure, they've crammed the city with every Simpsons character and location imaginable, but what's the point if none of these characters and locales truly matters anything? The characters serve only as givers of inane missions, are not tied into the plot, and their appearances are nothing short of pointless. It's like they slapped the license over their game mechanically, without bothering to research what really made the show tick.

It is debatable whether the GTA template is the most fitting one to use for a Simpsons game. Driving and organized crime themes are hardly the trademark of that TV series. That said, I think even this template could have worked if it were used more smartly. Just like with the Simpsons license, the developers of Hit & Run didn't quite understand how GTA games really worked. They obviously thought it was enough to create a virtual city and let the player drive through it. They forgot that the meat and bones of every GTA game were the missions; it was the variety of the missions and the creativity of their design that elevated GTA games above most of its subsequent clones.

Alas, the makers Hit & Run paid no attention to that. The game's missions design is so bad that it borders on ridiculous. Without exaggerating, every mission belongs to one of the three possible templates: 1) race against another car; 2) race against time; and 3) collect X amount of items under a time limit. This inane collection of mind-numbingly repetitive, simplistic, arcadish tasks passes for actual gameplay in this game.

GTA games had a large variety of driving missions plus shooting missions. Obviously, there is no shooting in Hit & Run, but they didn't even bother to replace it with anything else. 99% of the time in Hit & Run is spent in a car, and 99% of that time is spend doing idiotic "missions" such as finding 30 monkeys under 3 minutes (seriously, I haven't made that one up). The example of Bully shows how deep and varied GTA-style gameplay can be without guns (and even without cars!), using a more family-friendly tone. But Hit & Run was created without any concept.

In GTA and in all other comparable games I can think of the missions had something to do with the story. The missions were a way to advance the story; even if their goals were remote from the main objective, they were still logical. Hit & Run lacks this kind of basic logic. The missions in this game have, for the most part, absolutely nothing to do with the story. In order to prevent the aliens from spying on humans with giant bee-like cameras, the Simpsons family has to participate in races and collecting games. Almost all the missions follow the same senseless formula: "I need to save Springfield!" - "Ok, but first help me to find 22 fishes under 2:35 minutes!" - "Okay!"... Mission is over, an equally senseless "talking heads" cutscene follows, and... you must meet character X at location Y! Why? Nobody knows, but the game tells you to! You head to character X, triggering another "cutscene" - "I'd answer your question, but first you'll have to drive to my home under 1:20 minutes! And then find character Z!"... and so on, and so on... there is no end to this, and that's how the entire game plays.

As appealing as virtual Springfield and its characters are, their graphical style is just your basic 3D. Many characters look weird in a three-dimensional outfit (my favorite character, Lisa, doesn't look like herself any more); in my opinion cel-shading would have worked much better here.

And... no mouse support for the PC version? You have to move the camera with Num keys? And you can't even move it up and down properly? And it takes forever to turn it right or left? Was there something wrong with my copy of the game?...

The Bottom Line
Hit & Run clearly proves that it takes more than mixing a great setting with a great gameplay concept to make a great game. It lacks both the wit and the presentation of The Simpsons, and the gameplay depth and variety of GTA; it is a mediocre Simpsons product as well as a mediocre GTA clone.

I think the later Simpsons experiment, The Simpsons Game, is better both as a game and as an incarnation of the series' spirit.