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.