The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003)

I'm not really a Simpsons fan. Don't get me wrong; I have no animus toward it. I just haven't really watched very much of it, besides an episode here or there, and the feature film. And of course many rides on the Universal Studios theme park ride.

After spending around 12 hours and beating The Simpsons Hit & Run on the Nintendo GameCube, I'm still not sure I understand the show very well. Kind of a disappointment for me, in that regards, because I was playing through the game partly to try to enjoy The Simpsons a little bit more than I had in the past. But Hit & Run, probably wisely, assumes that you're already all-in on The Simpsons, so its presentation doesn't really do anything to help bring anyone into the fold. I was expecting a game that might feel a little bit like playing through a few episodes of the show, but the thin plot and sparse cutscenes don’t really have this effect. Instead, it's more like playing the home version of an arcade game -- story was never the goal here, its existence more perfunctory than anything.

I'd heard that this game was "Like a Simpsons universe GTA", but I don't think I'd ever describe it in such a fashion after beating it. It's more like Simpsons Driver, or, more apropos since it feels like an arcade game, Simpsons Crazy Taxi (where you can get out of the cab). The reason I don't find this to be remotely similar to GTA is that there is almost nothing to do outside of cars. You can run, you can jump, and you can kick, and that's it. There are a couple of different collectibles to find outside your car, and a shockingly small number of actual "enemies", which go down in literally two kicks and, as far as I can tell, cannot do any sort of damage or affect you in any way (if they can, I never saw because they never hit me, not even once). I think there was a mission of the 49 main story missions that directly had you do something "on-foot". This really is NOT Simpsons GTA, which to my mind would have had a lot more varied "activities", and would have included more opportunities for "directed exploration". The design of the activities provided don't really encourage you to learn and explore the areas in a general sense.

Learning and exploring the levels (I don't say "city" because each level of game is separate and distinct, with no continuity between them) is also made more difficult by the lack of any in-game map. True, you do have a "radar" mini-map in the corner, but this map shows, oh, maybe a 50 foot radius around you at any time. Certainly not enough to, say, plan a route. Understanding the levels is also hampered by the truly insane road design. I think I would have been okay with the artistic choice of the mad spaghetti road layouts if I could have seen a full map, but as it was it was irritating to always feel disoriented. Without a full map view, I think the game would have benefitted from a more "reasonable" city layout.

There are all these missteps so far; fortunately, the driving is actually pretty fun. It certainly appeals to my taste for a more simplified, arcadey style of driving, without veering all the way into "Kart Racer" territory. Different cars have a different feel and handling, and you will be required by the game to actually execute on some high-end driving skills. Boy, will you be required to execute. I'm not sure that I've played a game made after 1999 with such a wildly fluctuating difficulty curve. Even different runs of the exact same mission can range from ridiculously easy to punishingly difficult, due the random nature of the traffic in this game. I think this was something that offended me the most about this game, other than the lack of subtitles, because I'm not sure that I should have needed to do some of these missions as many times as I did, given that this is a licensed The Simpsons game.

Ultimately, what The Simpsons Hit & Run feels like is a 10 to 12 hour extension of the Universal Studios Simpsons theme park ride, and not the show. I watched a random episode of the show on Disney+ after having finished the game (the episode where Lady Gaga's train stops in Springfield to cheer Lisa up), and I found it to be witty and heartfelt in a way that the game basically never was. Given all this, it doesn't really surprise me that the final 3 missions of the game are literal copies of each other. I'm sure the developers knew that any further effort was never going to take this game beyond a "liked it" rating.

It's rare for me to beat a game if I don't at least like it, which to me is three stars. But it's a low 3; if I gave half stars, this would be a two and a half star rating.

Postscript observations:

The school bus driver from The Simpsons sounds just like the Hormone Monster from Big Mouth.

Why was the last level of the game Halloween themed, while none of the other levels have such radical shifts in their setting and tone?

Well, this was simply the disappointment of the year for me, and almost the worst game I've played in 2022 (Thanks, Bionicle Heroes).

I like The Simpsons a lot. The first... 16-20 seasons are great. So that means I was the target of the game. But it simply wasn't a good game. It's not like all the game is a disaster. If you are a Simpsons fan you'll surely enjoy the references. There are A LOT and they are good references. That's perfectly fine. Graphics and soundtrack are fine too.

But... the gameplay is bad. That's all. Control is not good, but could be worse. Missions and maps are bland and uninteresting. There are a lot of bad game designs, and nothing relatable. The final stretch of this game is awful: you have to repeat the same mission four times...

Sadly, there's little reason to play this game but the show's references.

I really don't believe this game was ever expected to be taken seriously, with its obvious parody of the GTA series, it manages to set itself apart and makes a name for itself.

So what do we have here? We have free roam through different parts of Springfield, the iconic home to the Simpsons family and we get to see much more of the original cast. All that with its iconic locations and plenty to do to keep us busy.

Graphically speaking, this game looks decent. Control wise, it plays similarly to the GTA series, just not as smoothly and with next to no violence.

This game brings The Simpsons to life and ends up being a fun ride, highly recommended.

Had to give this one a go since it's the most requested game I've seen in recent years for a re-make or HD re-release. But that's probably just not gonna happen, so you'll all have to find yourselves a way to play the original.

This is GTA but with the Simpsons. You get in a car, you drive recklessly through Springfield, and you complete missions. The missions are pretty much all timed, having you drive from one place to the other as quickly as possible. You weave your way through traffic, and try to not cause too much damage -- because if you do, the police will try to nab you. It's arcadey frantic fun for the most part. And if you're a fan of the golden age of The Simpsons, this game will be a treat because they packed it with references and didn't skimp out on bringing in the actual voice actors for all the characters. The story for this game wasn't as funny as I would have liked, but it got some chuckles from me here and there.

So what's not to love? Well, the game gets really frustrating sometimes. I'm okay with some games being difficult, but it felt really bizarre for a Simpsons game of all things to make so many of its missions requiring a perfect run to beat the timer. Hell, even a perfect run isn't enough sometimes, if the traffic works against you too much. I also got real sick of the characters' constantly repeated one-liners very quickly... Luckily you can turn the voices down in the options menu, but that also means you won't be able to hear the cut scenes should you trigger one. DOH!

I'll also throw out that some missions work better in this game than others. Races, item fetch quests, and evading missions work well enough, but I didn't care for the destruction derby segments. Also any item collecting you had to do on foot... The tacked-on 3D platforming is really bad, lol. And I guess I should mention that collision detection in this game isn't the best either... Way too many times my car crashed HARD into things it should've been able to plow right through, or at least just bump against.

All in all this is the sort of game that's fun for a while, but eventually becomes frustrating the further you try to progress through its story. If you just want to mess around driving through Springfield, it's a pretty amusing driving course sandbox. Well-worth checking out if you're a Simpsons fan at all, particularly if you're nostalgic for its first 10 or so seasons. But if you don't care about the Simpsons? There's bigger fish to be fried.

I would consider this my first GTA game, and the only one I played for a long time. Simpsons Road Rage was one of the first games I had on my PS2, and when I heard there was a sequel where you could get out of your car to walk around I thought that was the coolest thing. Hey, I was 13 & it was 2003, that was still a new, novel idea. I borrowed Hit'n'Run from a cousin and never returned it. Unfortunately, after all these years, my PS2 copy has weathered too many scratches to run properly, but I found a copy for my PC that I've been playing recently for nostalgia's sake.

This game isn't actually a sequel to Road Rage, it just shares the focus of vehicles and racing. The story was created by the show's writers and included most all of the actual cast. Sometimes when you have actors reprising their roles in video games, they make the game worse by phoning in their performance, but this game doesn't suffer that fate. The great acting and the fact the world is chock full with references to the show cement this as a classic. I replay this game every few years, and I notice a new set of references younger me missed, like the Mason Derriere in Springfield. There's collectible cards in each level that are references to classic Simpsons episodes.

Being a video game, the story is a little more far out to accommodate for the gameplay. It starts off normal, with Homer boobing around Springfield, then Bart gets abducted by aliens and there's evil cola, and it all ends with a Treehouse of Horror themed level where you destroy a UFO. All along the way, the plot is riddled with memorable jokes, mostly Homer's lines, "I'd come get you, but there's a spider next to my car keys" "I have no insurance" etc. Each level is a different area of Springfield; Evergreen Terrace, Downtown, the Squidport and you play as all the Simpsons family and Apu, which was out of left field, but still fun to play through his level.

The missions mostly center around some type of driving challenge; tail a person, racing, collect items, destroy a car. There's enough of a mix-up between all of them, that it doesn't get boringly repetitive, but if there's one type you dislike, you'll definitely get tired of it. And as the levels progress, the missions get harder, as most video games do, but by the last level you almost need to have perfect driving skills. The last set of three or so missions in the game where you have to drive volatile nuclear waste to the school are torturous. It doesn't help that their way of amping up difficulty is making the cops show up quicker and congesting the roads with a lot more civilian traffic.

The driving controls are of the arcade variety, but they are still very tight and fun to master. The only time they really fail is in tight spaces & quick turns like parts of Downtown and the Squidport boardwalk. You can get held up on corners & concrete columns, which could spell doom on a mission.

The music in this game is also great. Lots of variants of the Simpsons theme songs and each family member has their own style, Bart has rock, Homer has fat guy tuba music, and Lisa has Jazz, which is my favorite set of music in the game.

If you're a Simpsons fan, you should play this game, and you most likely already have. It's often touted as one of the best, in my opinion, the best Simpsons game. It's dripping with Simpsons nostalgia from the locations, vehicles, jokes, and collector cards.