The Simpsons Hit and Run Review

On paper, Simpsons Hit and Run should've been a game I really enjoyed. I haven't watched the Simpsons in over a decade and I don't remember the series that well outside of a few characters, lines and catchphrases, but at the same time, I kind of like Radical Entertainment as a developer. I also have some childhood nostalgia for Simpsons Road Rage since it was one of the first games I ever played and I always heard that this game was better on top of hearing that it is a really good licensed game. The very concept of a Grand Theft Auto styled game with an emphasis on driving with barely any on foot gameplay just sounds like something that should really appeal to me since I'm not a fan of GTA's on foot gameplay. I do enjoy games like Driver San Franciso and Pursuit Force Extreme Justice and even some racers like Jak X and Burnout Revenge. Everything really should've fell into place but instead the more I played Hit and Run, the more I just got angry and annoyed, which culminates in the last few missions since it's everything bad about the game's design all at once.

Before I start describing what I disliked, I'll start with what I enjoyed, the voice acting, dialogue and even the story itself are moderately engaging even for someone who hasn't watched the series in a long time. I forgot how charming the characters in the franchise can be. From the voice acting all the way to the various oddball characters and their quirky personalities. The story itself does a good job at feeling like a protracted version of a TV show episode and the wacky twist with aliens I can't help but find amusing especially when you throw in the vague marketing the game has. Some of the music is pretty good too with some of the tracks I want to listen to on Youtube.

From Levels 1-4, the game is pretty solid and the missions feel doable, I didn't use the mission skip feature. At first, the objectives feel decently varied, they tend to follow the Driver franchise's design with the use of constant timers. You will be destroying vehicles, making getaways, chasing npcs while slamming into them and picking up items, picking up items while on a timer, races or things will get mixed up where you will do all these things while in a different vehicle. I would usually chastise the game for no mission checkpoints, but they are generally short and quick enough that with enough practice you can get past them fast.

However, once you play as Apu, everything goes downhill, the game starts to reuse the objectives from Levels 1-4 and I started to actively skip missions when you had to do a chase as when with Snake and you also have to destroy an enemy vehicle while you use a vehicle with a low toughness stat.

This is where the game's biggest problem arises, the game not only resues the same objectives but the police or "hit and run" system you will have to contend with much more. The problem with this system is that this is a game where you already need to deal with timers and vehicle health but on top of that the game chastises you for constantly crashing and hitting pedestrians which is hard to do since the game already starts putting you on stricter time limits. This is not ideal since for one, dealing with the police while trying to complete an objective just adds extra busywork and the police just needs to be near you for 5 seconds and you be fined and lose money. Neither of this is ideal since you lose money and if you are on a mission where there is always a time limit, you will wait a few seconds to respawn which is a few seconds needed for the timer and you will have to build speed back up again since you lost your momentum.

The game will also highly encourage the player to use shortcuts on the various maps, the problem is unless you are speedrunning, the game does a terrible job at accomadating first time players since the green arrows the player follows on many late game missions will not give you enough time to complete the objective, the load screens tips will even tell you to use them but how I will know what is a shortcut and what isn't when on a timer? If I take possible detours, there is a 50-50 chance it could be a shortcut or a dead end. Maybe have different color arrows to indicate what is a shortcut for first timer players.

The game will also have random parts with 3D platforming which can feel out of place since these sections are infrequent and can feel jarring when they pop up.

As a result, I eventually just started to actively use the mission skip feature but you can't skip the last 3 and they are bad because it's doing the same thing 3 times with worse vehicles and with more strict timers and you can get screwed over for using shortcuts since it will donate the nuclear device and there is a 50-50 chance where it could happen.

Overall, at first Hit and Run was enjoyable but the more I played the more I got angry and frustrated. The last few m