The Simpsons: Hit & Run

"Simpsons+GTA+ Driver="

Game play: Game play in this game is fun, while some people compare it to Grand Theft Auto, I think it's a lot more like Driver. While you can get out of your car and beat people up like you could in GTA, you only are able to kick people, and while you are able to get out of your car, you probably won't want to because any car besides the ones you own stink. The game is a mission driven game, you do several different missions but all circle around the same concepts just different settings. Those games are: Follow a car, Collect Objects falling out of the car, Destroy a car, Collect a bunch of items, and an old favorite Drive from Point A to Point B. While these are fun, they are defiantly not as good as GTA which gave all sorts of missions. Since this is a Simpons game, expecting good humor is a must. This game delivers that with funny one-liners from the characters, and hilarious cut scenes. Only problem with this is that after hearing the character say one of those lines 6 or 7 times an hour you begin to grow irritated of them. There are also side quests like finding and destroying spy cameras, and collected a set of cards that are items found in the show.

Overall: 9/10

Audio/Visuals: The audio in this game is pretty good. They managed to get all the voices of the people who so the show (Yes they got all 6 of them) and in addition to that, they background music is also surprisingly well. While its not something you just turn this game on to listen to the music, the music is good and fits the character your playing very well. The only problem with the music though, is that you'll be humming to the music and then all the sudden, you get out of the car and it stops, weird thing is though in some areas it stops, but in others it doesn't. The graphics in this game are those of any Simpsons game, cartoon-ish style graphics. And honestly these graphics are great cause it feels like your playing an episode of the show, although possibly maybe they want to take a chance in the Simpsons games and just go with the wildly popular Cel-Shaded graphics. But the graphics this game has now are pretty good.

Overall: 9/10

Replay: This is where this game takes some hits. While this game is addicting, if you put yourself to it, you can beat 2 story levels a day making this game very short. While there is a bunch of side quests such as: finding and destroying the wasp cameras, finding and collecting the trading cards, finding the street races and earning some new cars, and finding some people to help in order to get them to drive you around, they aren't really enough to make this game a whole lot longer. There is also a multi-player mode but its not that fun and defiantly not something your going to invite all your friends over to play.

Overall: 5/10

Buy or Rent: Well while this game is very fun and funny, has awesome graphics, and is just plain fun... It's beatable in a few days. So while this may be a game you'll find great and entertaining while you play it, don't spend 50$ on this game just to beat it in a few days. So head out to Blockbuster or whatever game rental company is near you and pick this one up, play it, beat it, return it, and then find some new game.

Buy or Rent: Rent

Overall: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/03