Written By Shaun McCracken
The Simpsons have been an institution on television, with more than 300
episodes under it's belt and having the novelty of being one of the longest running
animated series of all time. Through those years, we've seen games based upon the Simpsons
license that have had a less than stellar result. When the games were under
Acclaim, they tended to be questionable in design. "Barts Nightmanre" lacked
direction and suffered from poor minigames, "Krusty's Fun House" was an adequate
puzzle game, sort of like a pre-Chu Chu Rocket, but again was met with confusing
gameplay. Two to three years ago, we finally saw a Simpsons game arrive on the
then next-gen console, the PlayStation in the form of "Simpsons Wrestling". Needless
to say, it was hardly critic-proof. In 2001, we see Road Rage, which basically
rips off the design of Crazy Taxi, but somehow messed up on that.
So why are the residents of Springfield driving each other around in this game?
Well, Mr. Burns has bought all of the city's public transportation, and decided
to jack up the price. Well, this won't do. To quote Homer, "Public transportation
is for jerks and lesbians.". To solve the problem of the Burns controlled bussing,
the Simpson family (except Maggie), as well as stupid sexy Flanders, Moe, Revrend
Lovejoy and a handful of the regular Simpsons characters will raise cash by
driving people around town, and try to buy the busses back. And all this is
done ala Crazy Taxi.
Except, despite the fact that Radical Games adopted (ripped off) the Crazy
Taxi design, the end result is less fun than Sega's arcade series. Sure, you
pick up passengers and drive them to their destinationl, and depending where
they want to go, you will recieve more or less time to get them there. But the
desing no way allows you to make money by near misses, jumping or sliding, as
well as earning a bonus for a timely delivery. Instead, your cash value
slowly increases while you're driving your customer to their destination. Depending
on the circumstance, you can earn some extra cash and time by meeting the criteria
of a safe drive or an aggressive drive. Of course, you'll never know when this happens.
I think the overall point here is, that Radical's design of Sega's game is not
nearly as fun or addictive as it should be. I played as much of the game as I could
tolerate (which was quite a bit), but I never had as much fun as I did in Crazy
Taxi.
The visuals are very spotty. I guess you can give some respect to Radical for
creating a fairly believable world in the Simpsons realm, and they do give us
six fairly diverse settings. But the polygon count is fairly low and the textures
are pretty flat. I can understand that they wanted a cel-shaded look, but if that
is what they were intending, then it was a failed effort. Sega's Jet Grind Radio
used the technique so much better, and that game came out over a year before this
one. Some textures are so poor that they seem more like simple gradients than a
texture. The polygons in some structures are painfully simple, such as the houses,
where it's basically a cube and a pyramid. The framerate is aslo hit and miss as
well, and never really remains smooth for an extended preiod of time. In a way, the
graphics get the job done, but on the other hand, so many other games look so
much better.
The sound is entertaining for awhile with real voices from the cast. When you
first hear the banter between the charecters, it's funny. But then it gets repetitive
after 15 minutes. Also, some of the events just don't match. The person can get
on board and say one thing, then the driver will say something that will seem
irrelivant (like Homer saying "Damn Straight!" when it really doesn't match
the prior phrase). The music is average.
Final Thought
You know what, if you're going to rip-off an established game, you might as
well do it all the way. Road Rage copies the design of Crazy Taxi, but only by about
65%. There's no strategy in scoring, no way in keeping the session going longer
and really this is what makes the game kind of boring. When I bought Crazy Taxi
years ago, I was hooked. Although there was only I city, I spent so much time
perfecting the strategy and improving my score and seeing just how long I could
last. I wanted to do that here, but Radical gave only so much that the replay value
diminishes quickly. A rental is suitable just to get all the humor it offers,
after that, you're done.
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