Playstation 2 Review: The Simpsons Road Rage

The Simpsons Road Rage



Genre
Car/Driving. Made by EA.

The Story
Not much in the way of a story here. Mr. Burns is purchasing every bus in Springfield and jacking up the fares to make more money. Now all of the people in Springfield must turn their cars into cabs to make enough money to buy back the buses.

Gameplay
Basically this game is like Crazy Taxi, just with Simpsons characters. There are four game modes: Road Rage (driving around and picking people up for cash, which lets you unlock different areas and cars), Sunday Drive (practice), Mission Mode (You must complete near impossible tasks in a really short time period), and Head to Head (You have to pick up the highlighted passenger before the other guy does and get him to where he wants to go). You can choose from many places in Springfield that are geographically correct according to the show. The controls are simple and easy to learn.
All in all it made me want to vomit. Where should I start? This game gets really boring really fast. It's like playing GTA: Vice City after you have beaten it. The missions are incredibly stupid, for example, you have to drive in Otto’s bus and hit 11 streetlights in 15 seconds. For Lisa, you have to hit piles of logs spread out all over the biggest level in 8 minutes (this one is impossible). After you’ve tried and failed a mission a certain amount of times an option to bypass the mission comes up (they knew the missions were impossible). The load times were insane. It takes about 30 seconds to a minute just to load a restart, and to load a new game it takes about 1 to 2 minutes. I’ll leave it at that.

Graphics
They graphics are less than perfect. Homer’s eyes look like they are three inches longer than they should be, and they all look like boxes. To make a long story short, they were pretty crappy.

Replay Value
I don’t think anyone would want to play this game twice.

Audio
They reused the voices to the point where my ears started bleeding. Yeah they are funny for the first 5 minutes. Then they just make you angry. The voice acting in the movie scenes were horrible. It was kind of like those dubbed kung-fu movies, except this isn’t funny.

Summary
Overall, this game is for someone with a short attention span. I don’t even think it’s worth the rent and it’s not a good party game since its only 2 players. Don’t make the same mistake as me and buy it. What do expect from a game that came from a TV show?

Rating
Story: 5/10, not much here.
Audio: 3/10, I put my TV on mute and put on my favorite music.
Gameplay: 3/10, gets very old, really quick.
Replay Value: 2/10, like I said, you’d have to be crazy to play this game twice.
Graphics: 5/10, they were pretty bad, but I’ve seen worse.

36%, yes that’s a 36, and I did my math right.

OA

Edited and checked by milefile

Well, the lowest score on GTP so far.. I have rented this game out, and it is very easy and does get boring after a while. Yet again another quality review from duo.

Once again, thank you for all of the compliments. Your reviews are great also, I just have never played any of them. About how long does it take for you to write those reviews of yours?

OA

I dunno...maybe about 20 mins...You?

It takes about 30 to 45 minutes for me. It takes a lot of energy though... we are an elite class

OA

I guess we are Here comes a burnout review

That game looked cool, but I ran out of money before I could buy it.

OA

Ah - it's not so bad. Definitely need to have had a couple of drinks beforehand, though.

Then again, I paid $10 (Aust) for a secondhand copy - if I'd paid $99.95 (Aust) for it I'd be crapped off.

I got 30 bucks off from that look under the Milk cap deal that they had going on.

OA

This is a bit harsh. I would have given it a 45%. It gets old really fast, but it's still kinda fun. Have you tried two player games? Those are a lot more fun. If you have a gruop of friends that have PS2s, this is a good game for ONE PERSON to buy and then loan it out.

45% is pushing it, maybe. This was one of several games we bought the day we bought our PS2 in March of 2002. We're big Simpsons fans anyway. Some counterpoints to duo17's excellent review:

1) Gameplay was OK, but not interesting enough to keep me playing longer than it took to unlock about half the characters. I haven't touched this game since a month after we got it. I never played Crazy Taxi but I've heard it's better. The controls were fine and actually wailing around Springfield is fun, but it gets dull fast.

2) I didn't think the graphics and audio were a problem, for a cartoon-based game. I thought the badly-dubbed Krusty rating system was funny, because I assumed it was done that way on purpose.

3) The load times were totally unacceptable, and were ultimately the reason I quit playing the game. One of the other games we bought that day was Jak & Daxter, which has a huge world full of luscious graphics and sound, and zero - I mean that literally - load times. You can walk for hours in that world and never see a load screen or feel a hesitation.

Thanks for the compliment neon_duke. Reading over the review again, the rating did seem a bit harsh, but the load times made me way to upset to change it.

Quote:

Originally posted by neon_duke
{snip}
2) I didn't think the graphics and audio were a problem, for a cartoon-based game. I thought the badly-dubbed Krusty rating system was funny, because I assumed it was done that way on purpose.
{snip}

I'm pretty sure that was done on purpose. Those Simpsons never fail to make me laugh!

OA

It was done on purpose - it's a reference to the Kamp Krusty episode, where 'Mr Black' is dubbed over Krusty's voice - quite clearly in the voice of Mr Black, who runs the camp.

I have this game and actually liked it...I mean, it gets old fast but is good for when friends are over...probably a 68% from me.

One of my brothers bought this. So far I've played it once for about 2 minute. I was playing as Lisa. Her car is crap.

I believe that the fastest car is Frink's Hover Car.

OA

Is it worth getting this game or should i get another game? (IM A SIMPSONS FAN)

You should probably rent it first. This sort of game tends to get boring in a few seconds, and like I said, the load times are horrible. You might think differently though. Your best bet would be a rental.

OA

EXACTLY like crazy taxi cept with the simpsons.