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> Results: Simpsons: Road Rage
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Dohnﾒt!The Simpsons Road Rage for the console systems was an adequate Crazy Taxi ripoff that proved amusing simply by using its license well. Filled with Simpsons characters, in-jokes, amusing vehicles, and best of all...sound files, at least it felt like you were a part of the wacky world of Springfield. The GameBoy Advance version of the game appears on store shelves a few years later, and sadly plays and feels like the afterthought it probably is.  The premise is simple. There are 16 Springfield denizens to play; only five are available at the start of the game, and there are five basic game modes to try out. Sunday Drive is the practice mode, Mission Mode gives you character specific tasks to try out; Performance mode gives you one passenger and the freedom to perform stunts for money, 2-player Multiplayer (requires a cartridge for each player), and the titular Road Rage. Road Rage is where the Crazy Taxi inspiration comes from. You pick a character and travel the town until you find a character in need of a ride. Stop in his box and he hops in and gives you a destination. Then you speed off and follow the arrows until you get to the destination. The character hops out, and you get money and a time bonus and have to seek out another fare. A premium is placed in picking people up and getting them where they need to go as quickly as possible, to keep that timer from hitting zero if for no other reason. Hereﾒs where the flaws come in. First off, the graphics are terrible. They opted for a sprite based pseudo-3D engine rather than something with more actual depth. This gives you an impressive view distance, but that makes it harder to see whatﾒs actually in front of you. Hit a hill and youﾒll have no idea where youﾒre going to land, youﾒll pass destination points without any warning, and everything looks blocky and two dimensional. Pixelation is a real problem whenever anything is close.  Worse, in terms of gameplay, are the artificial curbs. The town is laid out like a maze and free movement is definitely not allowed here. This gives you the feeling of driving half-blind through pixilated corridors while following not an arrow pointing out the destination, but hand-holding you around each and every curve. Suffice it to say, the resulting game just isnﾒt fun. The 2D picture graphics of each character are amusing and so is the Simpsons theme pumping out of your tiny GBA speakers at the intro screen. But the in game music is awful and repetitive and worse, aside from a ﾑbonkﾒ noise when you hit something, thatﾒs the only sound effect youﾒll find. Thatﾒs right, the saving grace of the console game, the copious and hilarious voice clips, arenﾒt present here. Maybe there wasnﾒt room on the cartridge, or maybe there just wasnﾒt room in the budget.  There also wasnﾒt room for a battery save because weﾒre stuck with the bane of GBA players, a password save system. Sigh. Thereﾒs an awful lot of locked content here so expect to cart around a notebook to keep track of saves as you or your youngster try to unlock the other racers and maps in the game. The only problem with that is, you probably wonﾒt want to once you get a taste of the game. Kid Factor Itﾒs the Simpsons, so kids and adults will find it appealing. Thereﾒs nothing offensive here, aside from the gameplay, and the game even lacks the controversial Itchy & Scratchy style ultra-violence (even though both are, locked at first, playable characters). The password save is annoying, but the unlockable content will occupy kids on long car trips but reallyﾅ wouldnﾒt you rather they played a better game? Ages: 8+ ESRB: E-Everyone Developer: Altron Producer: THQ Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Simpsons: Road Rage |
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