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Simpsons Road Rage 
Release date: 24 Nov 2001
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Mygamer review
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Just think; Crazy Taxi in Springfield! EA's The Simpsons Road Rage for PlayStation 2 is all that and less. The premise is that notorious power plant tycoon Mr. Burns, in his endless quest to increase quality of life, has produced a new line of nuclear-powered buses as a means of mass transit. Unfortunately the buses have a tendency to irradiate people, and to cope with the problem the people of Springfield take it upon themselves to provide each other with transportation.
In this uninspired carbon copy of Sega's masterpiece the user is offered four modes of gameplay including Road Rage, Sunday Drive, Mission Mode and Head to Head. Road Rage is the main story mode where the user must tear through a fully rendered Springfield picking up and dropping off as many passengers and making as much cash as possible without running out time. Prior to gameplay the user selects a driver from some of the show's familiar favorites, including Bart, Lisa, Marge and the dangerously dim-witted Homer. Money earned during gameplay is saved and when certain financial milestones are reached additional sections of the town and thirteen additional drivers each with their own vehicle can be unlocked including Professor Frink with his hover car and Groundskeeper Willy with his tractor. What's nice about the reward levels is that the user can unlock the extra content in any order. The only downside to this system is that since cash earned during gameplay is automatically added to your overall total, all bonuses can eventually be unlocked without putting in too much effort. It's mostly a matter of time rather than skill.
Springfield is broken down into six locations with only Evergreen Terrace, where the Simpsons actually live, available from the get go. The five other locations including Downtown and the Nuclear Power Plant must be unlocked by earning the green stuff. It's exciting, at least at first, to cruise around Springfield to all the show's famous locations and interacting with so many of the characters, all of whom are brought to life by their original voice actors (except for Lenny and Carl who sadly didn't make it into the game). All characters have an assortment of amusing sayings that are used depending on the speed of each trip and inter-character relations. A fast trip will leave Comic Book Guy saying "that was warp 10!" whereas after a slow trip he might say "worst trip ever."
Sunday Drive is the game's "chill" mode where the user can drive around and check things out without having to worry about any sort of time limit or mission. This is a great opportunity for the user to move freely through the town either to chauffer passengers free of fare or simply to familiarize oneself with the town's layout and find shortcuts. Here one of the game's largest shortcomings becomes clear; after unlocking successive portions of the town they never "join" and allow the user to move from one end of Springfield to another without quitting out and restarting in a new location. If you were to enter gameplay in Downtown and follow all of the road signs directing you to the mountains, you'll find nothing more than a road block even though Springfield Mountains is one of the six unlocked locations.
Mission Mode offers 10 mini games for the user to burn through including Snake's Day Off where the user must knock over 20 barrels of nuclear waste to ground Burns' fleet of buses, and Barney's Rage where the use runs over 12 mascots because for reasons unexplained Barney is angry at them. Considering how bland these "missions" are, more should have been included especially since the only reward for completing one is to unlock the next. It's here that Road Rage's unoptimized load times become unbearable as you wait 35 seconds to retry a mini game that takes 50 seconds to attempt. Most players will never have the patience to unlock all of them.
Two player Head to Head requires two players to compete for the same passenger and whoever delivers the most passengers wins. This means there is only one passenger at a time and he/she can be stolen by ramming into your opponent. This is a fun mode of gameplay but it offers little variety. Competing for passengers in a fully populated level would have been much more rewarding and varied.
Although it's a shame that the different districts of Springfield don't connect, each individual section is fairly large with a variety of locations and landmarks for picking up and dropping off passengers. Destructible environments appear in the form of trees, streetlights, mailboxes, bus stops, other vehicles and in classic Simpson's style, even people (no blood-sorry). Watching Homer mow down pedestrians while speeding towards the Quickie Mart is entertaining, but not entertaining enough to counterbalance the bland textures or the horizontal lines that appear across the screen when you make a sharp turn. The controls aren't very tight and you'll frequently find yourself doubling back and switching into reverse especially in the seventy percent of the mini games requiring you to hit things. It may have worked better to have brake and reverse as a single button and since there are 2 buttons for the horn, 1 of them could have been used to change camera angles rather than first having to pause the game. Also note that in 1st person view the button to look behind the car suddenly does nothing. Neither the low frame rate nor the low-end graphics can justify the game's load times.
Other questions arose such as why at the end of every game is there a cut scene of Mr. Burns saying, "Let them have their automobiles, I say." If he wants the people of Springfield to have their automobiles, why is he so adamant about his new line of buses? While I'm at it, if you decide to play on the Nuclear Power Plant district you'll frequently end up giving Bart a ride from the cooling tower to the main office. I defy you to answer these two questions: why does Bart need a ride for such a short distance, and why the heck is he hanging out at the cooling tower?
The Simpson's Road Rage definitely offers a fun experience, even if only for a few hours. While it certainly doesn't have the graphical prowess of Crazy Taxi the real character voices and classic Simpson's sense of humor make it worth a rental.
Review by Dave Kaplan on 28 Sep 2004
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